by Frank Norris
“Well,” repeated Jadwin, shifting with a movement of his lips his unlit cigar to the other corner of his mouth, “well, what do you think of it?”
The broker, intent upon the figures and statistics, replied only by an indefinite movement of the head.
“Why, Sam,” observed Jadwin, looking up from the paper, “there’s less than a hundred million bushels in the farmers’ hands.... That’s awfully small. Sam, that’s awfully small.”
“It ain’t, as you might say, colossal,” admitted Gretry.
There was a long silence while the two men studied the report still further. Gretry took a pamphlet of statistics from a pigeon-hole of his desk, and compared certain figures with those mentioned in the report.
Outside the rain swept against the windows with the subdued rustle of silk. A newsboy raised a Gregorian chant as he went down the street.
“By George, Sam,” Jadwin said again, “do you know that a whole pile of that wheat has got to go to Europe before July? How have the shipments been?”
“About five millions a week.”
“Why, think of that, twenty millions a month, and it’s — let’s see, April, May, June, July — four months before a new crop. Eighty million bushels will go out of the country in the next four months — eighty million out of less than a hundred millions.”
“Looks that way,” answered Gretry.
“Here,” said Jadwin, “let’s get some figures. Let’s get a squint on the whole situation. Got a ‘Price Current’ here? Let’s find out what the stocks are in Chicago. I don’t believe the elevators are exactly bursting, and, say,” he called after the broker, who had started for the front office, “say, find out about the primary receipts, and the Paris and Liverpool stocks. Bet you what you like that Paris and Liverpool together couldn’t show ten million to save their necks.”
In a few moments Gretry was back again, his hands full of pamphlets and “trade” journals.
By now the offices were quite deserted. The last clerk had gone home. Without, the neighbourhood was emptying rapidly. Only a few stragglers hurried over the glistening sidewalks; only a few lights yet remained in the facades of the tall, grey office buildings. And in the widening silence the cooing of the pigeons on the ledges and window-sills of the Board of Trade Building made itself heard with increasing distinctness.
Before Gretry’s desk the two men leaned over the litter of papers. The broker’s pencil was in his hand and from time to time he figured rapidly on a sheet of note paper.
“And,” observed Jadwin after a while, “and you see how the millers up here in the Northwest have been grinding up all the grain in sight. Do you see that?”
“Yes,” said Gretry, then he added, “navigation will be open in another month up there in the straits.”
“That’s so, too,” exclaimed Jadwin, “and what wheat there is here will be moving out. I’d forgotten that point. Ain’t you glad you aren’t short of wheat these days?”
“There’s plenty of fellows that are, though,” returned Gretry. “I’ve got a lot of short wheat on my books — a lot of it.”
All at once as Gretry spoke Jadwin started, and looked at him with a curious glance.
“You have, hey?” he said. “There are a lot of fellows who have sold short?”
“Oh, yes, some of Crookes’ followers — yes, quite a lot of them.”
Jadwin was silent a moment, tugging at his mustache. Then suddenly he leaned forward, his finger almost in Gretry’s face.
“Why, look here,” he cried. “Don’t you see? Don’t you see?”
“See what?” demanded the broker, puzzled at the other’s vehemence.
Jadwin loosened his collar with a forefinger.
“Great Scott! I’ll choke in a minute. See what? Why, I own ten million bushels of this wheat already, and Europe will take eighty million out of the country. Why, there ain’t going to be any wheat left in Chicago by May! If I get in now and buy a long line of cash wheat, where are all these fellows who’ve sold short going to get it to deliver to me? Say, where are they going to get it? Come on now, tell me, where are they going to get it?”
Gretry laid down his pencil and stared at Jadwin, looked long at the papers on his desk, consulted his pencilled memoranda, then thrust his hands deep into his pockets, with a long breath. Bewildered, and as if stupefied, he gazed again into Jadwin’s face.
“My God!” he murmured at last.
“Well, where are they going to get it?” Jadwin cried once more, his face suddenly scarlet.
“J.,” faltered the broker, “J., I — I’m damned if I know.”
