CHAPTER XIII
It was on a Wednesday morning that the famous "Gordon Panic" began. According to the later comment of the financial critics—those writers whose opinions are always interesting, rather, perhaps, than valuable—diagnosis, and not prognosis, being their forte—according to the critics, then, the members of the Combine, patiently biding their time, chanced to hit upon a morning when a well-defined war rumor joined company with a sudden and utterly unexplained drop of five pounds in copper in London. The result was immediate and disastrous. Overstrained and feverish for a fortnight past, the market broke sharply at the very opening, and Konahassett common, which had closed the night before at twenty-three and a half, by eleven o'clock, had run off, in sympathy with the other coppers, to nineteen. Then, and not until then, came the attack, evidently planned and executed by a master hand. Huge blocks of Konahassett were thrown upon the market with such rapidity that, for a time, Gordon himself seemed utterly helpless. Indeed, before he was fairly able to come to its defense, the stock had touched fourteen and a half. And then ensued a battle royal, waged with unabated fury until the ringing of the closing bell. Not only Gordon's office, but the offices of half the brokers in town, were overrun with crowds of frightened speculators; white-faced, anxious, terror-stricken. To all, by word of mouth, by tissue, by published statement, Gordon gave out the watchword, "Hold on; don't sell; it's only a drive; the mine's all right; above all, don't sell!" and Konahassett, on huge transactions, closed at sixteen.
On Thursday morning, indeed, everything looked better. The war rumor was denied, the decline in London copper was attributed to speculation, pure and simple, in nowise affecting the stability of the market, a remarkable report from the British Atlantic Railroad was rumored for the morrow, and, Gordon's followers taking heart of grace, Konahassett worked steadily upwards in sympathy with the rest of the market, and closed strong at twenty bid.
Thus things stood on Thursday evening, but Friday, day of ill-omen, disproved all the promise of the preceding day. Crop damage and heavy rain in the cotton belt both served their turn; the war scare was duly aired again; the report of the British Atlantic, so far from being what was expected, on the contrary not only showed a very considerable decrease in net earnings, but stated moreover that the complete electrification of the system would be for the present indefinitely postponed; rumor bred rumor, and the whole market, under the lead of the railroad stocks and the coppers, plunged heavily downward.
Amid all the excitement and confusion, once again it was an easy matter to distinguish the hand of the man or men who had led the attack on the Konahassett on the preceding Wednesday. The stock again from the very first acted badly; half an hour after the opening it had dropped to seventeen, and then a sudden flood of selling orders carried it down, and still farther down, until at eleven o'clock it was quoted at thirteen and a half.
Gordon, for the first time anxious and plainly doubtful of the result, fought his fight with all the cool daring and stubborn courage which had won him his place in the market world. One barrier after another was interposed in the effort to stem the tide, and one after another was ruthlessly swept away. About noon, for the first time in years, Gordon in person took the floor of the Exchange, and, knowing full well that he was destined to defeat, none the less bravely fought out his battle to the bitter end. Just once, indeed, early in the afternoon, it seemed for the moment that he might, after all, have a chance to win, and then came still another drive; stop orders were at last uncovered, and the battle, in a short half hour, became first a retreat, then a slaughter, and finally a hopeless, panic-stricken rout.
Gordon himself, pale as death, authorized the giving forth of the news that the fight was lost; that it was every man for himself; in the jargon of the street, made to do service to worried brokers in time of hopeless panic, that "one man's guess was as good as another's."
In the ensuing wild scramble to unload, Konahassett common was buffeted about the room, kicked and beaten and dragged in the dust, with none so poor to do it reverence. Once even it broke par for the first time in its history, a lot of a thousand shares selling at four and seven-eighths, and at the close it had only staggered weakly back to seven and a half. A great day for the Combine, if all the rumors were true; a great day for the reporters and their news columns; a day that had crushed and crumbled Gordon's little army into oblivion, spreading ruin and disaster in its wake.
Ruin and disaster—and worse, for not alone money losses and huge flaring head-lines followed closely on the heels of the Gordon Panic. In Saturday's paper one read of a woman, crazed by her losses, found dead beneath the window of her third-story room, and in the early calm of the Sabbath morning little Mott-Smith, at last tired of following the advice of others, for once acted on his own initiative, and the attendants at the Federal, bursting in the door, found him lying across the bed, the smoke still curling faintly upward from the pistol in his hand, a little round hole drilled neatly between his eyes.
