"Nothing more likely," was the reply. "My tip comes from that direction."
"Do you suppose they are going to try to break Price?"
"I don"t know; I guess they could do it if they made up their mind to."
"But he owns a majority of the stock!" said Montague. "They can"t take it away from him outright."
"Not if he"s got it locked up in his safe," was the reply; "and if he"s got no debts or obligations. But suppose he"s overextended; and suppose some bank has loaned him money on the stock--what then?"
Montague was now keenly interested. He went with his brother while the latter drew his money from the bank, and called at his brokers and ordered them to sell Mississippi Steel. The other was called away then by an engagement in court, which occupied him for several hours; when he came out, he made for the nearest ticker, and the first figures he saw were Mississippi Steel--quoted at nearly twenty points below the price of the morning!
The bare figures were eloquent to him of many tragedies; they brought before him half a dozen different personalities, with their triumphs and despairs. He could read in them the story of a t.i.tan struggle. Oliver had made his killing; but what of Price and Ryder?
Montague knew that most of Price"s stock was hypothecated at the Gotham Trust. And now what would become of it? And what would become of the Northern Mississippi?
He bought the afternoon papers. Their columns were full of the sensational events of the day. The bottom had dropped out of Mississippi Steel, as they phrased it. The wildest rumours were afloat. The Company was known to be making enormous extensions, and it was said to have overreached itself; there were whispers that its officers had been speculating, that the Company would be unable to meet the next quarterly payment upon its bonds, that a receivership would be necessary. There were hints that the concern was to be taken over by the Trust, but this was vigorously denied by officers of the latter.
All of which had come like a bolt out of the blue. To Montague it was an amazing and terrible thing. It counted little to him that he was out of the struggle himself; that he no longer had anything to lose personally. He was like a man who had been through an earthquake, and who stood and stared at a gaping crack in the ground. Even though he was safe at the moment, he could not forget that this was the earth upon which he had to spend the rest of his life, and that the next crack might open where he stood.
Montague could not see that there was the least chance for Price and Ryder; he pictured them bowled clean out, and he would not have been surprised to read that they were ruined. But apparently they weathered the storm. The episode pa.s.sed with no more than a crop of rumours. Mississippi Steel did not go back, however; and he noticed that Northern Mississippi stock had also "gone off" eight or ten points on the curb.
It was a period of great anxiety in the financial world. Men felt the unrest, even though they could not give definite reasons. There had been several panics in the stock market throughout the summer; and leading financiers and railroad presidents seemed to have got the habit of prognosticating the ruin of the country every time they made a speech at a banquet.
But apparently men could not agree about the causes of the trouble.
Some insisted that it was owing to the speeches of the President, to his attacks upon the great business interests of the country. Others maintained that the world"s supply of capital was inadequate, and pointed out the destruction of great wars and earthquakes and fires.
Others argued that there was not enough currency to do the country"s business. Now and again there rose above the din the shrill voice of some radical who declared that the stock collapses had been brought about deliberately; but such statements seemed so preposterous that they were received with ridicule whenever they were heeded at all.
To Montague the idea that there were men in the country sufficiently powerful to wreck its business, and sufficiently unscrupulous to use their power--the idea seemed to him sensational and absurd.
But he had a talk about it one evening with Major Venable, who laughed at him. The Major named half a dozen men--Waterman and Duval and Wyman among them--who controlled ninety per cent of the banks in the Metropolis. They controlled all three of the big insurance companies, with their resources of four or five hundred million dollars; one of them controlled a great transcontinental railroad system, which alone kept a twenty-or thirty-million dollar "surplus"
for stock-gambling purposes.
"If any two or three of those men were to make up their minds,"
declared the Major, "they could wreck the business of this country in a day. If there were stocks they wanted to pick up, they could knock them to any price they chose."
"How would they do it?" asked the other.
"There are many ways. You noticed that the last big slump began with the worst scarcity of money the Street has known for years. Now suppose those men should gradually acc.u.mulate a lot of cash in the banks, and make an agreement to withdraw it at a certain hour.
Suppose that the banks that they own, and the banks where they own directors, and the insurance companies which they control--suppose they all did the same! Can"t you imagine the scurrying around for money, the calling in of loans, the rush to realise on holdings? And when you have a public as nervous as ours is, when you have credit stretched to the breaking-point, and everybody involved--don"t you see the possibilities?"
