Part 59

"When -- will -- that -- be -- Wimp -- asks."

"Three -- days."

"Wimp -- says -- hurry -- up -- things -- shaky -- here -- expect -- attack -- by -- bears -- have tried -- to -- place -- rails -- elsewhere -- but -- not -- successful. Wimp -- says -- good night."

Clark's eyes sparkled with anger and he hammered the key. There were other things he wanted to say--and must say. But for all his repeated calls there was only silence, till in an interval, while he rubbed his throbbing fingers, the receiver began to tilt.

"Wimp -- says -- good night --" it announced with metallic finality.

He got up and stood staring at the thing for a moment, his face heavy with anger, the group in Wimperley's office vividly before him. He could see the cold features of Birch, sharpened by the tenseness of the hour into a visage bloodless and inflexible, with thin tight lips and narrow expressionless eyes. He could see Stoughton, red with discomfort and resentment; Riggs' excited and anxious little face, and Wimperley himself, cast with a new severity; all supremely conscious of that which probably must be faced on the morrow. And what about Marsham? Tottering was now their faith in the essential future of the works and the great cycle of their operations. The wire had transmitted their decisions, but over its yellow filament had also trickled their apprehension. With a touch of cynicism he recalled the congratulatory messages--the very first it had carried.

He went out on the terrace again, seeking the black bulk of the rail mill in the medley of structures down at the works. Presently he found and scrutinized it. Somewhere in its gloom lurked an error, or else in the great furnaces that shouldered nakedly into the moonlit air. With a sudden sense of fatigue, he turned to his bedroom.

"At any rate the chief constable is with me," he soliloquized sardonically, "and that's something."

In five minutes he was sleeping profoundly.

XXI.--THE CRASH

Around the neck of every great industrial undertaking is hung a chain of unlovely parasites, who fatten on the interruptions to its progress and the fluctuations in its success. These men create nothing--contribute nothing. Playing on the fears and hopes and untempered weakness of the public, they reap where they do not sow and feed the speculative appetite of millions. To them it is negligible whether good men go down or honest effort is rewarded. Predatory by nature and unscrupulous in action, they prey upon their fellows, and, like the wolf, are strangers to mercy and compassion. Their wealth is not an asset to the world, because it represents nothing they have originated, but only that which they have filched from others less shrewd and unscrupulous. They do not hesitate to magnify the false or to bring to ruin what they find most profitably assailable. They have respect for neither genius nor labor, but juggle with the efforts of both in a fierce game for gold.

As the gong struck on the Philadelphia Exchange next morning, a well known operator associated with Marsham's firm threw five thousand shares of Consolidated on the market. It was taken at forty-eight, a loss of two points, and in that first transaction the value of the entire enterprise shrank by half a million.

A moment later, Wimperley knew of it and sent for Birch, but Birch, who had been just as speedily informed, was already on his way. He came in, a little paler than usual. On his heels arrived Stoughton and Riggs.

They were in the padded seclusion of the president's inner office, while two blocks away swelled a storm, whose echoes only reached them in the sharp staccato of the ticker in the corner as it vomited a strip of white paper. Wimperley stood there, the strip slipping between his fingers, while selling orders began to pour in to Philadelphia, and the price of Consolidated crumbled like dust. He could visualize the scene on the floor of the Exchange, the frenzy of men smitten with sudden fear, and the deliberate cold-blooded action of others who lent their weight to this downfall. Marsham was very busy. Greater grew the flood, with sales of so great quantities of stock that they perceived the market was going boldly short. Then came an avalanche of small holdings, till the ticker announced that it had fallen behind the record of transactions and that Consolidated was now offered at thirty-five with no bidders. This was three-quarters of an hour after the Exchange opened.

Stoughton and the others sat quite motionless. The thing was too big for them to grasp at once, but they had a dull sense that the foundation stones of their great pyramid were shifting, that the gigantic structures at St. Marys were dissolving into something phantom-like and tenuous. At this juncture a message was brought in from Clark.

Hear market is very weak. Please buy five thousand for me by way of support.

Wimperley read and handed it silently to Riggs. The little man swallowed a lump in his throat. "By God!" he said unsteadily, "but he's got sand, no doubt about it."

"What's that?" Stoughton demanded dully, and, reaching out, glanced at the telegram. "Why throw Robert Fisher to the wolves? They're doing well enough as it is," he grunted, and relapsed into a brooding silence.

Then began to arrive inquiries from country banks and cancellations from country subscribers. Wimperley read them out as they came in, and, well informed though he was of the wide distribution of Consolidated stock, experienced a slow amazement at the broad range of his followers. Their messages were indignant, despairing, threatening and pathetic. He began to wonder why he had accepted a responsibility which was now for the first time unveiled in such startling proportions. Yesterday the Consolidated was a name to conjure with. To-day it was an epitome of human fear and desperation.

Ten seconds before the noon gong struck on the Exchange, a frantic broker lifted a bull like voice above the uproar.

"Sell five thousand consol at thirty-two, thirty-two!" He bellowed it out raucously. The selling order had been flashed from Toronto.

"Taken at thirty-two," snapped Marsham's operator, who had opened the perilous game that morning, and, smiling, jotted a note on his cuff. He had made just eighty thousand dollars on that one transaction. The market strengthened a little in the afternoon on short covering, the matter of investment being thrown to the winds. Consolidated was now a gambling counter, and the closing quotation stood at thirty-five. Former values had shrunk by some eight millions. Gone was that laborious upbuilding into which Clark and the rest had thrown their very souls; overcast were the efforts of seven years. It was, to most people, a question of what might be made of what was left. The works remained, but, the public concluded, the iron and steel section, the heart of the thing, was unsound. Such is the communicable essence of fear.

At ten minutes after three the directors met to face a situation which was, in all truth, serious enough. Philadelphia banks, smarting from loans made on Consolidated stock, had declined further credit. The first payment of a million dollars for steel rails was indefinitely deferred. Creditors, galvanized by the events of the day, poured in ceaseless demands that their accounts be liquidated, but moneys due the Consolidated for pulp had been realized and diverted into the building of railways and the construction of the rail mill. Birch, his face very grave, ran over all this in a level monotone of a voice, while the rest wearily admitted its truth, and in the middle of the rehearsal a message was brought in from Clark.

Greatly regret events of to-day but am unshakenly confident for the future, given sufficient time to remedy defect in rails which should not take long. Chemical analyses show too high carbon and this can be rectified. Now awaiting remittance for payroll.

Wimperley read it without a trace of accentuation, while Stoughton got up and stared, as once before, at the sky line of Philadelphia.

"Well," drawled Birch dryly, "we've heard from our prophet."

"He's got more confidence in our future than we have in his past," put in Riggs.

Stoughton turned, "What about the payroll?"