"The pool to sell Pittsburgh & New Orleans."

"Who said anything about selling!" said Drake sharply. "The pool's all right." He looked at him a long moment, and the boyish triumph, suppressed too long, broke out with the memory of Fontaine's visit. "I bought control of Pittsburgh & New Orleans at eleven o'clock this morning and sold it ten minutes ago, for what I paid for it, plus--plus a little profit of ten million dollars." He paused long enough to let this sink into the consciousness of the reeling young man and added, smiling: "On a pro rata basis, Tom, your fifty thousand stands you in just a quarter of a million. I congratulate you."

CHAPTER XV

SUDDEN WEALTH

"Your fifty thousand stands you in just a quarter of a million."

The words came to him faintly as though shouted from an incredible distance. The shock was too acute for his nerves. He sought to mumble over the fantastic news and sank into a chair, sick with giddiness. The next thing he knew clearly was Drake's powerful arm about him and a gla.s.s forced to his lips.

"Here, get this down. Then steady up. Good luck doesn't kill."

"I thought they'd caught us--thought I was cleaned out," he said incoherently.

"You did, eh?" said Drake, laughing. "You haven't much faith in the old man."

Bojo steadied himself, standing alone. The room seemed to race about him and in his ears were strange unfixed sounds. One thought rapped upon his brain--he was not disgraced, not dishonored; no one would ever know--Drake would never need to know; that is if he were careful, if he could somehow dissimulate before that penetrating glance.

"I thought we were to sell Pittsburgh & New Orleans," he said vacantly, leaning against the mantelpiece.

"So did a good many others," said Drake shrewdly. "Sit down, till I tell you about it. Head clearin' up?"

"It's rather a shock," said Bojo, trying to smile. "I'm sorry to be such a baby."

"I warned you not to jump to conclusions or try any flyers," said Drake, watching him. "Of course you did?"

Bojo nodded, his glance on the floor.

"Well, write it off against your profits and charge it up to experience," said Drake, smiling. "Store this away for the future and use it if you ever need it, if you're ever running a pool of your own--which I hope you won't. It's been my golden rule and I paid a lot to learn it. It's this: If you want a secret kept, keep it yourself." He burst into a round, hearty laugh, gazing contentedly into the fire.

"Wish I could see Borneman's face. Helped me a lot, Borneman did. You see, Tom," he said, with the human need of boasting a little, which allies such men rather to the child on an adventure than to the criminal, between whom they occupy an indefinable middle position, "you've come in on the drop of the curtain. You've seen the finale of something that'll set Wall Street stewing for years to come. Yes, by George, it's the biggest bit of manipulation by a single operator yet!

And look at the crowd I tricked--the inner gang, the creme de la creme, Tom--exactly that!"

"I don't understand it," said Bojo, as Drake began to smile, reflecting over remembered details. He himself understood only confusedly the events which had been whirling about him.

"Tom, the crowd had figured me out for a tr.i.m.m.i.n.g," said Drake, gleefully, caressing his chin. "They thought the time had come to trim old Drake. You see, they calculated I was loaded up with stocks, crowded to busting and ready to squeal at the slightest squeeze. Now getting rich on paper is one thing and getting rich in the bank's another. Any one can corner anything--but it's all-fired different to get Mr. Fly to come down to your parlor and take some stock after you've got it where you want it. That's what they figured. Dan Drake was loaded to the sky with stocks that looked almighty good on the quotation column, but darned hard to swap for cold, hard cash. That's what they figured, and the strange part about it is they were right.

"But--there's always a but--they hadn't reckoned on the fact that Mr. Me was expecting just what they'd figured out. That's what I told you was the secret of the game--any game--think the way the other man thinks, and then think two jumps ahead of him. Now if I was reasonably sure a certain powerful gang was going to put stocks down, and put them down hard, I might look around to see how that could benefit me at one end while it was annoying me, almightily annoying me, at the other. Now when them coyotes get to juggling stocks they always like to juggle stock they know about--something with a nice little pink ribbon to it, with a president and board of directors on the other end, that'll wriggle in the right direction when the coyotes pull the string.

