Making Money Part 51

On leaving Patsie and her father he had gone down the Avenue in a vain hope that his father might be in town, hoping to catch him at his hotel.

On his way to his amazement he perceived a long line of curious shapes stretched along the sidewalk. As he came nearer he saw a file of men and women, some standing, some seated, camped out for the night. Then he noticed above all the great white columns of the Atlantic Trust and he realized that these were the first frightened outposts of the army of despair and panic which would come storming at the doors on the morrow.

By the morning a dozen banks scattered over the city were besieged by frantic hordes of depositors, a dozen others hastily preparing against the impending tide of evil rumor and disaster.

With the opening of the Stock Exchange the havoc began, for with the threatened collapse of gigantic banking systems orders came pouring in from all over the country to sell at any price. In the wild hours that ensued holdings were thrown on the market in such quant.i.ties that the machinery of the Stock Exchange was momentarily paralyzed. Stocks were selling at half a dozen figures simultaneously, until it became a human impossibility for the frantic brokers to fulfil the demands that came pouring in on them to sell at any price. Any rumor was believed and shouted frantically: receivers were to be appointed for a dozen inst.i.tutions: the State Superintendent's investigation was showing incredible defalcations and misuses of funds. Indictments were to be returned against the most prominent men in the financial world, and at the close of the day on top of the wildest fabrications of the imagination came the supreme horror of fact. Majendie, the president of the Atlantic Trust, was dead, slain by his own hand. But what happened this day would be nothing to the morrow.

At Patsie's frantic request Bojo went down in the late forenoon to see Mr. Swift. He had to wait almost an hour in the outer offices, watching breathless, frantic men, men of fifty and sixty as panic-stricken as youngsters of twenty-five, breaking under the strain of their first knowledge of overwhelming ruin, an indiscriminate convulsive ma.s.s pouring in and out. Then a door opened and a secretary issued him in.

Mr. Swift received him with an agitated clutch of the hand, and valuing the precious seconds, without waiting for his questions, burst out:

"Mr. Crocker, it's absolutely humanly impossible for me to do what Miss Drake requested. We disposed yesterday of over forty thousand dollars.

To sell now would be a financial slaughter to which I simply will not give my permission. Moreover, it's all very well to talk of selling, but who's going to buy?"

"If you can't sell," said Bojo, gloomily, "Miss Drake would like to know what you could raise on her holdings as security."

"She wants to know?" said Mr. Swift, on edge with the anxiety of twenty operations to be safe-guarded, "I'll tell you. Not a hundred thousand dollars, nor ten thousand. There isn't an inst.i.tution that would dare weaken its cash supply to-day on any security offered. Mr. Crocker, say for me that I absolutely and completely refuse to offer a single security." A door opened and back of the secretary the faces of two new visitors were already to be seen. Mr. Swift with scant ceremony seized his hand and dismissed him. "It can't be done, that's all; it can't be done."

Bojo went out and telephoned the result. He even tried, though he knew the futility of the attempt, to place a loan at two banks where he was known, one his own and the other the depository for the Crocker Mills.

At the first he got no further than a subordinate, who threw up his hands at the first mention of his plan. At the latter he gained a moment's opportunity to state his demand to the vice-president, who had known him from childhood. The refusal was as instantaneous. The banks were coming to the aid of no one, frightened for their own security. He even attempted to call up his father on long distance, but after long, tedious waits he was unable to locate him. What he would have asked of him he did not quite know, only that he was seeking frantically some means, some way, to come to the a.s.sistance of the girl he loved, even though in his heart he knew the futility of her attempt; perhaps even despite his admiration for her unselfishness, glad that the sacrifice could not be made. He went up later in the afternoon to explain to her all he had tried to do, to get her to go for a short ride up the river in order to s.n.a.t.c.h a little rest and calm, but Patsie refused obstinately. She was afraid that at any moment her father might return and call for her, declaring that she must be ready to go to him. Perhaps she had fears that she did not express even to him, but she remained as she had remained all day, waiting feverishly. Drake did not come back until long after midnight. Then there were conferences to be held in his library far into the gray morning. Everything seemed topsy-turvy. The night was like the daytime. At every hour an automobile came rustling up, a hurried ring of the bell followed by a ghostly flitting pa.s.sage into the library of strange, hurrying figures. Drake was no longer the dejected, resigned man, broken in pride and courage, of the night before. He put them aside hastily with a swift, convulsive hug for his daughter and a welcoming handshake for Bojo. He would say nothing and they could guess nothing of all the desperate remedies that were being discussed and acted upon in the s.h.i.+fting conference within the library.

