CHAPTER IV

A Flurry in the Market

It still lacked five minutes of ten o'clock, the hour for the daily opening of the Stock Exchange, but the board room at Holt and Henderson's was already filled to suffocation, and presently, as more and more clients came hurrying through the doors, so little space remained that as the crowd surged to and fro frequent forcible collisions became unavoidable. Yet while at any other time these gamblers would promptly have resented this jostling and scrimmaging, now they were so preoccupied and so intent upon their own affairs that they never thought of wasting time, either in apologizing themselves or in demanding an apology from those with whom they had come in contact.

The gathering would have repaid the studies of a psychologist. It numbered at least two hundred men, and apparently every rank and condition of society had furnished a representative. Well-dressed gentlemen rubbed elbows with ragged tipsters and hangers-on of Wall Street; a famous musician examined the "chart" of a no less famous artist; a coachman confident of a rise in July oats swapped theories with a farmer who foresaw a fall in December corn. But though in appearance so strikingly dissimilar, yet in one respect all these men were startlingly alike; not one of them seemed wholly normal. Their aberration displayed itself in various ways. Some were unable to keep still, but moved continually hither and thither, from the news ticker to the newspaper files, from the newspaper files to the bulletin board. Others, though content to remain in one spot, were unable to control their tongues and talked incessantly, the intensity of their speech and their nervous laughter showing the strain under which they were laboring; while others still, of a less friendly temperament, maintained an unbroken silence and a sullen aloofness from their companions.

Occasionally, here and there, small groups collected to discuss one subject, and one only--the future of the three great markets. "Well, what do you know?" was the common salutation, while now and then a customer, seemingly disregarding the grim significance of the phrase, would propound the jocular query, "Well, what are they going to do to us to-day?" Questions, answers, comments, filled the air. "London's up." "How's Liverpool?" "It's a big bull move; they've only started 'em." "I think they're toppy; you can sell 'em on the rallies." So ran the talk of the speculators, vapid and valueless, without end or beginning, and begotten of the fever which consumed their veins.

At one end of the office was a narrow alcove in the wall, just wide enough to contain a single chair, and this seat was now pre-empted, as it had been for the past month, by a man who at least in appearance presented a marked contrast to his fellow gamblers. He was young and exceptionally good-looking, with the build and bearing of an athlete, while his clear-cut features betokened not only birth and breeding, but also no lack of determination and tenacity of purpose. His whole attitude, indeed, suggested confidence in himself, and the occasional glances which he bestowed upon his companions were somewhat disdainful, as though he despised them for their excitement and their lack of self-control. Yet he himself, although quite unaware of it, was not exempt from the universal nervousness of the office, for every few moments he cast a quick glance upward at the clock, and repeatedly drew from his pocket a small memorandum book, studying it as the patron of the race track examines his wagers before the beginning of a race.

The hands of the clock pointed to ten o'clock; a bell tinkled sharply; and the tickers, like sprinters shooting from their marks at the starter's signal, commenced clicking and whirring at breakneck speed, while Demming, the red-headed, pot-bellied customers' man, began bellowing forth the quotations with an air of omnipotence which suggested that he alone was responsible for all that was taking place. "Crucible, ninety-four," he cried, "Union, one hundred and fifty-three; Steel, one hundred and twenty-seven and a half," and then, to divert his audience, and to show that he was a genuine humorist, he dropped into the time-honored slang of the street, and with a smirk of self-appreciation, went on chanting, "Annie Connolly, one hundred and five; Old Dog, sixty-two; Soup, par and a quarter."

The young man in the corner listened eagerly, noting the prices, as the board boys posted them, with an approving eye. "Still strong," he said half-aloud, "they're going up, all right," and he had settled himself to watch in comfort the rise that was to make him rich when one of the employees of the office came hastily up to him.

"If you please, Mr. Atherton," he said respectfully, "Mr. Holt would like to see you for a moment, sir, in his office."

Atherton looked at him in surprise. "Are you sure you have the right name?" he queried. "I don't like to leave the board just now."

"Yes, sir, I'm sure," the man responded. "In fact, Mr. Holt said that he particularly wished to see you at once."

Atherton rose. "Very well, then," he answered shortly, "if it's as important as that, I'll go."

