When Dawson came around at half -past ten, he found a file of waiting depositors that extended clear to the corner. He walked into John’s pri- vate office and sat down near the window.
“This is hell, isn’t it?” he remarked cheer- fully.
John nodded, and Dawson looked out at the crowd in the street.
“ It doesn’t take but a minute to get a pack of fools together at any given point,” the older man went on.
“ All the fools aren’t standing in line out there, though,” said John.
Dawson turned from the window and looked over the Banker from head to foot, but made no comment on the remark.
“ I’ve been talking with them out there,” he said, “trying to find out what scared them. There are the wildest lot of yarns you ever heard going up and down that line. I don’t sup- pose the man who started it told anything very big, either. Those things grow like thistles.”
Still the Banker made no reply, but stared moodily at the blotter on his desk.
“ You’re not demanding thirty days’ notice, are you ? “ Dawson asked. “ You seem to be pay- ing everybody who asks for his money.”
“ Yes, we might as well suspend entirely as to demand notice at a time like this. The moral effect would be as bad. They’d just keep com- ing to get their money until they fairly ran us out of business. We can keep this up until the cows come home,” and he nodded toward the window.
“ This isn’t the worst you’ll get, though,” said Dawson. “ Of coursenobody but a fool’d be scared by those stories ; but there is a story that I’ve heard from three or four sources, that your loans to Pickering are entirely unsecured, and that if he goes down, he’s sure to pull you with him. You wouldn’t think men’d believe a damned lie like that ; but they do, and you’re likely to have an awful balance against you at the clearing house.”
“ I’ve been selling exchange as fast as I could without breaking the market for it. That’ll help square me there.” John rose and walked nervously to the window. “I’d like to take the whole bunch of lies those people have heard and stuff them down the throat they first came out of by God, I should ! “
“ So would I,” said Dawson, quietly. “ But look here, John,” it was the first time in years that Dawson had called him by his Christian name, “ you can’t afford to get mad yet. Don’t let your bearings get hot until the run’s over. Don’t think about it.”
“ I remember Sponley said once,” John’s mind had run back, and for an instant he thought of his old friend rather than his new enemy, “ he said that to a man who lives as we do, an emotion was a more expensive luxury than a steam yacht. But by “
He checked himself abruptly. “ Thank you. Do you suppose the Atlantic can let me have some small currency about closing time ? These little accounts are taking all I’ve got.”
The old man nodded. “ You’re all right. Only keep cool and well oiled. You can’t waste anything on friction to-day. Good-by.”
Toward noon the crowd grew larger and its temper worse, as the more distant part of it began to fear it would not reach the window by closing time. That sort of gathering, where all have come with the same single purpose, acquires a distinct individuality. This giant is far lower in intelligence than the average of its component parts; more subject to swift, unrea- soning enthusiasm or anger, easily led or directed by anything that glitters. It is a person, not a number of persons. You must reckon with it in the singular. In his office John was per- fectly conscious of this new sullenness that had come over the crowd, and he soon discovered the cause of it in a newspaper the small boys were hawking about the street. It was a sensa- tional “ Extra,” with the words “ Bulls break for Cover “ in letters three inches high across the front page, followed by the information that Pickering’s gang was badly squeezed by a drop of four dollars a tierce in the price of lard, and that the cause was the serious run that was in progress at Bagsbury’s bank.
At quarter after twelve there came to John’s ears a sound he had never heard before the noise that this dangerous animal, called a crowd, makes when it is angry. It began with a mut- ter so far down the scale that it seemed to come from anywhere, or nowhere, swelled slowly at first, and then with a sudden stringendo to a yell, and snapped off so short he could feel the air quivering in the silence behind it.
It fairly jerked the Banker out of his chair, and drew the half-dozen policemen who were standing about the big room, and who knew what it meant, to the door on the run. John reached the window just in time to see Picker- ing walking slowly up the steps.