It was after four o'clock when Bojo left, after persuading Patsie of the uselessness of further vigil. He felt too tremulously awake for need of sleep. He went down the Avenue and in the convalescing gray of the weak and sickly dawn pa.s.sed the growing lines of depositors still obstinately clinging to their posts, feeling as though he were walking a world of nightmares and alarms. About seven o'clock he came back to the Court for a tub and a cup of coffee. There he received news of Fred DeLancy, who had been in frantically the night before begging for loans to back up his disappearing margins. Neither Marsh nor Granning could come to his a.s.sistance and he had left absolutely unnerved, vowing that he would be wiped out if he could not raise only ten thousand dollars before the morrow. Bojo shook his head. He had no desire to help him. The few thousands he still retained seemed to him something miraculously solid and precious in the whirling evaporation of fict.i.tious values. There was nothing he could do before the arrival of Doris and her husband, if anything could be done then. He went down again to Wall Street merely as a matter of curiosity and entered the spectators' gallery in the Stock Exchange. The panic there had become a delirium. He stood leaning over the railing gazing profoundly down into this frenzy which had once been his life. Removed from its peril--judging it. What he saw was ugly to look upon. A few figures stood out grim, game and defiant to the last, meeting the crisis as sportsmen facing the last chance. But for the rest, the element of the human seemed to have disappeared in the animal madness of beasts trapped awaiting destruction. These s.h.i.+fting, struggling, contending clumps of men, shrieking and hoa.r.s.e, all strength cast to the winds, fighting for the last disappearing rung of financial security, gave him a last final distaste of the life he had renounced.

He went out and pa.s.sed another howling group of savages on the curb, feeling all at once the high note of tragedy that lies in the manifestation of obliterating rage of a great people disposing finally of all the shallow horde of petty parasites that are eliminated by the cleansing force of a great panic.

Doris arrived in the late afternoon and there was a family consultation, at which he was not present. Whatever might have been done the week before the issue had been decided. Drake's fate was in the hands of Gunther, to whose house he had been summoned that night to learn the terms which would be accorded him by the group of financial leaders who had been hastily organized to save the country from the convulsion which now threatened to overwhelm every industry and every inst.i.tution.

At midnight Drake returned a ruined man, stripped of every possession, a bankrupt. Only Patsie and Bojo were there when he came in. A certain calm seemed to have replaced the unnatural febrile activity of the last forty-eight hours, the calm of accepted defeat, the end of hopes, the certainty of failure.

"It's over," he said with a nod of recognition. "They got me. I'm rather hungry; let's have something to eat."

"What do you mean by it's over?" said Patsie, coming towards him. "You lost?" He nodded. "How much?"

"Stripped clean."

"You mean that there's nothing left, not a cent?"

For the first time the old hunted look came back to his eyes. "It's worse than that," he said. "It's what's got to be made good. Your Daddy is a bankrupt, Patsie, one million and a half to the bad."

"You owe that?"

"Pretty close to it."

"But what will you do? They can't put you to prison."

"Oh, no," he said grimly, "there's nothing to be ashamed of in it; that is, so far." He stopped a moment and watching him closely they both divined that he was thinking of his wife. "If worse comes to worse," he added moodily, "I've got to find some way of paying that over, every cent of it."

"But, Mr. Drake," said Bojo hastily, "surely there is no reason why you should feel that way. Others have met misfortune--been forced into bankruptcy. Every one will know that it could not be helped, that conditions were against you, that you were forced into it."

"And every one," he said quickly, speaking without reserve for the first time, "will say that Dan Drake knew how to fail at the right time and in the right way." He gave a wave of his hand as though to indicate the great house of which he was thinking, and added bitterly: "What will they think of this, when this goes on? They'll think just one thing--that I worked a crooked, double-crossing game and salted away my fortune behind a petticoat! By G.o.d, that's what hurts!" He brought down his fist with an outburst of anger such as they had never seen in him before and sprang up trembling and heavy. "No, by Heavens, if I fail she can't go on with her millions." The rage that possessed him made him seemingly oblivious to their presence. "Oh, what a fool, a blind, contemptible fool I've been! If she is worth a cent she is worth four millions to-day, and every cent I made for her, I gave to her. Talk about business heads, there is not a one of us can touch her. Oh, she's known all right what she has been doing all these years. She took no chances. She knew when to work me and how to work me. Clever? Yes, she's clever and as cold as they make 'em. Under all her pretense of being weak and sickly, tears and hysterics, you can't beat her."

"Oh, Daddy, Daddy," said Patsie, laying her hand on his arm to calm him, "she can't, she won't refuse to come to your help now when it's a question of honor, our honor and her honor. I know, I promise you, we will pay over every cent of what you owe."

