CHAPTER VI
Daylight was fading; the shadows of the trees lengthened upon the grass; yet Atherton made no move to leave the park, but still sat motionless, oblivious to everything except the turmoil of his thoughts.
From the office of Holt and Henderson he had walked blindly along, heedless of his destination, until as he had neared the lake a sudden weariness had seized him and he had sunk down upon a bench to rest. For a time, he could scarcely convince himself of the reality of what had occurred; seen in retrospect, it all appeared fantastic and of the texture of a dream. But at length, as the afternoon wore on, and the shrill clamor of the newsboys filled the park, he purchased a paper and when he read, in black and white, the story of the day's decline, his last hope vanished and he knew that this was no nightmare, but reality, and that financially he was a ruined man.
At first, the burden of his calamity seemed too hard to bear. Fifty thousand dollars! While he had possessed it, never dreaming of its loss, he had not appreciated its magnitude, but now that it was gone, he realized what a sum of money it was. So marvellously easy to lose; so tremendously difficult to regain. But presently, since he was young, and by no means a coward, he managed to recover his courage. He had made a bad mistake, but so had other men; he had a difficult task before him, but others had faced problems still more difficult, and had triumphantly solved them. Therefore he resolved that beginning with to-morrow he would put the past behind him, and would think only of the future; but this afternoon he would not try to plan--his brain was weary and the tragedy of the day was still too recent and too deeply in his thoughts. And suddenly, as he lived over again the past few weeks, it dawned upon him that he had been quite mad, and not he alone, but all these other men who had sat and talked and laughed their futile laughter while the narrow ribbon of the tape spelled ruin for them before their very eyes. How had he dared, he wondered--how did any of them dare--to speculate in stocks? What did they know of real conditions throughout the world? In the papers they read bits of news, already stale and cold, and this news they swallowed and assimilated until at last they mistook its effect upon their minds for the process of original thought. So it had been with him. Over and over again, for days, he had read, first in one form, then in another, the news that Steel was going up; until he had ended by believing it with a fervor that nothing could shake; imagining, moreover, that he had shrewdly reasoned this out for himself, that he was a good judge of commerce, finance, trade--that because of his ability he could make a fortune in stocks--he laughed ironically; disillusionment had been absolute, complete, a hammer stroke--"The Boy Gambler," he murmured to himself, "A Story of Punctured Pride."
Twilight deepened; the night breeze, grateful and refreshing, swept across the water, and all at once Atherton remembered that he had not eaten since his ill-omened luncheon and that he was ravenously hungry. "It's lucky," he reflected, "that I've enough left for a meal," and forthwith made his way toward the Sign of the Peacock, a café where he knew that evening dress was not required, and where food, wines and music vied each with the other in excellence.
The head waiter greeted him with his customary smiling welcome. "All alone to-night, Mr. Atherton?" he inquired; and Atherton, answering mechanically, "Yes, for one, please," was shown to a table near the window, but no sooner had he seated himself than Henri, the second in command, came bustling up to him. "Ze zhentlemen," he explained, "across ze room--zey ask ze honnaire--" and he waved his hand with a gesture deprecatory but inviting.
Atherton glanced in the direction indicated, and immediately recognized the two men as friends and classmates of his college days. Blagden, tall, dark, good-looking, had been one of those attractive but unreliable students who are more brilliant than successful, more admired than liked, so that on the whole his University course had been more spectacular than satisfying. But though open to plenty of criticism on other grounds, no one had ever denied him the qualities of courage, coolness and "nerve," and these had won for him outdoors the title of tennis champion, indoors the still more valuable reputation of being the best poker player in college. The other man, thickset, solid, rosy, with the neck of a bull, was "Tubby" Mills, guard upon the eleven for three seasons; never quite of "All-America" timber, but steady, dependable, and always managing to let the man opposed to him in the line realize, before the game was ended, that he had been through an afternoon of exercise perhaps more strenuous than beneficial. Stolid but likable, "Tubby" made up in genial good nature what he perhaps lacked in brains.
Atherton rose at once, crossed the room and took the vacant chair at their table.
"Well, well," Blagden greeted him, "how goes it, old scout?" And so strong is the force of habit that Atherton, despite the day's reverses, rejoined, "Oh, first-rate, thanks. How is it with you?"
"Fine," Blagden responded, "couldn't be better. Everything lovely."
"And you, Tubby," said Atherton, turning to Mills.
"Oh, pretty good," the chubby one answered, and pushing the bill of fare toward Atherton, he added, "Here, what will you have? This is on me. Better try a porterhouse with onions; we've ordered some fizz."
Atherton followed his advice, and the talk, running back to college days and college classmates, dealt for a time wholly with the past until at last, after a pause, Blagden asked the question that Atherton had been expecting, "And what are you doing with yourself now?"