When he entered the private office he was slightly pale, but laughing, and he moved with an air of bravado toward the window.
“ Stand back from there,” said John. “ You shouldn’t have come here to-day, Mr. Picker- ing.”
“ I didn’t come on a pleasure trip. I need some money.”
The excitement that wild yell had wrought in him was oozing out now. His face twitched and he glanced uneasily toward the window. “ Damn them,” he said. Then he repeated, “I want some money.”
“ You can’t have it,” said the Banker.
They heard the storm rising again, and both men waited for it to break. It wiped the color out of Pickering’s face, and he was no coward, either.
“ Isn’t it a little late to let go ? “ he asked. “ If it’s one of us now, it’s both.”
“ That may be,” said the Banker ; “ but you can’t have it. I can’t give you my depositors’ money when they’re lined up here to get it. It may be that when I find out where I stand with the clearing house, I’ll be able to help you. But I can do nothing now. And it seems to me that your staying here any longer,” there it came again, “isn’t going to improve the tem- per of that crowd,” he went on evenly. “ Do you want a couple of policemen to go with you ? Those fellows may be rough.”
“ No, they’re harmless. They’re chained. They wouldn’t lose their place in line even for me.”
John Bagsbury likes to tell the story of that day, and of the next ; but he says nothing of the half hour that followed Pickering’s visit : he hasalmost forgotten it himself.
Only by his utmost effort had he controlled himself while Pickering was in his office, for the cries from the street maddened him. He knew that Dawson was right, that to lose control of himself was to lose the fight, and he struggled desperately to keep himself in hand. But when the door was shut, and he was alone, and when, a moment later, he heard the derisive cheer which greeted the reappearance of Pickering on the front steps, his anger mastered him. He tried to make himself think. He must discover some way of reassuring those people in the street, of stopping this run before it drained him dry, of meeting the balance there would be against him at the clearing house ; but his rage befogged his mind, his faculties were numb, and all he knewwas the longing to have Melville Sponley under his hands for for just one minute.
He would not admit it now, if you were to ask him ; yet it is true that when he turned his back on the old desk and bowed his head, he told himself that there was no more use fight- ing ; he confessed that he was beaten.
Then there came a knock at the door and some one said, “ Mr. Cartwright and Mr. Meredith would like to see you, Mr. Bagsbury.”
When the two old trustees entered the office, they saw the only John Bagsbury that they or anybody else had ever seen in his office, the courteous, patient, quick-witted, even-minded John Bagsbury whom everybody but these same trustees knew to be the best banker in the city.
“ This is outrageous,” said Mr. Cartwright, and his voice shook. Poor Mr. Meredith’s would not come at all, though his lips moved in tremulous imitation of his principal’s.
“ Mr. Dawson said something to the same ef- fect when he was here a couple of hours ago,” said John. “ I agree with both of you.”
“ I suppose you wish to see me on a matter of personal business, gentlemen,” he added, and closed the door.
Half an hour later he opened it and spoke to th
e telephone boy. He did not speak very loudly, but his voice carried to the farthest cor- ner of the big noisy room.
“Will you call up Mr. Moffat, I wish to speak with him.”
CHAPTER XVIII
HOW THEY BROKE THE RUN
THERE was nothing really surprising about it, though John had not expected that the two dissenting trustees would reach that turning in the lane so soon. On Sunday morning, when he had said to Mr. Cartwright that of course he and Mr. Meredith would not be able to escape all the scandal that would certainly attend the failure of the bank, it was no new fear that he put in the old man’s mind. Mr. Cartwright and his echo had discussed that possibility in awed whispers a dozen times since John had been made president. When he went to Cart- wright’s house Monday evening, John referred frankly, though with a good deal of tact, to that very point ; but he said nothing of the obvious way they had out of their difficulty. He left them to think of that for themselves. It was inevitable that they should think of it, and that they should decide that such a course, should it become necessary, would involve no betrayal of old John Bagsbury’s trust. Thanks to the other stockholders in the bank, and to the unspeakable Moffat, they had no real control of the larger part of the estate; and if their nominal authority were going to bring disgrace upon their eminently respectable old heads, why should they not discard it ?