And then, all in the same moment, the two men were on their feet. The event which all those past eleven months had been preparing was suddenly consummated, suddenly stood revealed, as though a veil had been ripped asunder, as though an explosion had crashed through the air upon them, deafening, blinding.
Jadwin sprang forward, gripping the broker by the shoulder.
“Sam,” he shouted, “do you know — great God! — do you know what this means? Sam, we can corner the market!”
VIII
On that particular morning in April, the trading around the Wheat Pit on the floor of the Chicago Board of Trade began practically a full five minutes ahead of the stroke of the gong; and the throng of brokers and clerks that surged in and about the Pit itself was so great that it overflowed and spread out over the floor between the wheat and corn pits, ousting the traders in oats from their traditional ground. The market had closed the day before with May wheat at ninety-eight and five-eighths, and the Bulls had prophesied and promised that the magic legend “Dollar wheat” would be on the Western Union wires before another twenty-four hours.
The indications pointed to a lively morning’s work. Never for an instant during the past six weeks had the trading sagged or languished. The air of the Pit was surcharged with a veritable electricity; it had the effervescence of champagne, or of a mountain-top at sunrise. It was buoyant, thrilling.
The “Unknown Bull” was to all appearance still in control; the whole market hung upon his horns; and from time to time, one felt the sudden upward thrust, powerful, tremendous, as he flung the wheat up another notch. The “tailers” — the little Bulls — were radiant. In the dark, they hung hard by their unseen and mysterious friend who daily, weekly, was making them richer. The Bears were scarcely visible. The Great Bull in a single superb rush had driven them nearly out of the Pit. Growling, grumbling they had retreated, and only at distance dared so much as to bare a claw. Just the formidable lowering of the Great Bull’s frontlet sufficed, so it seemed, to check their every move of aggression or resistance. And all the while, Liverpool, Paris, Odessa, and Buda-Pesth clamoured ever louder and louder for the grain that meant food to the crowded streets and barren farms of Europe.
A few moments before the opening Charles Cressler was in the public room, in the southeast corner of the building, where smoking was allowed, finishing his morning’s cigar. But as he heard the distant striking of the gong, and the roar of the Pit as it began to get under way, with a prolonged rumbling trepidation like the advancing of a great flood, he threw his cigar away and stepped out from the public room to the main floor, going on towards the front windows. At the sample tables he filled his pockets with wheat, and once at the windows raised the sash and spread the pigeons’ breakfast on the granite ledge.
While he was watching the confused fluttering of flashing wings, that on the instant filled the air in front of the window, he was all at once surprised to hear a voice at his elbow, wishing him good morning.
“Seem to know you, don’t they?”
Cressler turned about.
“Oh,” he said. “Hullo, hullo — yes, they know me all right. Especially that red and white hen. She’s got a lame wing since yesterday, and if I don’t watch, the others would drive her off. The pouter brute yonder, for instance. He’s a regular pirate. Wants all the wheat himself. Don’t ever seem to get enough.”
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br /> “Well,” observed the newcomer, laconically, “there are others.”
The man who spoke was about forty years of age. His name was Calvin Hardy Crookes. He was very small and very slim. His hair was yet dark, and his face — smooth-shaven and triangulated in shape, like a cat’s — was dark as well. The eyebrows were thin and black, and the lips too were thin and were puckered a little, like the mouth of a tight-shut sack. The face was secretive, impassive, and cold.
The man himself was dressed like a dandy. His coat and trousers were of the very newest fashion. He wore a white waistcoat, drab gaiters, a gold watch and chain, a jewelled scarf pin, and a seal ring. From the top pocket of his coat protruded the finger tips of a pair of unworn red gloves.
“Yes,” continued Crookes, unfolding a brand-new pocket handkerchief as he spoke. “There are others — who never know when they’ve got enough wheat.”
“Oh, you mean the ‘Unknown Bull.’”
“I mean the unknown damned fool,” returned Crookes placidly.