Atherton hesitated; then, inspired perhaps by the comforting influence of the steak and the "fizz," he answered impulsively, "Oh, I might as well tell you the truth. I've been playing the market, and like a fool I got in so deep that this drop to-day wiped me out. So I'm practically busted, and wondering what I'm going to do next."
Having finished his disclosure, he awaited the conventional expressions of sympathy from his friends, but to his surprise neither of them spoke, and Blagden stared at Mills, and Mills at Blagden until presently, somewhat to Atherton's resentment, both of them began to grin broadly.
"Shall we tell him, Tubby?" asked Blagden at length. "Sure thing," responded Mills briefly. "He told us."
Blagden turned to Atherton. "Well, then," he observed, "to borrow a phrase from the unregenerate and indefensible game of poker, this appears to be a case of three of a kind. Last week, I was long of twelve thousand bales of January cotton, and they dropped the market on me one hundred and fifty points in two days, and beggared me to the tune of about ninety thousand dollars. To-day Tubby, who has been a terrible bear on wheat, and was short up to his eyebrows, got forced out on the rise, and was stung for--how much was it, Tubby?"
"Oh, about thirty-five thousand," answered Mills regretfully, "between thirty-five and forty. I bit off more than I could chew."
In spite of himself, Atherton smiled in his turn. "Well, I'll be damned," was his first rejoinder, and then, as the real significance of the coincidence dawned upon him, he cried, "What's the trouble with this speculative game, anyway? Why on earth can't anyone beat it? We're not all fools. Suppose a hundred men start speculating on the same day? You'd naturally suppose, on some kind of law of averages, that half of them would win and half would lose. But what's the answer? The answer is that the whole darned hundred lose. I never knew it to fail. And I'd like to know why. It can't be true that everybody who invests money in cotton and grain and stocks is stark, staring crazy. There must be some men who understand conditions, who possess ability enough to calculate and plan; there must be some winners. But if they are, I never heard of 'em. It's a mighty funny game."
"You're right," Blagden assented. "I've been doing some thinking myself since last week; I've been asking the very questions you're asking now. I can't find the answer, but I've got this far; I know why poor idiots like you and me and Tubby get it in the neck. It's because we play the game single-handed. And look at what we're up against. This is an age of consolidation and co-operation. It's so in business and it's so in the markets. Pools--that's all you hear nowadays--pools in leather, copper, oil, cotton, corn. And we're fools enough, with a few thousand dollars, to go into a game where you need millions. And as for talking about understanding conditions, and calculating what the market ought to do, why good Lord, Atherton, you ought to know better than that. Speculation is only another way of spelling manipulation. Prices don't go up--they're forced up; they don't go down--they're jammed down, and sometimes most curiously far, too. But as for planning, calculating, reading, studying conditions--good night!" And he refilled his glass.
There was a thoughtful silence. Atherton, pondering on what Blagden had said, and remembering, also, what the trader at Holt and Henderson's had told him, felt that his ideas of speculation had undergone a violent change. So that at length he answered reluctantly, "Well, it looks as though you were right. But I wish we'd thought of this before. Now it's a case of 'They've got the money and we've got the experience.'"
Mills leaned forward, planting his elbows comfortably upon the table. "That's so," he agreed, "I never could see much sense in this post mortem business. The point is: What are we going to do next? And I for one wish it distinctly understood that I refuse to be licked. I started out to make a million dollars, and I'm not going to quit until I'm put away in a box underground. You two fellows were considered rather clever when you were in college, so instead of all this sob stuff why don't you furnish some practical wisdom? What are we going to do? How are we going to get our money back?"
Atherton gazed at his stocky friend, not without admiration for his grit. "Blagden," he answered, "has made one mighty good suggestion. Whatever we do, let's not continue this 'lone hand' business; let's take his tip that this is an age of consolidation, and let's pool our resources, such as they are, and see if we can't manage to do a little better."
Mills grunted approval. "Good scheme," he assented. "We'll be a regular trust. But when you say, 'resources, such as they are,' you've put your finger on our weakest spot. If we have resources, they're not in cash. What shall we call ourselves? 'The United Brotherhood of Down and Outs'? Or is that too severe?"
But Blagden, the imaginative, suddenly caught fire at the idea. "No, no," he objected, "nothing as crude as that. Give a dog a bad name and hang him. I'll tell you what we'll call ourselves. 'Gentlemen Adventurers.' That has the proper ring. Every morning we'll start forth on a tour of discovery; then we'll meet and compare notes and see if we can't combine our experiences to our mutual advantage."
"That sounds fine," Mills agreed, "but what kind of adventures are we going to have?"