In the private office he found both partners seated at the long table in the centre of the room. Holt was tall, dark and solemn; Henderson short, rosy and never without a smile; so that almost inevitably they had become known to employees and customers alike as "Joy" and "Gloom." They greeted him pleasantly enough, and after he had taken a seat, Holt picked up a card from the table and with a preliminary clearing of his throat, observed, "Our margin clerk has called our attention, Mr. Atherton, to the state of your account, and I thought that I had better speak to you about it."

Atherton, with the touchiness of a very young man, at once took offence. "I wasn't aware," he said stiffly, "that my account was not in good shape. But if you object to it, I suppose I can take it elsewhere."

At this retort, Mr. Holt's solemnity visibly increased, but the smiling Henderson, at his best in such an emergency, came promptly to the rescue. "Now, now, Mr. Atherton," he remonstrated, "don't be so hasty. There's nothing wrong with your account as it stands, and it's an account that we're very glad to have in the office, and that we don't wish to lose. But Mr. Holt is merely suggesting to you, for your own good, that you are rather crowding things. You've been carrying twenty-five hundred shares of Steel; yesterday, at the close, you bought twenty-five hundred more. And as your deposit with us is just about fifty thousand dollars, it is obvious that you are getting pretty close to the danger line."

"Quite so," Atherton acknowledged, "but that is my lookout. As long as I keep my ten point margin good, why should you worry?"

"That," resumed Mr. Holt, "is exactly the question. Are we to understand that in the event of a decline in the market, you stand ready to deposit additional sums as we may require them?"

"No," Atherton answered frankly, "you're not to understand anything of the sort. All the money I have in the world is in here now. But the market is going up and you're not obliged to worry about more margin; if there should be a drop, then we can talk things over again."

Mr. Holt heaved a sigh of impatience. "You young men, Mr. Atherton," he complained, "are all alike. You are too cocksure about everything. Now you can't tell anything about this market; it may go up; it may go off; but to try to carry five thousand shares of Steel on a ten point margin is absolute madness--I've been in the brokerage business long enough to know that. Sell out half your holdings, Mr. Atherton, and then, if a drop comes, you won't be giving us all nervous prostration."

Atherton frowned. He had calculated his profits so many times that the thought of seeing them cut in halves did not appeal to him in the least. "I don't want to sell," he demurred. "I tell you this market can't go down. The Steel Corporation is earning more money than at any time in its history. Everyone says it's going to cross two hundred. So don't be too particular about my margin; they don't always insist on ten points in other offices."

"More fools they," retorted Holt briskly, but Henderson, foreseeing in Atherton's attitude the possible loss of a good customer, hastened to make a suggestion.

"Personally, Mr. Atherton," he observed, "I think Mr. Holt is quite right. We've been in this business a long time, and we've seen many a good man embarrassed for lack of sufficient margin. But if you feel confident that we are in a big bull market, and are willing to take your chances, we will carry you, provided you will sign an order authorizing us to sell you out if steel reacts to one hundred and twenty. In other words, you give us a stop loss order for our protection, and take your chances of being caught. It's rank gambling on your part, Mr. Atherton, and we won't always agree to carry you overnight, but if it is an accommodation to you, we will carry you along from day to day, and give you the opportunity of making a big killing if the market goes up."

Atherton reflected, and obsessed as he was with the idea that the market was going much higher, Mr. Henderson's scheme impressed him favorably. With his stock selling at over one hundred and twenty-seven, a recession to one hundred and twenty seemed impossible, and by signing the stop loss order he would be enabled to hold the whole of his five thousand shares. Accordingly, since it was no time for delay, he made up his mind at once and promptly answered, "Very well, I'll do it."

At once Mr. Holt selected a "sell order" from the printed slips upon the table, filled in the figures agreed upon, and Atherton, hastily signing his name, hurried back to the board room to find, to his delight, that Steel had advanced to one hundred and twenty-eight. This, however, appeared to be a critical point in the struggle, and while the transactions increased to enormous proportions, the fluctuations narrowed correspondingly. Up an eighth, down a quarter, up an eighth again, while every few moments Demming's voice could be heard roaring vociferously, "A thousand Steel--three thousand Steel--five thousand Steel--"