"It seems like playing with dynamite," said Montague.
"It"s not as bad as it might be," was the answer. "We are saved by the fact that these big men don"t get together. There are too many jealousies and quarrels. Waterman wants easy money, and gets the Treasury Department to lend ten millions; Wyman, on the other hand, wants high prices, and he goes into the Street and borrows fifteen millions; and so it goes. There are a half dozen big banking groups in the city--"
"They are still competing, then?" asked Montague.
"Oh, yes," said the Major. "For instance, they fight for the patronage of the out-of-town banks. The banks all over the country send their reserves to New York; it"s a matter of four or five hundred million dollars, and that"s an enormous power. Some of the big banks are agents for one or two thousand inst.i.tutions, and there"s the keenest kind of struggle going on. It"s not an easy thing to follow, of course; but they offer all kinds of secret advantages--there"s more graft in it than you"d find in Russia."
"I see," said Montague.
"There"s only one thing about which the banks are agreed," continued the other. "That is their hatred of the independent trust companies.
You see, the national banks have to keep twenty-five per cent reserve, while the trust companies only keep five per cent.
Consequently they do a faster business, and they offer four per cent, and advertise widely, and they are simply driving the banks to the wall. There are over fifty of them in this city alone, and they"ve got over a billion of the people"s money. And, mark my word, that is where you"ll see blood spilled before long."
And Montague was destined to remember the prophecy.
A couple of days later occurred an incident which gave him a new light upon the situation. His brother came around one afternoon, with a letter in his hand. "Allan," he said, "what do you make of this?"
Montague glanced at it, and saw that it was from Lucy Dupree.
"My dear Ollie," it read. "I find myself in an embarra.s.sing position, owing to the fact that some business arrangements upon which I had counted have fallen through. The money which I brought with me to New York is nearly all gone, and, as you can understand, my position as a stranger is a difficult one. I have a note which Stanley Ryder gave me for my stock. It is for a hundred and forty thousand dollars, and is due in three months. It occurred to me that you might know someone who has some ready cash, and who would like to purchase the note. I should be very glad to sell it for a hundred and thirty thousand. Please do not mention it except in confidence."
"Now, what in the world do you suppose that means?" said Oliver.
The other stared at him. "I am sure I can"t imagine," he replied.
"How much money did Lucy have when she came here?"
"She had three or four thousand dollars. But then, she got ten thousand from Stanley Ryder when he bought that stock."
"She can"t have spent any such sum of money!" exclaimed Oliver.
"She may have invested it," said the other, thoughtfully.
"Invested nothing!" exclaimed Oliver.
"But that"s not what puzzles me," said Montague. "Why doesn"t Ryder discount the note himself?"
"That"s just it! What business has he letting Lucy hawk his notes about the town?"
"Maybe he doesn"t know it. Maybe she"s trying to keep her affairs from him."
"Nonsense!" Oliver replied. "I don"t believe anything of the sort.
What I think is that Stanley Ryder is doing it himself."
"How do you mean?" asked Montague, in perplexity.
"I believe that he is trying to get his own note discounted. I don"t believe that Lucy would ever come to us of herself. She"d starve first. She"s too proud."
"But Stanley Ryder!" protested Montague. "The president of the Gotham Trust Company!"
"That"s all right," said Oliver. "It"s his own note, and not the Trust Company"s; and I"ll wager you he"s hard up for cash. There was a big realty company that failed the other day, and I saw that Ryder was one of the stockholders. And he"s been hit by that Mississippi Steel slump, and I"ll wager you he"s scurrying around to raise money. It"s just like Lucy, too. Before he gets through, he"ll take every dollar she owns."
Montague said nothing for a minute or two. Suddenly he clenched his hands. "I must go up and see her," he said.
Lucy had moved from the expensive hotel to which Oliver had taken her, and rented an apartment on Riverside Drive. Montague went up early the next morning.
She came and stood in the doorway of the drawing-room and looked at him. He saw that she was paler than she had been, and with lines of pain upon her face.
"Allan!" she said. "I thought you would come some day. How could you stay away so long?"