by Frank Norris
“A dollar and a half! Why, my God, man! Oh well” — Scannel spread out his hands nonchalantly— “I shall simply go into bankruptcy — just as you said.”
“Oh, no, you won’t,” replied Jadwin, pushing back and crossing his legs. “I’ve had your financial standing computed very carefully, Mr. Scannel. You’ve got the ready money. I know what you can stand without busting, to the fraction of a cent.”
“Why, it’s ridiculous. That handful of wheat will cost me three hundred thousand dollars.”
“Pre-cisely.”
And then all at once Scannel surrendered. Stony, imperturbable, he drew his check book from his pocket.
“Make it payable to bearer,” said Jadwin.
The other complied, and Jadwin took the check and looked it over carefully.
“Now,” he said, “watch here, Dave Scannel. You see this check? And now,” he added, thrusting it into Hargus’s hands, “you see where it goes. There’s the principal of your debt paid off.”
“The principal?”
“You haven’t forgotten the interest, have you? won’t compound it, because that might bust you. But six per cent interest on three hundred thousand since 1878, comes to — let’s see — three hundred and sixty thousand dollars. And you still owe me nine hundred thousand bushels of wheat.” He ciphered a moment on a sheet of note paper. “If I charge you a dollar and forty a bushel for that wheat, it will come to that sum exactly.... Yes, that’s correct. I’ll let you have the balance of that wheat at a dollar forty. Make the check payable to bearer as before.”
For a second Scannel hesitated, his face purple, his teeth grinding together, then muttering his rage beneath his breath, opened his check book again.
“Thank you,” said Jadwin as he took the check.
He touched his call bell.
“Kinzie,” he said to the clerk who answered it, “after the close of the market to-day send delivery slips for a million and a half wheat to Mr. Scannel. His account with us has been settled.”
Jadwin turned to the old man, reaching out the second check to him.
“Here you are, Hargus. Put it away carefully. You see what it is, don’t you? Buy your Lizzie a little gold watch with a hundred of it, and tell her it’s from Curtis Jadwin, with his compliments.... What, going, Scannel? Well, good-by to you, sir, and hey!” he called after him, “please don’t slam the door as you go out.”
But he dodged with a defensive gesture as the pane of glass almost leaped from its casing, as Scannel stormed across the threshold.
Jadwin turned to Hargus, with a solemn wink.
“He did slam it after all, didn’t he?”
The old fellow, however, sat fingering the two checks in silence. Then he looked up at Jadwin, scared and trembling.
“I — I don’t know,” he murmured, feebly. “I am a very old man. This — this is a great deal of money, sir. I — I can’t say; I — I don’t know. I’m an old man ... an old man.”
“You won’t lose ‘em, now?”
“No, no. I’ll deposit them at once in the Illinois Trust. I shall ask — I should like.”
“I’ll send a clerk with you.”
“Yes, yes, that is about what — what I — what I was about to suggest. But I must say, Mr. Jadwin—”
He began to stammer his thanks. But Jadwin cut him off. Rising, he guided Hargus to the door, one hand on his shoulder, and at the entrance to the outer office called a clerk.
“Take Mr. Hargus over to the Illinois Trust, Kinzie, and introduce him. He wants to open an account.”
The old man started off with the clerk, but before Jadwin had reseated himself at his desk was back again. He was suddenly all excitement, as if a great idea had abruptly taken possession of him. Stealthy, furtive, he glanced continually over his shoulder as he spoke, talking in whispers, a trembling hand shielding his lips.
“You — you are in — you are in control now,” he said. “You could give — hey? You could give me — just a little — just one word. A word would be enough, hey? hey? Just a little tip. My God, I could make fifty dollars by noon.”
“Why, man, I’ve just given you about half a million.”
“Half a million? I don’t know. But” — he plucked Jadwin tremulously by the sleeve— “just a word,” he begged. “Hey, just yes or no.”
“Haven’t you enough with those two checks?”
“Those checks? Oh, I know, I know, I know I’ll salt ’em down. Yes, in the Illinois Trust. I won’t touch ’em — not those. But just a little tip now, hey?”