And then, at last, after all the damage had been done, Monday morning saw the clearing of the storm. The newspapers which had talked hopelessly of panic, acting on "information from the very highest sources," suddenly changed their tone. "A bear drive," "A carefully planned raid," "Gunning for Gordon," were some of the phrases used. Stocks rallied, went blithely up, held their gain and then increased it, and closed actually buoyant. It was over. "They" had "gone" for Gordon, and had "got" him. That was all. The incident was closed.
During Saturday and Sunday Gordon received three visitors at his home. The first was a man whose eyesight evidently troubled him very considerably, for he came to Gordon's door in a closed carriage, with the shades drawn; did not emerge until such time as there chanced to be no passers-by in sight; and hastened up the steps with his hand held close to his face, as if further to aid the disfiguring blue goggles that protected him from the sun. It was two o'clock when he arrived, and he remained until shortly before six, when the same carriage again drew up at the door.
Once safely ensconced behind the drawn shades, he thoughtfully removed the blue goggles, and sat silent and preoccupied, until the carriage paused before the most magnificent house on the wholly magnificent avenue, the famous residence of the famous head of the Combine. Just once during the drive did the man with the weak eyes allow himself a thought outside his mission; very slowly he shook his head, and half aloud began to frame a brief sentence, "Of all the damned, cold-blooded—" and there he stopped, for the head of the Combine desired reports, and not comments, even from the man who was, perhaps, in his way, the most trusted little cog in the whole vast machinery of the big Trust's many activities. And so the sentence remained unfinished.
Gordon's second visitor; and the word is used advisedly, was his wife. For the first time in a week, she invaded the privacy of his study, and stood by his desk, tall and slender and graceful, her neck and arms gleaming with jewels, her opera cloak over her arm, a copy of the evening paper in her hand.
"Well," she said coldly. "Is it as bad as they say?"
Gordon made a little deprecating gesture. "You can read," he answered shortly. "The papers haven't got everything quite right, of course, but it's been bad enough. Yes," he added with emphasis, "the whole affair's been fully as bad as the papers make it out to be."
She nodded, a cold gleam of anger in her eyes. "You've done splendidly, haven't you?" she queried scornfully. "You that were going to make yourself one of the richest men in the country before you got through. You that were going to see that I never lacked for anything I wanted to raise my finger for. You that said you never started out for anything that you didn't get it—"
She gave a scornful little laugh. Gordon, with a humility that sat strangely on him, rose quietly. "I'm sorry," he said simply. "For myself, I don't mind, but I'm sorry for you. I think, though, in time—"
She cut him short. "In time!" she echoed bitterly. "And I've got to give up everything. To be pointed out as the wife of a man who went broke in the stock market. To be laughed at, pitied, patronized; oh, it's too much! I hate you, you fool! I'll tell you the truth now. I hate you! I despise you! I'd be glad—"
With a supreme effort at self-control Gordon clutched the rim of the table with both hands. In a red mist the room swam before his eyes. Then, all at once, together his vision and his brain suddenly cleared. He raised his right hand and pointed to the door.
"You'd better go," he said, in a perfectly even tone. "You've gone too far. I'll never own you as my wife again."
She did not flinch. Her eye met his with a passion less restrained, but the equal of his own. "No," she blazed, in sudden wrath, "you won't. You never spoke a truer word. Perhaps—"
She stopped abruptly, then silently turned and swept from the room.
It was not until Sunday night that Gordon's third caller came. Doyle, hurrying post-haste from the West, consumed with anxiety, his fears increasing with every bulletin received on the way, burst into Gordon's study, travel-stained and weary, to find his chief sitting calmly in his easy chair, the long table in front of him, usually covered inches deep with papers, cleared bare, with the exception of two sheets, one a letter, one a memorandum covered with minute figures. Gordon nodded pleasantly.
"Well," he said, "glad you're back. You've missed all the excitement. We've been making history since you left. All sorts, too."
