"Decker!" I exclaimed, p.r.i.c.king up my ears. "I thought he had quit the market."
As I had never heard of Mr. Decker before that moment this was not exactly the truth, but I thought it would serve me better.
"Decker out of it!" gasped Wallbridge, his bald head positively glistening at the absurdity of the idea. "He"ll be out of it when he"s carried out."
"I meant out of Omega. Is he getting up a deal?"
The little broker looked vexed, as though it crossed his mind that he had said too much.
"Oh, no. Guess not. Don"t think he is," he said rapidly. "Just wanted to save the market, I guess. If Omega had gone five points lower, there would have been the sickest times in the Street that we"ve seen since the Bank of California closed and the shop across the way,"--pointing his thumb at the Exchange,--"had to be shut up. But maybe it wasn"t Decker, you know. That"s just what was rumored on the Street, you know."
I suspected that my little broker knew more than he was willing to tell, but I forbore to press him further; and giving him the order to buy all the Omega stock he could pick up under fifty, I made my way to Eppner.
The blue-black eyes of that impa.s.sive agent snapped with a glow of interest when I gave him my order to sell the other purchases of the morning and buy Omega, but faded into a dull stare when I lingered for conversation.
I was not to be abashed.
"I wonder who was picking up Omega this morning?" I said.
"Oh, some of the shorts getting ready to fill contracts," he replied in his dry, uninterested tones.
"I heard that Decker was in the market for the stock," I said.
The blue-black eyes gave a flash of genuine surprise.
"Decker!" he exclaimed. Then his eyes fell, and he paused a moment before replying in his high inflexible voice. "He might be."
"Is he after Omega, or is he just bracing up the market?"
"Excuse me," said Eppner with the cold reflection of an apologetic tone, "but we never advise customers. Are you walking over to the Exchange?"
In the Exchange all was excitement, and the first call brought a roar of struggling brokers. I could make nothing of the clamor, but my nearest neighbor shouted in my ear:
"A strong market!"
"It looks that way," I shouted back. It certainly was strong in noise.
I made out at last that prices were being held to the figures of the morning"s session, and in some cases were forced above them.
The excitement grew as the call approached Omega. There was an electric tension in the air that told of the anxious hopes and fears that centered in the coming struggle. The stock was called at last, and I looked for a roar that would shake the building and a scene of riot on the floor that would surpa.s.s anything I had witnessed yet.
It failed to come. There was almost a pause in the proceedings.
I caught a glimpse of Doddridge Knapp across the room, looking on with a grim smile on the wolf jaws and an apparently impa.s.sive interest in the scene. I marveled at his coolness when his fortune, perhaps, turned on the events of the next five minutes. He gave no sign, nor once looked in my direction.
The clamor on the floor began and swelled in volume, and a breath of visible relief pa.s.sed over the anxious a.s.sembly.
Wallbridge and Eppner made a dive at once for a yelling broker, and a cold chill ran down my back. I saw then that I had set my brokers bidding against each other for the same stock.
"Great Mammon!" I thought. "If Doddridge Knapp ever finds it out, what a circus there will be!"
"She"s going up!" said my neighbor with a shout of joy. He owned none of the stock, but like the rest of the populace he was a bull on principle.
I nodded with a dubious attempt to imitate his signs of satisfaction.
Forty-five--forty-seven--fifty-five--it was going up by leaps. I blessed the forethought that had suggested to me to put a limit on Wallbridge and stop the compet.i.tion between my agents at fifty. The contest grew warmer. I could follow with difficulty the course of the proceedings, but I knew that Omega was bounding upward.
The call closed amid animation; but the excitement was nothing compared to the scene that had followed the fall in the morning. Omega stood at eighty asked, and seventy-eight bid, and the ship of the stock gamblers was again sailing on an even keel. Some hundreds had been washed overboard, but there were thousands left, and n.o.body foresaw the day when the market would take the fashion of a storm-swept hulk, with only a chance survivor clinging here and there to the wreckage and exchanging tales of the magnificence that once existed.
The session was over at last, and Wallbridge and Eppner handed me their memoranda of purchases.
"You couldn"t pick Omega off the bushes this afternoon, Mr. Wilton,"
said Wallbridge, wiping his bald head vigorously. "There"s fools at all times, and some of "em were here and ready to drop what they had; but not many. I gathered in six hundred for you, but I had to fight for it."
I thanked the merry broker, and gave him a check for his balance.
Eppner had done some better with a wider margin, but all told I had added but three thousand one hundred shares to my list. I wondered how much of this had been sold to me by my employer. Plainly, if Doddridge Knapp was needing Omega stock he would have to pay for it.
There was no one to be seen as I reached Room 15. The connecting door was closed and locked, and no sound came from behind it. I turned to arrange the books, to keep from a bad habit of thinking over the inexplicable. But there was nothing exciting enough, in the statutes or reports of court decisions or text-books, to cover up the questions against which I had been beating in vain ever since I had entered this accursed city.
An hour pa.s.sed, and no Doddridge Knapp. It was long past office hours.
The sun had disappeared in the bank of fog that was rolling up from the ocean and coming in wisps and streamers over the hills, and the light was fast failing.
Just as I was considering whether my duty to my employer constrained me to wait longer, I caught sight of an envelope that had been slipped under the door. I wondered, as I hastily opened it and brought its inclosure to the failing light, how it could have got there. It was in cipher, but it yielded to the key with which Doddridge Knapp had provided me. I made it out to be this:
"Come to my house to-night.
Bring your contracts with you.
Knapp."
I was thrown into some perplexity by this order. For a little I suspected a trap, but on second thought this seemed unlikely. The office furnished as convenient a place for homicidal diversions as he could wish, if these were in his intention, and possibly a visit to Doddridge Knapp in his own house would give me a better clue to his habits and purposes, and a better chance of bringing home to him his awful crime, than a month together on the Street.
The clocks were pointing past eight when I mounted the steps that led to Doddridge Knapp"s door. Doddridge Knapp"s house fronted upper Pine Street much as Doddridge Knapp himself fronted lower Pine Street. There was a calmly aggressive look about it that was typical of the owner. It defied the elements with easy strength, as Doddridge Knapp defied the storms of the market. I had the fancy that even if the directory had not given me its position I might have picked it out from its neighbors by its individuality, its impression of reserve force.
I had something of trepidation, after all, as I rang the bell, for I was far from being sure that Doddridge Knapp was above carrying out his desperate purposes in his own house, and I wondered whether I should ever come out again, once I was behind those ma.s.sive doors. I had taken the precaution to find a smaller revolver, "suitable for an evening call," as I a.s.sured myself, but it did not look to be much of a protection in case the house held a dozen ruffians of the Terrill brand.
However, I must risk it. I gave my name to the servant who opened the door.
"This way," he said quietly.
I had hardly time as I pa.s.sed to note the large hall, the handsome staircase, and the wide parlors that hung rich with drapery, but in darkness. I was led beyond and behind them, and in a moment was ushered into a small, plainly-furnished room; and at a desk covered with papers sat Doddridge Knapp, the picture of the Wolf in his den.
"Sit down, Wilton," said he with grim affability, giving his hand. "You won"t mind if an old man doesn"t get up."
I made some conventional reply.
"Sorry to disappoint you this afternoon, and take up your evening," he said; "but I found some business that needed more immediate attention.
There was a little matter that had to be looked after in person." And the Wolf"s fangs showed in a cruel smile, which a.s.sured me that the "little matter" had terminated unhappily for the other man.
I airily professed myself happy to be at his service at any time.