When they heard that there was a run in prog- ress at the bank, they set out thither merely because they were frightened. They had no idea of doing anything so radical as turning the estate over, then and there, into the mad hands of John Bagsbury. With all their perturbation, they would probably not have been able to make up their minds to such an act until the danger was over, had it not been for the crowd in the street. That crowd had frightened Picker- ing, had benumbed John, and it is not wonder- ful that at sight of it Mr. Cartwright and Mr. Meredith should feel the panic strike in to their very marrow. They were very old, they wanted no occupation more exciting than playing golf and telling old stories and sipping irreproach- able sherry. But here was a mob, and here were policemen, here was riot and disaster, and, worse yet, a certain scandal. They fairly gasped with relief when they were safe in the little room, and the door was shut. Even John Bagsbury’s office seemed a haven after that tumultuous street.
So it was natural enough that when John Bagsbury said, divining the rapidly forming pur- pose which underlay their querulous complaints and remonstrances, “Well, gentlemen, shall I telephone for Mr. Moffat?” that they should have assented, though their red faces grew redder as they did it, and that after the third trustee arrived, badly out of breath with hurry and with chuckling over the situation, the first steps to make John master of his own property should have been taken as promptly as possible.
It remained for Jack Dorlin, when months afterward he turned a reminiscent and contem- plative eye upon the episode, to discover the curious perversity of it all. John’s first oppor- tunity to get control of the bank had arisen in the excessive precaution his father had taken to prevent it, and now the same timorous conserva- tism of his trustees, on which the old man had counted so much, was turned to panic, and the move deliberately calculated by Sponley to ruin John served only to make the temporary control permanent
John heard from the clearing house and from Pickering almost simultaneously. The news from the former was no worse than the Banker had expected, and from the latter much better; for the closingbell had rung, and Pickering was safe till to-morrow morning. But the tide of battle was turned already. With the arrival of Cartwright and Meredith at the bank, and John’s quick guess at their errand, his confidence had come back. The morning with its confession of defeat was forgotten. He was no longer angry ; his mind was occupied by a confident determi- nation to win.
He left the telephone after receiving Picker- ing’s message and approached a little group of his officers, who were discussing the situation, and who apparently entertained serious mis- giving as to what the outcome would be.
“ I don’t think you need to feel alarmed about it,” he said. “We’re coming out all right. We’ll have that run broken now in short notice.”
“We don’t seem to be making much head- way,” said Jackson. “That line’s longer than ever and more scared. The people down there by the corner think they aren’t going to get this money.”
“ Thank God it’s getting somewhere near three o’clock,” said Peters.
“ We ought to be able to last out to-day, it seems to me,” hazarded Curtin.
“Yes, it’s to-morrow that scares me,” Peters answered.
“We shan’t close at three,” said John Bags- bury. “ We’re going to keep open till every depositor who’s waiting out there in line gets his money. We’ll keep it up as long as they do, if that’s till midnight.”
“ I don’t see how we can do that, Mr. Bags- bury,” Jackson remonstrated. “ I should think we ought to stop for breath when we have the chance.”
“ I don’t want another day like this. We’ll be able to pay every man who wants his money before we close to-night, and we’re going to do it. I think you’d better put out a notice to that effect, Mr. Peters. I’m going out to lunch. I’ll be at that little place on the corner, so that if you want me, you can get at me. Please put that notice in a conspicuous place, Mr. Peters.”
John was hardly out of the bank before Curtin
288 The Banker and the Bear
had called up Sponley and begun an account of the way matters had been going since noon ; but the Bear cut short his narrative.