Eleven o'clock came, and twelve, and Atherton, in view of the market's steadiness, decided to go out to lunch. But the grip of the game had laid its spell upon him, and without the board before his eyes he became so nervous and ill at ease that he ate his meal at breakneck speed, raced hurriedly back to Holt and Henderson's, and drawing a breath of relief as he regained the familiar entrance, he thrust open the door and went in. Yet scarcely had he crossed the threshold when he realized that during his brief absence from the office something sensational must have occurred. The room was in a turmoil; a bedlam of sound filled the air; a mob of dishevelled customers fought their way madly toward the windows of the order clerks, elbowing and shoving each other this way and that in their frenzied eagerness to buy or sell. Waters, regulator of margins, ordinarily the coolest man in the world, now stood in the rear of the office, crimson-faced, perspiring, sorting and shuffling a sheaf of customers' cards in his hands, and sending his subordinates rushing hither and thither in pursuit of those unfortunates whose slenderly margined accounts were either already submerged or in imminent danger of becoming so at any moment.

All this Atherton saw in one lightning flash of vision; the next moment his eyes leaped to the board and he gasped to see in the Steel column the figures, one twenty-four, while in the same breath he heard the voice of Demming, hoarse and exhausted, but still powerful, roaring out "Union, one forty-nine; Reading, one hundred and three; Steel, one twenty-three and seven-eighths, three-quarters, five-eighths, a half--"

In a second the calm and confidence of the past few weeks, born of a rising market and the conviction that he was making his fortune, vanished utterly, leaving him weak, trembling and panic-stricken. No longer despising his fellow gamblers, he grasped the first who passed him by the arm. "What's up?" he cried. "What the devil's happened?"

"War!" the man shouted in reply. "War with Japan! Battleships and submarines off the Pacific coast! A whole fleet of 'em. Hell to pay. I'm going to sell 'em short, right here."

He rushed away in the direction of the order clerks, leaving Atherton perplexed and dismayed. A short distance away from him he noticed a man, apparently calm amid the confusion, whom Demming had once pointed out to him as the best judge of the market among all the customers of Holt and Henderson. Without the loss of a moment, Atherton walked up to him. "What do you think of 'em?" he asked anxiously, "Are they going lower?"

The man did not take his eyes from the board, but answered courteously enough, "I can't tell. It's a big bear raid. I've thought for the last few weeks the big men were getting out."

"But I thought all the big men were in" protested Atherton. "That's what all the papers have been saying."

The trader grinned sardonically. "There's a lot in the papers that oughtn't to be there," he rejoined, "and there's a long sight more that isn't there, but ought to be. There's only one explanation of this. The public are ninety-five per cent long of stocks, and the insiders are getting them! That's all; it's the same old game."

Atherton reflected. "But the warships--" he queried.

"All in your eye," was the trader's response. "It will be denied to-morrow. But they're doing just as much damage," he added, with a gesture toward the board, "as if they were real. When the crowd takes fright, it's all over. Down go stocks, and then the big men load up again at the bottom, and sell again at the top. It's what you might call a crime, if you dared to."

At this new view of the stock market, Atherton felt more perplexed than ever. "Then you think they'll rally?" he ventured.

"Sure," his informant agreed, "but you can't tell how much lower they'll go first. It all depends on how heavily the public is in the market. I know what the bears are aiming at, and that's one hundred and twenty on Steel; that was the old low, six weeks ago. If it goes through there, good-night."

Atherton shuddered, for by coincidence this was precisely the point at which his stop order would be reached. Yet he hesitated to put much confidence in this stray acquaintance and his theories. Big men slaughtering the public so wantonly, false reports in circulation, prices being swayed, not by basic conditions, but by manipulation and by such strange fetishes as "new lows"--if all these things were true, his faith in human nature and in the goodness of the world had been sadly misplaced. "But look here," he objected, "Steel can't go down like this. Why, the earnings for the last quarter--"

The trader's grin widened, and for the first time he turned away from the board and gazed squarely at Atherton, as if at some new and interesting specimen of mankind. "Earnings," he repeated vaguely, and still again, more forcibly, "Earnings!" And at last, as though realizing the inadequacy of speech, he muttered tolerantly and not unkindly, "Oh, hell--" and turning on his heel, walked over toward the board.

Atherton, bewildered and abashed, stole back to his alcove, and sat down to watch the progress of the fight. In his mind, he pictured to himself the rival armies--the bears red-faced, scowling, domineering men, objectionable to a degree, pirates of the Exchange, attempting to wreck a stock like Steel; the bulls sane, conservative men of affairs, shrewd judges of fundamental conditions, men, in fact, much like himself. And he could not doubt that the bulls would win. Up went Steel an eighth, and he thrilled with pride for those who were defending it; down it went a quarter, and he shook with fear of these reckless raiders and highwaymen.