“Not a word. Not a word. Take him along, Kinzie.”
One week after this Jadwin sold, through his agents in Paris, a tremendous line of “cash” wheat at a dollar and sixty cents the bushel. By now the foreign demand was a thing almost insensate. There was no question as to the price. It was, “Give us the wheat, at whatever cost, at whatever figure, at whatever expense; only that it be rushed to our markets with all the swiftness of steam and steel.” At home, upon the Chicago Board of Trade, Jadwin was as completely master of the market as of his own right hand. Everything stopped when he raised a finger; everything leaped to life with the fury of obsession when he nodded his head. His wealth increased with such stupefying rapidity, that at no time was he able to even approximate the gains that accrued to him because of his corner. It was more than twenty million, and less than fifty million. That was all he knew. Nor were the everlasting hills more secure than he from the attack of any human enemy. Out of the ranks of the conquered there issued not so much as a whisper of hostility. Within his own sphere no Czar, no satrap, no Caesar ever wielded power more resistless.
“Sam,” said Curtis Jadwin, at length to the broker, “Sam, nothing in the world can stop me now. They think I’ve been doing something big, don’t they, with this corner. Why, I’ve only just begun. This is just a feeler. Now I’m going to let ’em know just how big a gun C. J. really is. I’m going to swing this deal right over into July. I’m going to buy in my July shorts.”
The two men were in Gretry’s office as usual, and as Jadwin spoke, the broker glanced up incredulously.
“Now you are for sure crazy.”
Jadwin jumped to his feet.
“Crazy!” he vociferated. “Crazy! What do you mean? Crazy! For God’s sake, Sam, what — Look here, don’t use that word to me. I — it don’t suit. What I’ve done isn’t exactly the work of — of — takes brains, let me tell you. And look here, look here, I say, I’m going to swing this deal right over into July. Think I’m going to let go now, when I’ve just begun to get a real grip on things? A pretty fool I’d look like to get out now — even if I could. Get out? How are we going to unload our big line of wheat without breaking the price on us? No, sir, not much. This market is going up to two dollars.” He smote a knee with his clinched fist, his face going abruptly crimson. “I say two dollars,” he cried. “Two dollars, do you hear? It will go there, you’ll see, you’ll see.”
“Reports on the new crop will begin to come in in June.” Gretry’s warning was almost a cry. “The price of wheat is so high now, that God knows how many farmers will plant it this spring. You may have to take care of a record harvest.”
“I know better,” retorted Jadwin. “I’m watching this thing. You can’t tell me anything about it. I’ve got it all figured out, your ‘new crop.’”
“Well, then you’re the Lord Almighty himself.”
“I don’t like that kind of joke. I don’t like that kind of joke. It’s blasphemous,” exclaimed Jadwin. “Go, get it off on Crookes. He’d appreciate it, but I don’t. But this new crop now — look here.”
And for upwards of two hours Jadwin argued and figured, and showed to Gretry endless tables of statistics to prove that he was right.
But at the end Gretry shook his head. Calmly and deliberately he spoke his mind.
“J., listen to me. You’ve done a big thing. I know it, and I know, too, that there’ve been lots of times in the last year or so whe
n I’ve been wrong and you’ve been right. But now, J., so help me God, we’ve reached our limit. Wheat is worth a dollar and a half to-day, and not one cent more. Every eighth over that figure is inflation. If you run it up to two dollars—”
“It will go there of itself, I tell you.”
“ — if you run it up to two dollars, it will be that top-heavy, that the littlest kick in the world will knock it over. Be satisfied now with what you got. J., it’s common sense. Close out your long line of May, and then stop. Suppose the price does break a little, you’d still make your pile. But swing this deal over into July, and it’s ruin, ruin. I may have been mistaken before, but I know I’m right now. And do you realise, J., that yesterday in the Pit there were some short sales? There’s some of them dared to go short of wheat against you — even at the very top of your corner — and there was more selling this morning. You’ve always got to buy, you know. If they all began to sell to you at once they’d bust you. It’s only because you’ve got ’em so scared — I believe — that keeps ’em from it. But it looks to me as though this selling proved that they were picking up heart. They think they can get the wheat from the farmers when harvesting begins. And I tell you, J., you’ve put the price of wheat so high, that the wheat areas are extending all over the country.”