“ Don’t say anything more over the ‘phone ; it isn’t safe. Anyway, I want to talk with you. You say Bagsbury’s gone out to lunch ? Do you know where ? Well, you come right off, as quick as you can, to the Eagle Cafe, in the Arcadia building. Yes, I’ll be there in one of the private rooms.”
Sponley heard or guessed enough from what Curtin told him to make him think that the bank was in no such desperate condition as he had hoped. He had been winning all day ; he was almost sure that he would be able to finish Pick- ering within the first hour next morning, but he was unwilling to take any chances. If John should so thoroughly break up the run this after- noon that it would not be resumed to-morrow morning, the Bull might recover his lost ground and compel him to do the work all over again. It would be risky, riskier than it had been before, to get people to talking once more and create another run on the bank. And so he decided to play his last card.
It was an old notion of his which Curtin had
How they Broke the Run 289
recalled to his mind just a week ago, when he said he had not been hired to crack safes. It seemed to him then too theatrical to be worth considering seriously ; but as the days went by, and the fight grew hotter, and one plan after an- other failed to dislodge John Bagsbury from his position supporting Pickering, the idea came back to him and he asked himself, Why not, as a last resort. Well, it was now or not at all. Curtin, he reflected, would probably not relish the job, but that was not an important consideration.
The assistant cashier, however, surprised his employer by entering into the scheme with a good deal of gusto. Had Sponley known his man less thoroughly, he would have suspected the genuineness of this enthusiasm, and would have conceived the idea that Curtin meant to play him false. But the Bear had no misgiv- ings. Curtin might plan a dozen treacheries in an hour, but when the moment of action came, he would obey orders.
Sponley cut short his guessing as to just what the effect of the trick would be.
“You’d better get right back to the bank, and don’t telephone to me, whatever happens. Don’t try to communicate with me in any way u
290 The Banker and the Bear
either to-night or to-morrow morning. It isn’t safe. If I want to find out anything, I’ll con- trive to get word to you.”
Curtin nodded and left the room. Just out- side the door he hesitated a moment, then walked nervously over to the bar and ordered a drink of whiskey. He watched the man po
ur- ing it into the glass, and did not see who had come up beside him until Sponley laid his hand upon his arm.
“ You don’t want that, do you ? Don’t you think you’ve had enough this afternoon ? “
Curtin laughed weakly. “ It won’t hurt me. I want something to brace me up.”
“That won’t brace you up. You’re excited enough already.”
“ There’s no harm in this one. I won’t take any more.”
The barkeeper had pushed the glass toward him, and he raised it toward his lips.
“ Put that down ! “
The glass halted.
“ This seems to be my business rather than yours.”
The glass moved upward again, but now it was trembling.
The next instant it was shivered on the tile floor, and both Curtin’s wrists were fettered in Sponley’s hands.
“ Damn you,” Curtin said.
“ I told you not to,” said Sponley, quietly. “Now go back to the bank.” He let go of Curtin’s wrists.
“ Do you do you think I’ll take your orders after an insult like that ? “
“ I think you will. You’ve found it paid pretty well before now. But that was not an insult ; it was business. You’ll get us both into trouble if you’re drunk this afternoon. You’ll see that that’s so when you’re cooled down.”
Sponley paid for the glass, and without another word to Curtin, or even a look at him, left the cafe and entered his carriage, which was waiting for him at the corner. It was three or four minutes later when Curtin came out, but in that time he had not been able to force him- self to order another glass of whiskey.
At three o’clock John Bagsbury sent word to Jack Dorlin to come into the private office. Jack found him standing back a couple of paces from his window, looking down with what appeared to be a merely impersonal or speculative interest upon the undiminished crowd in the street.
“Mr. Dorlin,” he said, “you’ve shown a dis- position to help me out of difficulties before,” Jack looked at him closely, but there was not even the faint trace of a smile, “and I want you to come to my assistance again. I want you to help me scatter that crowd in the street.”
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