And so the battle raged. Two o'clock came and went, and suddenly Atherton realized the sensations of a wearied fighter in the ring, striving to hold his own until the clanging of the gong to mark the end of the round. "If only it holds another hour," he thought. Then he would at least have a respite until the following morning, a chance to decide matters at his leisure without this frightful accompaniment of sound and fury, this whirling maelstrom of men seeking desperately to make new dollars or trying more desperately still to cling to the dollars they already owned. If the market would only hold--

But even as these thoughts were shaping in his mind, there came a furious onslaught from the bears. One hundred and twenty-three for Steel, twenty-two and a half, twenty-two, twenty-one and three quarters. He could feel the blood surging to his brain, and his hands clenched as though he were fighting physically for victory. Then a rally and a long fight around twenty-three. But he could feel, with a gambler's instinct, that there was no life to the advance, and sure enough, as he had feared, presently the tide began once more to ebb. Twenty-two again, twenty-one and a half, then suddenly, with a bull-like bellow from Demming, one hundred and twenty-one, twenty and seven-eighths. For the fiftieth time he glanced up at the clock; two, thirty-five; only twenty-five minutes more, but less than a point lay between him and virtual ruin. His lip trembled, his knees shook under him, and without realizing that there was anything incongruous in such a proceeding, he began to pray fervently, imploringly--

In the midst of the group which thronged, five deep, around the ticker, suddenly arose wild commotion. Atherton could discern faces frenzied with joy; other faces torn with anguish; heard, above the tumult, some one cry shrilly, "They've done it!" and the next instant, Demming, in tones of incredulous wonder, was reporting the cataclysm, "Union, forty-eight, seven, six; Reading, ninety-nine, eight, seven and a half; Steel, one hundred and twenty, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixteen--"

Atherton stood dazed, benumbed; the blow had fallen so quickly that for a moment he could not grasp the truth. Then all at once he knew--knew that he had lost not only the fortune he had sought but most of the capital which he had risked to gain it. Steel at one hundred and twenty; he would have fifteen thousand dollars left; but instantly he recalled the lightning speed of the sheer drop to one hundred and sixteen, and wondered whether he had been fortunate enough to escape at the stop loss figure. There was but one way to find out, and mingling with the crowd, he fought his way to the order clerk's window, and presently caught the eye of Curtis, his particular friend among the office force. The clerk shook his head dubiously. "No word yet, Mr. Atherton," he called, "everything is away behind." And thus, for ten minutes which seemed unending, Atherton maintained his place until at last Curtis bent quickly forward, scribbled some figures upon a piece of paper, folded it, and handed it through the window. Atherton seized it, made his way back to the alcove, and tense with excitement, unfolded it to see staring up at him the figures 117-5/8. His fears were realized--deducting commissions, his account was practically wiped out of existence. And suddenly a frenzied desire seized him to leave the place and never to see the inside of a broker's office again. There was a moment's delay at the cashier's window, and then, residue of the fifty thousand he had staked, there came back to him a check for thirteen hundred and forty dollars and seventy cents. He thrust it into his pocket, and started for the door.

Around the board the storm was still raging, but now a different note was in the air. "Steel, one twenty-one," he heard, "twenty-two, three and a half, twenty-four." The trader whom he had questioned stood in his path, and recognizing Atherton, he said, "They've turned. Just as I thought. Warship story's denied. All a mistake; Japan expresses warm friendship. They'll come back strong now. You can buy 'em right where they are."

Without answer, Atherton passed on. In his heart smouldered a fierce resentment--a bitter hatred of everybody and everything connected with the gambler's trade. Forgetting, for the moment, that he had only himself to blame, he felt that he had somehow been tricked, deceived, robbed. And as he opened the door, and banged it to behind him, the last sound which rang in his ears was Demming's frenzied shriek, "Steel, twenty-six and three-quarters, twenty-seven!"

Outside, in the street, the world was bathed in sunshine. Overhead the sky was blue. About him, on every side, men and women were going about their appointed tasks, alert, smiling, unbelievably happy. Of a sudden Atherton's vision cleared, and in a flash of readjustment, he realized, for the first time, the incredible folly of what he had done.