When Sponley reached his office at nine o’clock, he found Stewart and Ray waiting for him. He nodded to them cordially.
“ We’re going to have great times this morn- ing. This is going to be the last day of it. You’ll find cigars in my desk there. Help yourselves, will you?”
“We haven’t much time for a smoke before the fun begins, have we ? “ one of them asked.
Sponley had disappeared in a little closet, where he seemed to be rumaging about in search of something, and it was a minute or two before he answered. When he came out, he brought a shiny old alpaca coat and a crum- pled felt hat.
“ Yes, you will,” he answered ; “ all the time you want. I’m going to attend to the fun to- day myself.”
One would not have called his face heavy at that moment, and his laugh had an almost boy- ish ring. He slipped on the coat, and thrust his hands luxuriously into the sagging pockets.
“ This old rig has been through many a fight, but never a one better than there’ll be to-day. By the Lord Harry, gentlemen, I wouldn’t miss it for fifty thousand dollars.”
He stowed away a little package of memo- randum cards and a couple of hard pencils, and moved to leave the office. “ I’m going up to the floor now,” he said.
“ You’re wanted at the telephone, Mr. Spon- ley,” said his clerk, coming out of the cabinet.
It was Curtin who had called him up, and the moment the Bear recognized his voice he demanded,
“ Where are you ? “
“ At the bank,” the assistant cashier answered.
“ Ring off right away then,” said Sponley. “ I told you not to run that risk.”
“It’s all safe enough,” he could hear Cur- tin laugh, “they aren’t watching the ‘phone just now. They’re all over by the vaults.”
“ Have they found out anything ? “
“ No, they think it’ll come open in a minute.”
“All right,” said the Bear; “but don’t call me up again in any case. You wound it up till twelve, didn’t you ? “
There was a moment’s pause, then came the short rattle of the ring for disconnection. Cur- tin must have seen some one coming and rung off. Sponley was glad the assistant cashier had so much discretion.
At twenty minutes after nine, when the Bear, with a word of greeting to the guard at the entrance, came out on the floor, it was, to the unaccustomed eyes and ears in the crowded gallery, already a bedlam. Traders and clerks were grouped about that big room, talking in every key of excitement, and little messenger boys, to whom nothing mattered until the bell rang, larked about, pelting one another with handfuls of sample grain, and making a gratui- tous addition to the uproar. All the while, monotonous and incessant, the metallic chatter of scores of telegraph instruments made a long organ-point against the varying pitch of the voice of the crowd.
Sponley breathed a long sigh of complete contentment as the old air and the familiar noises greeted him. The pervasive, inarticulate sound was as perfectly intelligible to him as is the song of the locomotive to an old railroad engineer. He knew every cadence of it. He walked slowly across toward the provision pit, and before he had taken twenty paces he felt that every man in the great room knew of his presence and was wondering what it portended. His half-shut eyes that were everywhere, saw Keyes scribble a note and despatch a messenger boy with it on the run, and he smiled. That note did not contain pleasant news for Pickering.
This was his last day, the last of a multitude of days, and safe, as this one was, or precari- ous, he had enjoyed them all. He wished there were to be more of them. But he had promised Harriet and himself, and he was particular about such promises. He would enjoy the little that was left, however.
Then there ^ame to him a notion, an ironical, whimsical notion that pleased him, and he stood still, smiling over it. He would set a periodto this delectable experience. His opponent should have an hour and a half. He would begin now in three two and three-quarters minutes, and at eleven o’clock his bear’s hug should squeeze the last gasp out of Pickering. It was anything but hard business sense, but for this once he could afford the luxury of following a fancy, as pretty a fancy as that.
Then the big bell rang out half-past nine, and the trading began. It had been long since Sponley had taken the field in person, but not so long that men had forgotten that he was the best operator on the board. That he was, was due partly to his impassivity, partly to his quickness ; but more than either, apparently, to his mere bulk, or at least to a certain oppres- sion which seemed to emanate from it. Keyes was a good man, an old hand at the business, he knew every trick of it, but he felt as if Pickering’s defeat were already accomplished when he looked at Sponley standing there, at the other side of the pit.
None the less he held his ground gallantly ; for the first three-quarters of an hour he never gave an inch. But it was a game of follow the leader by that time. It seemed that every trader on the floor was coming to the provision pit, to make a short sale and take a little share in Sponley’s certain victory. No one could stand for long against such a pressure as that, and the price began dropping, a notch at a time, at first, but faster afterwards and down, down, down it went, sliding.
At a quarter before eleven there came a check and then a smart rally of a point or two. Sponley glanced up at the big clock, and he smiled. He was going to hit it almost exactly. He had expected this turn, he knew just what it meant. Pickering was of the sort who die hard, and now, as he came so desperately near the extreme edge, he was gathering every ounce of fight into this last plunge. Without hurry and without discomposure, Sponley hammered the price back again, and the narrow margin was almost nothing.
Outside, in the street, a carriage with three men in it was driving up furiously, reckless of the shouts from the policeman at the corner. When it stopped before the Board of Trade building, Pickering was still righting, but already half over the edge.