He pushed the letter across the table. Mechanically Doyle took it, and read the few brief lines through. Then he looked up with a gasp.
"Is it true?" he exclaimed. "She's really gone?" Gordon nodded. "Quick work, wasn't it?" he said pleasantly. "She could have had a divorce, if she'd waited; but she was in a hurry, it seems. So they're off on a three years' tour of the world on Ogden's steam yacht. Quite romantic, isn't it?"
Doyle shook his head in mute sympathy. "I'm awfully sorry—" he began, but Gordon, with a strange laugh, cut him short.
"Needn't be," he said. "You don't know the humorous side yet. When you do, you'll laugh, too. It's really funny."
Doyle's face sufficiently showed his bewilderment. Inwardly he wondered whether it was Gordon or himself whose brain was giving way. After a moment's pause Gordon continued, half, it seemed, as if to himself.
"You're the only man who's ever going to know the inside of this; this—and one other thing. The two are inseparably connected, as they say in books. Well, here's the story. You've heard gossip about my wife and Ogden?"
Doyle nodded reluctantly. Who, indeed, had not?
Gordon nodded in turn. "I supposed so," he said dryly. "And I suppose, further, you've wondered at my inaction. Before this gossip started, I made a deal with Ogden, by which he lent me a very large sum of money to use in engineering a stock deal I'll be coming to in a few moments. It was demand money, unfortunately, and Ogden, like the thorough gentleman he is, made use of the fact that he knew I needed it, to go on dancing attendance on my wife and getting her name coupled with his, feeling sure that I wouldn't be in a position to act, or even complain. Clever, I think. Don't you?"
Doyle's lip curled. "Clever!" he cried. His tone was enough. Gordon smiled.
"There, there," he said, "don't take me too seriously. I'm never serious, these days. Life's too amusing. Well, now we come to the side-splitting humor. The real reason my wife took French leave, as you've just read in her touching little farewell, is that she couldn't endure life with a poor man. That was the phrase, wasn't it?"
Doyle nodded again. Uneasily he began to think that Gordon, under the strain, was going mad. Yet his chief's tone, when he spoke again, was sane enough, even pleasantly indifferent.
"I'm afraid," he said, "that my poor wife decided too quickly. As far as Ogden is concerned, his wealth has been grossly overestimated. To-day he isn't worth over three millions, and while it's too long a story to bother you with now, the substance of it is that, thanks to this wild trip of his, I've got the information, I've got the men in my power, and, best of all, I've got the resources to make the man a beggar, so that long before he gets ready to come home, he'll be glad some fine morning to sneak into the poor debtor court and take that means of getting rid of his creditors."
Again Doyle's fears returned. Gordon, himself a hopeless bankrupt, sitting there and stating calmly that he had the resources to put a multimillionaire into bankruptcy. Possibly something of Doyle's thought showed on his expressive face. At all events, Gordon smiled.
"Well," he said. "I mustn't have all the enjoyment. It isn't fair to keep you away from the point so long." He picked up the paper covered with the neat little figuring, and almost lovingly glanced over it once more. Then he handed it across the table to Doyle.
Half a minute passed—a minute—two. Then Doyle slowly raised his eyes to Gordon's face, and his expression was that of mute adoration. Once again, as if he could scarcely believe his eyes, he glanced at the eight figures in the lowest row of all, just below the little code cipher known only to himself and to Gordon, which, translated, read, "Deducting amount paid to Combine, as per agreement." Then once again he raised his head. "My God!" he ejaculated slowly, and, after a pause, even more slowly and with greater emphasis, "My God!"
Gordon gazed at him with a slow smile; then, when he spoke, his tone for the first time showed a trace of excitement.
"It is remarkable, isn't it?" he said simply. "And Jim, at that, it's only the first step. I'm through with the market. You're to come with me at a doubled salary, and I'm going to try the biggest game of all. A year from now I'm going to be elected governor of this state—the first Democratic governor for twenty years—and the year after that—"
He paused, as if confident that Doyle would catch his meaning, but for once the latter's ready brain was fairly staggered by what he had seen.
"The year after that—" he repeated.
Gordon rose, and stood facing him, the lust of battle in his eyes.
"The year after that," he said quietly, "is presidential year."