"You think so? Try!"

"Daddy," said Patsie quietly, "I have $500,000 you gave me. Bojo and I tried our best to sell them and raise money for you. If you had only let me know sooner perhaps we could have. Every cent of that will go to you.

Doris, too, I know, will give her third. We will only ask my mother for what we are giving ourselves. That she will not refuse, she cannot, she won't dare. Daddy, there is one thing you must not worry about. We won't let any one say a single word against you. Every cent you owe shall be paid. I'll promise you that."

At the first mention of what she had done, Drake turned and stared at her, deaf to what had followed. When she ended tears were in his eyes.

For a moment he could not control his voice.

"You did that?" he said at last. "You would have done that?"

"Why, Dad," she said, smiling, "I couldn't do anything else."

He took her suddenly in his arms and the touch of kindness broke him down where everything else had failed. Bojo turned hastily away, not to intrude on the sanct.i.ty of the scene. When a long moment afterwards Patsie called him back from the window where he had been standing Drake seemed to have grown suddenly old and feeble.

"I want you to wait here, Bojo dear," she said as determined as her father seemed without will or energy. "I am going to settle this now. I am going to see my mother. Don't worry."

She went out after bending lightly for a last kiss and a touch of her hand, over the weak shoulders.

Left alone, there was a long silence. Finally Drake arose and began to pace the floor, talking to himself, stopping from time to time with sudden contractions of the arms, clutches of the fists, to take a long breath and shake his head. When Bojo was least expecting it, he came to him abruptly and said:

"Tom, I tell you this, and you may believe I mean it--that it's going to be. Not one cent will I take from that child. With all that I provided for the others she's not going to be left a pauper. It's got to be my wife who stands by me in this." In his excitement he seized the young man by the wrist so that the fingers cut into his flesh. "It's got to be her and only her, do you understand, or else--" He stopped with a wild glance, with a disorder that left Bojo cold with apprehension, and suddenly as though afraid to say too much Drake dropped the young man's wrist roughly and went and sat down, covering his face with his hands.

"I mean it," he said, and several times he repeated the phrase as though to himself.

They spoke no more. Bojo on the edge of his chair sat staring at the older man, turning over what he had heard, not daring to think. At the end of a long wait a maid knocked and came in.

"Mr. Crocker, please. Miss Drake would like you to come to her mother's room."

Bojo, startled, sprang up hastily, saying: "All right, right away." He turned, striving to find a word of encouragement, hesitated, and went out.

When he came into the little sitting room which gave on to Mrs. Drake's private apartments he found the two confronting each other, Patsie erect and scornful, with flas.h.i.+ng, angry eyes, and her mother, in a hastily donned wrapper and bedroom cap, clutching a sort of blue lace quilt, sunk hysterically in the depths of a great armchair. At the first glance he guessed the scene of cries and reproaches which had just ended. At his entrance Mrs. Drake burst out furiously:

"I won't have it; I won't be insulted like this. Mr. Crocker, I desire you, I command you, to leave the room. It's enough that my daughter should take advantage of me. I will not be shamed before strangers."

"Lock the door," said Patsie quietly, "and keep the key."

He did so and came back to her side.

"Don't mind what she says," said Patsie scornfully. "She's not ill, she's not hysterical, it's all put on: she knows just what she's doing."

At this Mrs. Drake burst into exaggerated sobs and shrank down into the chair, covering her face with the quilt she clung to, without perception of the grotesqueness of her act.

"Now, you're going to listen to me," said Patsie, striving to remain calm through her anger. "You don't fool me the least bit, so you might just as well listen quietly. I know just how much money you have and every cent of it has been given to you by my father. You are worth over four million dollars, I know that."

"It's not true, that's a lie," said Mrs. Drake with a scream.

"It is true," continued Patsie calmly, "and you know it's true. This house is yours and everything in it. Do you want me to tell you exactly what stocks and bonds you have at the present moment? Shall I have my father come in, too, and tell us in detail just what he has given you all these years? Do you want that?" She waited a moment and added scornfully: "No, I rather guess that is not what you want. I asked you before to help raise a loan to save him from losing what he had. You could have done it: you refused. Now I am asking you to give exactly what I shall give and what Doris will give, $500,000, so there will be nothing, not the slightest reproach against his good name, against the name you bear and I bear. Will you do it or not?"

"You don't know what you are talking about," cried the mother wildly.

"It's $500,000 now, it's $500,000 to-morrow and then it's everything.

You want me to ruin myself. You think just because he's gone on risking everything, just because he never could be satisfied, that I should suffer, too. You want me to make a pauper of myself. Well, I won't.