There was not a trace of the snob about Charles Cressler. No one could be more democratic. But at the same time, as this interview proceeded, he could not fight down nor altogether ignore a certain qualm of gratified vanity. Had the matter risen to the realm of his consciousness, he would have hated himself for this. But it went no further than a vaguely felt increase of self-esteem. He seemed to feel more important in his own eyes; he would have liked to have his friends see him just now talking with this man. “Crookes was saying to-day—” he would observe when next he met an acquaintance. For C. H. Crookes was conceded to be the “biggest man” in La Salle Street. Not even the growing importance of the new and mysterious Bull could quite make the market forget the Great Bear. Inactive during all this trampling and goring in the Pit, there were yet those who, even as they strove against the Bull, cast uneasy glances over their shoulders, wondering why the Bear did not come to the help of his own.
“Well, yes,” admitted Cressler, combing his short beard, “yes, he is a fool.”
The contrast between the two men was extreme. Each was precisely what the other was not. The one, long, angular, loose-jointed; the other, tight, trim, small, and compact. The one osseous, the other sleek; the one stoop-shouldered, the other erect as a corporal of infantry.
But as Cressler was about to continue Crookes put his chin in the air.
“Hark!” he said. “What’s that?”
For from the direction of the Wheat Pit had come a sudden and vehement renewal of tumult. The traders as one man were roaring in chorus. There were cheers; hats went up into the air. On the floor by the lowest step two brokers, their hands trumpet-wise to their mouths, shouted at top voice to certain friends at a distance, while above them, on the topmost step of the Pit, a half-dozen others, their arms at fullest stretch, threw the hand signals that interpreted the fluctuations in the price, to their associates in the various parts of the building. Again and again the cheers rose, violent hip-hip-hurrahs and tigers, while from all corners and parts of the floor men and boys came scurrying up. Visitors in the gallery leaned eagerly upon the railing. Over in the provision pit, trading ceased for the moment, and all heads were turned towards the commotion of the wheat traders.
“Ah,” commented Crookes, “they did get it there at last.”
For the hand on the dial had suddenly jumped another degree, and not a messenger boy, not a porter not a janitor, none whose work or life brought him in touch with the Board of Trade, that did not feel the thrill. The news flashed out to the world on a hundred telegraph wires; it was called to a hundred offices across the telephone lines. From every doorway, even, as it seemed, from every window of the building, spreading thence all over the city, the State, the Northwest, the entire nation, sped the magic words, “Dollar wheat.”
Crookes turned to Cressler.
“Can you lunch with me to-day — at Kinsley’s? I’d like to have a talk with you.”
And as soon as Cressler had accepted the invitation, Crookes, with a succinct nod, turned upon his heel and walked away.
At Kinsley’s that day, in a private room on the second floor, Cressler met not only Crookes, but his associate Sweeny, and another gentleman by the name of Freye, the latter one of his oldest and best-liked friends.
Sweeny was an Irishman, florid, flamboyant, talkative, who spoke with a faint brogue, and who tagged every observation, argument, or remark with the phrase, “Do you understand me, gen’lemen?” Freye, a German-American, was a quiet fellow, very handsome, with black side whiskers and a humourous, twinkling eye. The three were members of the Board of Trade, and were always associated with the Bear forces. Indeed, they could be said to be its leaders. Between them, as Cressler afterwards was accustomed to say, “They could have bought pretty much all of the West Side.”
And during the course of the luncheon these three, with a simplicity and a directness that for the moment left Cressler breathless, announced that they were preparing to drive the Unknown Bull out of the Pit, and asked him to become one of the clique.
Crookes, whom Cressler intuitively singled out as the leader, did not so much as open his mouth till Sweeny had talked himself breathless, and all the preliminaries were out of the way. Then he remarked, his eye as lifeless as the eye of a fish, his voice as expressionless as the voice of Fate itself:
“I don’t know who the big Bull is, and I don’t care a curse. But he don’t suit my book. I want him out of the market. We’ve let him have his way now for three or four months. We figured we’d let him run to the dollar mark. The May option closed this morning at a dollar and an eighth.... Now we take hold.