"Oh, Tubby, Tubby," cried Blagden. "If there's a more prosaic man in the world than you are, I'd like to see him. Why, you miss the point of the whole thing. If we knew just what was going to happen to us, every day of our lives, where would the fun be? Where would be the romance, the thrill? If you could see an adventure coming half a mile down the road, then it wouldn't be an adventure; it has to bump into you from right around the corner. Do you get the idea?"
"Oh, sure," retorted Mills. "At least, I get what you think is the idea. But that is the trouble with you poetical chaps; you can't understand that this is a practical world, especially the dollars and cents part of it. And if you're proposing that we leave here to-night and start looking for adventure, why we'd better raise an emergency fund at once. Because instead of finding money, we'll be losing it. I've started looking for adventure lots of times in my life, and I always bring up in one of two places--the police station or the hospital."
"Oh, I don't mean that kind of adventure," Blagden hastened to explain. "I mean the 'New Arabian Nights' sort of thing. We'll meet princesses and potentates and you may take my word for it that it won't be long before we're on the trail of some real money. We'll get back all we've lost and more too."
He spoke persuasively, but Mills remained unconvinced. "Oh, it's easy enough," he objected, "to talk like that in here, with the lights and the music and a couple of glasses of champagne under your belt. But nothing will really happen. We'll go out of this place and walk peacefully home again, and in the morning we'll wake up and laugh at ourselves. I only wish your dreams would come true, Blagden, but they won't; they're all moonshine. The only real thing is that we're broke."
But Blagden, always at his best under fire, rallied vigorously to the support of his theory. "Nonsense," he cried, "you ought to be ashamed of yourself. One minute you claim to be a fighter and the next you're ready to quit cold. Why, the trouble with you--the trouble with all three of us--and the reason we think there's no romance left in the world is simply that we've gone stale--stale from sitting over the ticker day after day, without a thought of anything else on earth except the ups and downs of the market. I would gamble my last cent that there's waiting for us, right here in this city, adventure enough to fill a thousand books; adventures of riches and of poverty, of romance and reality, of battle and murder and sudden death. Here's the test. What day is this? Tuesday. Friday night, at nine o'clock, we'll meet in my rooms and compare notes. We'll all three try our best in the meantime and if by Friday no one of us has had an adventure worthy of the name, no one of us has chanced on the slightest idea, the faintest clue, that spells money, then I'll admit that I'm wrong and that Tubby's right. Now then, you fat guzzler, isn't that fair?"
"Oh, sure, that's fair enough," Mills was forced to agree, "but I don't believe--"
He stopped abruptly, gazing straight before him, and then, under his breath, he murmured, "Great Heavens, what a peach!"
The girl who had entered the café and taken a seat at a table not far from their own surely merited his praise. She was tall and slender, faultlessly gowned in black, and her face, under the broad picture hat, was of exceptional beauty, yet with an expression of mingled indifference and assurance that bespoke a plentiful knowledge of the world. She gave her order, began leisurely to remove her gloves, and presently, as she glanced about the room, Atherton perceived, to his surprise, that her eyes remained fixed upon their table with a singular intentness. Nor was he the only one to notice this, for immediately Mills observed, "By Jove, one of us seems to have made a hit. Do you know her, Atherton?"
Atherton shook his head. "No, I haven't the pleasure," he answered. And as the girl's eyes were suddenly averted, he added, "There was something, though, about our table, that seemed to attract her. And reasoning by the process of elimination, I conclude that it must be Blagden."
"You flatter me," Blagden calmly rejoined. "Just my luck, though, to be seated with my back to the lady. Is she really so charming?"
"Charming?" Mills echoed fervently, in a tone which answered Blagden's question in ardent affirmative. And Atherton supplemented, "Yes, if anybody happens to fancy that particular type, I should almost say that she is as pretty a woman as I ever saw in my life."
"Why, this is wonderful!" cried Blagden. "This calls for personal investigation. I don't suppose I can deliberately turn around and stare, but we might as well be going, anyway, and I must see her, if only as we depart."
They rose, and as they started to leave the table, Atherton noticed that the girl's eyes were again turned in their direction, and almost simultaneously was aware of a smothered ejaculation from Blagden. "So you know her?" he whispered.
Blagden did not answer directly. "Just a moment," he muttered, "I'll be right back." And walking swiftly over to the table, he exchanged a few brief words with its occupant, and then rejoined his companions, his face eager and expectant.
"I'll see you fellows later," he hurriedly explained; adding hastily, "What do you think of my theories now. Didn't I tell you this was the city of adventures. And mine is going to begin right here."
Mills grinned. "You always were a lucky devil," he cried enviously. "Well, all I can say is that if this is the form our adventures are going to take, they can't come too fast for me." And he and Atherton walked slowly in the direction of the door, while Blagden turned and made his way toward the girl who awaited him.