“You’re scared,” cried Jadwin. “That’s the trouble with you, Sam. You’ve been scared from the start. Can’t you see, man, can’t you see that this market is a regular tornado?”
“I see that the farmers all over the country are planting wheat as they’ve never planted it before. Great Scott, J., you’re fighting against the earth itself.”
“Well, we’ll fight it, then. I’ll stop those hayseeds. What do I own all these newspapers and trade journals for? We’ll begin sending out reports to-morrow that’ll discourage any big wheat planting.”
“And then, too,” went on Gretry, “here’s another point. Do you know, you ought to be in bed this very minute. You haven’t got any nerves left at all. You acknowledge yourself that you don’t sleep any more. And, good Lord, the moment any one of us contradicts you, or opposes you, you go off the handle to beat the Dutch. I know it’s a strain, old man, but you want to keep yourself in hand if you go on with this thing. If you should break down now — well, I don’t like to think of what would happen. You ought to see a doctor.”
“Oh-h, fiddlesticks,” exclaimed Jadwin, “I’m all right. I don’t need a doctor, haven’t time to see one anyhow. Don’t you bother about me. I’m all right.”
Was he? That same night, the first he had spent under his own roof for four days, Jadwin lay awake till the clocks struck four, asking himself the same question. No, he was not all right. Something was very wrong with him, and whatever it might be, it was growing worse. The sensation of the iron clamp about his head was almost permanent by now, and just the walk between his room at the Grand Pacific and Gretry’s office left him panting and exhausted. Then had come vertigoes and strange, inexplicable qualms, as if he were in an elevator that sank under him with terrifying rapidity.
Going to and fro in La Salle Street, or sitting in Gretry’s office, where the roar of the Pit dinned forever in his ears, he could forget these strange symptoms. It was the night he dreaded — the long hours he must spend alone. The instant the strain was relaxed, the gallop of hoofs, or as the beat of ungovernable torrents began in his brain. Always the beat dropped to the same cadence, always the pulse spelled out the same words:
“Wheat-wheat-wheat, wheat-wheat-wheat.”
And of late, during the long and still watches of the night, while he stared at the ceiling, or counted the hours that must pass before his next dose of bromide of potassium, a new turn had been given to the screw.
This was a sensation, the like of which he found it difficult to describe. But it seemed to be a slow, tense crisping of every tiniest nerve in his body. It would begin as he lay in bed — counting interminably to get himself to sleep — between his knees and ankles, and thence slowly spread to every part of him, creeping upward, from loin to shoulder, in a gradual wave of torture that was not pain, yet infinitely worse. A dry, pringling aura as of billions of minute electric shocks crept upward over his flesh, till it reached his head, where it seemed to culminate in a white flash, which he felt rather than saw.
His body felt strange and unfamiliar to him. It seemed to have no weight, and at times his hands would appear to swell swiftly to the size of mammoth boxing-gloves, so that he must rub them together to feel that they were his own.
He put off consulting a doctor from day to day, alleging that he had not the time. But the real reason, though he never admitted it, was the fear that the doctor might tell him what he guessed to be the truth.
Were his wits leaving him? The horror of the question smote through him like the drive of a javelin. What was to happen? What nameless calamity impended?
“Wheat-wheat-wheat, wheat-wheat-wheat.”
His watch under his pillow took up the refrain. How to grasp the morrow’s business, how control the sluice gates of that torrent he had unchained, with this unspeakable crumbling and disintegrating of his faculties going on?
Jaded, feeble, he rose to meet another day. He drove down town, trying not to hear the beat of his horses’ hoofs. Dizzy and stupefied, he gained Gretry’s office, and alone with his terrors sat in the chair before his desk, waiting, waiting.