“But,” Cressler hastened to object, “you forget — I’m not a speculator.”
Freye smiled, and tapped his friend on the arm.
“I guess, Charlie,” he said, “that there won’t be much speculating about this.”
“Why, gen’lemen,” cried Sweeny, brandishing a fork, “we’re going to sell him right out o’ the market, so we are. Simply flood out the son-of-a-gun — you understand me, gen’lemen?”
Cressler shook his head.
“No,” he answered. “No, you must count me out. I quit speculating years ago. And, besides, to sell short on this kind of market — I don’t need to tell you what you risk.”
“Risk hell!” muttered Crookes.
“Well, now, I’ll explain to you, Charlie,” began Freye.
The other two withdrew a little from the conversation. Crookes, as ever monosyllabic, took himself on in a little while, and Sweeny, his chair tipped back against the wall, his hands clasped behind his head, listened to Freye explaining to Cressler the plans of the proposed clique and the lines of their attack.
He talked for nearly an hour and a half, at the end of which time the lunch table was one litter of papers — letters, contracts, warehouse receipts, tabulated statistics, and the like.
“Well,” said Freye, at length, “well, Charlie, do you see the game? What do you think of it?”
“It’s about as ingenious a scheme as I ever heard of, Billy,” answered Cressler. “You can’t lose, with Crookes back of it.”
“Well, then, we can count you in, hey?”
“Count nothing,” declared Cressler, stoutly. “I don’t speculate.”
“But have you thought of this?” urged Freye, and went over the entire proposition, from a fresh point of view, winding up with the exclamation: “Why, Charlie, we’re going to make our everlasting fortunes.”
“I don’t want any everlasting fortune, Billy Freye,” protested Cressler. “Look here, Billy. You must remember I’m a pretty old cock. You boys are all youngsters. I’ve got a little money left and a little business, and I want to grow old quiet-like. I had my fling, you know, when you boys were in knickerbockers. Now you let me keep out of all this. You get some one else.”
“No, we’ll be jiggered if we do,” exclaimed Sweeny. “Say, are ye scared we can’t buy that trade journal? Why, we have it in our pocke
t, so we have. D’ye think Crookes, now, couldn’t make Bear sentiment with the public, with just the lift o’ one forefinger? Why, he owns most of the commercial columns of the dailies already. D’ye think he couldn’t swamp that market with sellin’ orders in the shorter end o’ two days? D’ye think we won’t all hold together, now? Is that the bug in the butter? Sure, now, listen. Let me tell you—”
“You can’t tell me anything about this scheme that you’ve not told me before,” declared Cressler. “You’ll win, of course. Crookes & Co. are like Rothschild — earthquakes couldn’t budge ‘em. But I promised myself years ago to keep out of the speculative market, and I mean to stick by it.”
“Oh, get on with you, Charlie,” said Freye, good-humouredly, “you’re scared.”
“Of what,” asked Cressler, “speculating? You bet I am, and when you’re as old as I am, and have been through three panics, and have known what it meant to have a corner bust under you, you’ll be scared of speculating too.”
“But suppose we can prove to you,” said Sweeny, all at once, “that we’re not speculating — that the other fellow, this fool Bull is doing the speculating?”
“I’ll go into anything in the way of legitimate trading,” answered Cressler, getting up from the table. “You convince me that your clique is not a speculative clique, and I’ll come in. But I don’t see how your deal can be anything else.”
“Will you meet us here to-morrow?” asked Sweeny, as they got into their overcoats.
“It won’t do you any good,” persisted Cressler.
“Well, will you meet us just the same?” the other insisted. And in the end Cressler accepted.
On the steps of the restaurant they parted, and the two leaders watched Cressler’s broad, stooped shoulders disappear down the street.
“He’s as good as in already,” Sweeny declared. “I’ll fix him to-morrow. Once a speculator, always a speculator. He was the cock of the cow-yard in his day, and the thing is in the blood. He gave himself clean, clean away when he let out he was afraid o’ speculating. You can’t be afraid of anything that ain’t got a hold on you. Y’ understand me now?”