That was six minutes of eleven.
CHAPTER XX
ASSAULT AND BATTERY
DICK has never been able satisfactorily to explain why, as soon as she had finished her breakfast that morning, she went to the bank. Just before starting she told Alice that John had run off without his eye-glasses, and that she was going to take them down to him, which was true, but not entirely adequate. She told her- self that since Mrs. Sponley’s fever had abated, she was sure to want to know all about the hap- penings of the day before, and that telling her might have serious consequences. Alice would not be able to give her any information about it, and the morning paper containing the inter- view that had so badly frightened Curtin had been stuffed, as soon as Dick had read it, into John’s pocket, and was now on its way down town.So that if Dick herself was well out of the way, Mrs. Sponley might have whatever poor hap- piness ignorance affords, for a while longer.
That was an excellent reason. A year later Jack Dorlin told her that she came to the bank on Thursday morning simply because he had not come to see her Wednesday evening, which was a piece of impudence Dick could well afford to answer merely with an infinitely scornful smile.
They met at the corner, half a square away from the bank.
“What on earth has brought you down here ? “ he exclaimed, as he came up with her. “Has anything gone wrong ? “
She waived the question. “ Hello, Jack,” was all she said. There was small matter in the words to blush over ; but the color sprang into her face, for something in the inflection of them had been almost a caress, and the fact that she had not offered him her hand and that she had barely glanced at him lent an emphasis to it that he would be sure to understand.
They walked a score of paces in silence. The mere sense of nearness that came to them in the crowd was good enough without seeking to better it by talking. But the words that hung in Jack’s throat had to come out at last.
“ There’s something I must tell you “
Not there on that crowded sidewalk, with bank clerks and messenger boys, lawyers and merchants, ri
ch men, poor men, beggar men, all hurrying and jostling past, to slip be- tween them, and make an interruption at every three words. No, certainly not there, if Dick could help it. So Jack, who for all he knew of his surroundings at that moment might have been walking down a grassy lane, between haw- thorn hedges that breathed softly into the moon- light ; Jack, who knew only that it was Dick’s hand that brushed lightly by his own; poor, stupid Jack must needs again be interrupted.
“There are a lot of things you must tell me,” she said. “All I know about what happened yesterday is what I saw in this morning’s paper. John was so thoroughly tired out when he came home that, as soon as he could get rid of the reporters, he went to bed, and “
She was talking aimlessly, for she saw how he was misunderstanding her, how her words must be hurting him, and she could think of nothing but that. Why, oh, why had he made her do it !
Though he mistook the reason, he saw that the situation was painful to her, and he came quickly to the rescue.
“ You haven’t told me why you’ve come down here at this time in the morning,” he said easily. “There’s nothing wrong with Mr. Bagsbury, I hope.”
His consideration for her, even at such a moment, touched her. The tremulous bright- ness of her eyes would have told him something if he had looked up at them. She herself had forgotten by that time where they were stand- ing.
“It’s nothing I mean nothing important. I want to see John for a minute.”
“ It’s pretty early for him yet, isn’t it ? “ asked Jack. Still he would not look at her. They were standing just before the entrance to the bank, but she did not move to go in. Hills- mead came bustling up, and, as he passed them, lifted his hat in his latest and most impressive manner ; but they looked at him with unseeing eyes. He would have had the same sort of reception had he been a six-gun field battery, or a circus parade with caged animals.
“Is it?” she asked listlessly. “He started before I did oh, of course ; he walks. I for- got that.”
Then her tone changed quickly. “I think I’ll go in and wait for him. It’ll be all right for me to stay in his office till he comes, won’t it?”
He nodded assent, and led the way into the bank. They passed Hillsmead as they turned in behind the rail, and Jack wondered why he wore that peculiar expression. But he did not think of Hillsmead for more than a fraction of a second.
He ushered Dick into the private office, raised a window, and placed a chair for her near by where she could feel the breeze. “ I don’t be- lieve it will be very long before he comes,” he said.
Then with an effort he added : “ I can’t stay here. I I have my work, you see “
He turned toward the door, but before he reached it she spoke his name.
“Don’t go away, Jack. I want tell me what you started to tell me out there.”
She had not taken the chair he had placed for her, but was standing close by the window. He could not see her face.
“ I shouldn’t have done that,” he said. “ You had answered me already. It was wrong in me to try to compel you to do it more directly. I presumed on your liking me, and wanting to be kind to me.”
He dropped down in John’s big desk chair, and, bending forward, pressed his clasped hands together between his knees.
“ It is just what I tried to tell you a week ago last night in the Bagsburys’library,” he went on, speaking slowly and precisely ; “ nothing but just this : that I know what it really means now to love you, Dick. I didn’t know those other times when I told you. You were right about that. Now that I really understand, I can see how little I understood before. And until that night, I hoped that you knew I really under- stood, and that you “
If he had looked at her, he would have stopped there, but his eyes were still averted, and he labored painfully on through a bog of words, until at last, mercifully, she interrupted him.