Then far away the great gong struck. Just over his head, penetrating wood and iron, he heard the mighty throe of the Pit once more beginning, moving. And then, once again, the limp and ravelled fibres of being grew tight with a wrench. Under the stimulus of the roar of the maelstrom, the flagging, wavering brain righted itself once more, and — how, he himself could not say — the business of the day was despatched, the battle was once more urged. Often he acted upon what he knew to be blind, unreasoned instinct. Judgment, clear reasoning, at times, he felt, forsook him. Decisions that involved what seemed to be the very stronghold of his situation, had to be taken without a moment’s warning. He decided for or against without knowing why. Under his feet fissures opened. He must take the leap without seeing the other edge. Somehow he always landed upon his feet; somehow his great, cumbersome engine, lurching, swaying, in spite of loosened joints, always kept the track.
Luck, his golden goddess, the genius of glittering wings, was with him yet. Sorely tried, flouted even she yet remained faithful, lending a helping hand to lost and wandering judgment.
So the month of May drew to its close. Between the twenty-fifth and the thirtieth Jadwin covered his July shortage, despite Gretry’s protests and warnings. To him they seemed idle enough. He was too rich, too strong now to fear any issue. Daily the profits of the corner increased. The unfortunate shorts were wrung dry and drier. In Gretry’s office they heard their sentences, and as time went on, and Jadwin beheld more and more of these broken speculators, a vast contempt for human nature grew within him.
Some few of his beaten enemies were resolute enough, accepting defeat with grim carelessness, or with sphinx-like indifference, or even with airy jocularity. But for the most part their alert, eager deference, their tame subservience, the abject humility and debasement of their bent shoulders drove Jadwin to the verge of self-control. He grew to detest the business; he regretted even the defiant brutality of Scannel, a rascal, but none the less keeping his head high. The more the fellows cringed to him, the tighter he wrenched the screw. In a few cases he found a pleasure in relenting entirely, selling his wheat to the unfortunates at a price that left them without loss; but in the end the business hardened his heart to any distress his mercilessness might entail. He took his profits as a Bourbon took his taxes, as if by right of birth. Somewhere, in a long-forgotten history of his brief school days, he had come across a phrase that he remembered now, by some devious and distant process of association, and when he heard of the calamities that his campaign had wrought, of the shipwrecked fortunes and careers that were sucked down by the Pit, he found
it possible to say, with a short laugh, and a lift of one shoulder:
“Vae victis.”
His wife he saw but seldom. Occasionally they breakfasted together; more often they met at dinner. But that was all. Jadwin’s life by now had come to be so irregular, and his few hours of sleep so precious and so easily disturbed, that he had long since occupied a separate apartment.
What Laura’s life was at this time he no longer knew. She never spoke of it to him; never nowadays complained of loneliness. When he saw her she appeared to be cheerful. But this very cheerfulness made him uneasy, and at times, through the murk of the chaff of wheat, through the bellow of the Pit, and the crash of collapsing fortunes there reached him a suspicion that all was not well with Laura.
Once he had made an abortive attempt to break from the turmoil of La Salle Street and the Board of Trade, and, for a time at least, to get back to the old life they both had loved — to get back, in a word, to her. But the consequences had been all but disastrous. Now he could not keep away.
“Corner wheat!” he had exclaimed to her, the following day. “Corner wheat! It’s the wheat that has cornered me. It’s like holding a wolf by the ears, bad to hold on, but worse to let go.”
But absorbed, blinded, deafened by the whirl of things, Curtis Jadwin could not see how perilously well grounded had been his faint suspicion as to Laura’s distress.
On the day after her evening with her husband in the art gallery, the evening when Gretry had broken in upon them like a courier from the front, Laura had risen from her bed to look out upon a world suddenly empty.
Corthell she had sent from her forever. Jadwin was once more snatched from her side. Where, now, was she to turn? Jadwin had urged her to go to the country — to their place at Geneva Lake — but she refused. She saw the change that had of late come over her husband, saw his lean face, the hot, tired eyes, the trembling fingers and nervous gestures. Vaguely she imagined approaching disaster. If anything happened to Curtis, her place was at his side.