“That wasn’t what you told me the other night. You only told me that you had found out that I was right when I said you didn’t you didn’t know. John came in then, and I “
But then the words she had meant to say sud- denly refused to be said. For the first time she realized that they were not true. He did not change his position, but she heard his breath coming quicker. He was holding him- self hard.
“ I suppose I did commit such a piece of idiocy as that. It’s just what I’d be likely to do. I’m getting tired of being such an utterly hopeless “
It was her hand, laid lightly on his lips, that checked him there. “You mustn’t say such things about yourself any more,” she said. She took her hand away, but remained standing close beside him.
Still he did not raise his eyes.
“ You are stupid this morning, though,” she said, and her voice was quivering. “Jack Jack, are you going to make me “
Then, at last, he rose swiftly to his feet; and he looked at her as though to make up in that first moment for a six months’ blindness. He caught her hands timidly, as though he expected that they would resist ; but they lay quite con- tentedly in his and he gripped them tighter.
“ Do they mean what they’re telling me ? “ he asked breathlessly. “ Do you know what they’re telling me?” But he needed no other answer than what he saw in her face, and though he let go her hands, it was that he might hold her close in the circle of his arms.
“You didn’t believe what I said that night, did you, Dick ? You knew what I was trying to say.”
A tremulous little sigh of complete happiness was all her answer at first, but afterward she said :
“ Yes, I knew, of course, all the time. I told myself that you meant that you had found out you didn’t care, and I tried to make myself believe it.But if I’d been afraid that I really should believe it “
He interrupted her, but not by speaking.
There are occasions when arbitrary divisions of time, such as minutes, cease to have any particular significance, and we can but guess from collateral evidence how much later it was when Dick, after a glance into the street below, said with a laugh, “There comes John, now.”
“ Let him come. He’s a malevolent sort of wretch. He laid his plans, you see, to come down and interrupt us again, just at a a critical moment; but for once he’s too late. We foiled him.”
“ We ? “ she questioned demurely. “ He’d have been here in plenty of time if “
But she should not have expected to be allowed to finish a sentence like that.
“ Jack ! Let me go. Please let me go. Oh, he’s coming ! “
“ It will be such a fine surprise for Mr. Bags- bury,” he answered placidly.
But John was not to have his surprise just then. Before he reached the outer office he was stopped by Mr. Peters.
“There’s a good one on us, Mr. Bagsbury. We can’t get into either of the big vaults. The time-locks are still going. They ought to have come open a quarter of an hour ago. Curtin says he set them just as usual, but I suppose he must have wound them a little too far. That would be easy enough to do. They’re likely to come open any minute now.”
“ Where is Curtin ? “ John asked.
“ He’s somewhere about. Oh, I guess he’s in the telephone box.”
There was, after all, a fundamental error in Melville Sponley’s calculations which would probably have beaten him even if luck had turned things differently; if, for instance, Curtin had not chosen that particular moment for his telephoning. The Bear had never in the course of the fight, and particularly not in this last turn of it, reckoned upon the quickness of John’s intuitions. Most men would have taken the obvious explanation instead of the far more remote one, and until it was too late would have waited for the vaults to open themselves. John would have been too late had he been obliged to wait for the laborious processes of reason to guide him ; but thanks to insight, or imagina- tion, or genius, or whatever you may be pleased to call it, he moved swiftly. Before Peters had finished speaking, John understood the whole trick, and, what is more to the purpose, he ha
d no doubt of his understanding.
He looked about thoughtfully for a moment. Then he said to Peters :
“ Don’t interfere in what’s going to happen. I know exactly what I’m going to do.”
With that he walked rapidly toward the open door of the telephone box.
He had no intention of stealing up and taking Curtin unawares, but chance brought it about.
The rubber matting deadened his footfalls, and as he drew nearer, a movement by one of the clerks attracted Curtin’s attention in the other direction. Even at that, had it not been for the intoxication induced by the whiskey and by the excitement of the moment, Curtin must have perceived John’s presence before the Banker had come within a single pace of him. But as it happened, John was not an arm’s length away when Curtin said, “ They think it’ll come open in a minute.”
It was not, as Sponley thought, discretion that stopped him then, but a big, lean forearm which came under his chin, bending his head back suddenly so that every muscle in his body turned limp as rags and the terrible grip of the inner crook of an elbow which throttled him. As his hands involuntarily flew to release his throat, John caught the receiver away from him and clapped it to his own ear. He heard Spon- ley say,
“ Locked it up till twelve, didn’t you ? “
Then he rang off, and tightening his grip on Curtin, backed out of the cabinet. Every man in the bank, save the one who remained deep in oblivion in the inner private office, came running to the spot, but they did not need John’s quick admonition not to interfere.
Curtin had ceased even to appear to struggle. He simply hung, so much dead weight, from John Bagsbury’s rigid elbow.
“ I don’t know whether I’ve broken your neck or not. I hope not. Come into my office. There are some things I’d like to have you tell me.”
The Banker and the Bear Page 19