"Now I'd been particularly hankering after Pittsburgh & New Orleans for quite a while. It was good in their old Southern system, but it looked mighty better outside of it. In independent hands it could stir up a lot of trouble; sort of like a plain daughter in a rich man's house--no one notices her until she runs off with the chauffeur. That was my idea.

Only Pittsburgh was high. But--again the but--if some particular breed of coyote would be obliging enough to run it down along with a lot of other properties on the market, I might pitch in and help them force it down to where I could pick up what I wanted from the bargain counter.

See?"

"But you sold openly," said Bojo, amazed.

"Exactly. Sold it where they could see it and bought it back twice over, ten times over, where they couldn't. Very simple process. All great processes are simple, and it never dawned on those monumental intelligences that they were fetchin' and carryin' for yours truly until they woke up at six o'clock to-day to find while they were scrambling in the dark, the chauffeur had run off with Miss Pittsburgh!"

He turned and walked to the table desk, motioning to Bojo.

"Come over here, look at it." He held out a check for ten million dollars. "You don't see one of those fellows very often. Great man, Gunther. When he's got to act he doesn't waste time. Right to the point.

'We are satisfied you have control. What's your terms?' 'Ten millions and what the stock cost me.' 'We accept your terms,' Great man, Gunther.

Suppose I might have added another million, but it wouldn't have sounded as well, would it? Something rather nice about costs and ten million!"

As he spoke, he had drawn out his check-book and filled out a check to Bojo.

"Well, Tom, this isn't ten millions, but it's some pin money, and I guess to you it looks bigger than the other. There you are--take it."

Bojo took it quite stupidly, saying:

"Thank you, thank you, sir!"

Drake watched the young man's emotion with tolerant amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Don't wonder you're a bit shaken up, Tom. Supposing you call up a certain young lady on long distance. Rather please her, I reckon."

"Why, yes. I wanted to do it. I--I will, of course."

"So you thought I was going to sell short Pittsburgh & New Orleans,"

said Drake with a roguish humor.

Bojo nodded, at loss for words, biding the moment to escape into the outer air.

"But, of course, Tom," said Drake slowly, with smiling eyes, "_you_ didn't tell any one, did you?"

Bojo mumbled something incoherent and went out, clutching the check, which lay in his hand with the heaviness of lead.

In the open air he tried to readjust the events of the night. He had a confused idea of rushing through the great hall, past the mechanical footman, of hearing Thompson cry, "Get you a taxi, sir!" and of being far down resounding pavements in the lovely night with something still clutched in his hand.

"Two hundred and fifty thousand," he said to himself. He repeated it again and again as a sort of dull drum-beat accompaniment, resounding in his ears, even as his cane tapped out its sharp metallic punctuation.

"Two hundred _and_ fifty!" he said for the hundredth time, utterly unable to comprehend what had in one hour changed the face of his world.

He stopped, drew his hand from his pocket, took the crumpled check and placed it in his wallet, b.u.t.toned his coat carefully, and then unb.u.t.toned it to make sure it had not slipped from his pocket.

Drake had not asked him the vital question. He had not had to answer him, to tell him what he had lost, to own that he had gambled beyond his right. The issue he had gone to meet, resolved on a clean confession, had been evaded, and in his pocket was the check--a fortune! Certain facts did not at once focus in his mind, perhaps because he did not want to contemplate them, perhaps because he was too bewildered with his own sensations to perceive clearly what a role he had been made to play.

But as he swung down the Avenue past the Plaza with its Argus-eyed windows still awake, past a few great mansions with cars and grouped footmen in wait for revelers, at the thought of the quiet Court, of Roscoe and Granning, at the sudden startled recollection of DeLancy, the cold fact forced itself upon him; they had lost and he had won. He had won because they had lost, and how many others!

"How could I help it?" he said to himself uneasily, and answered it immediately with another question "But will they believe me?"

Suddenly Drake's last question flashed across him with a new significance. "Of course you didn't tell any one, did you?"

Why had he not asked him then and there what he had meant? Because he had been afraid, because he did not wish to know the answer, just as he had evaded the knowledge that Doris in the first speculation had made use of Boskirk. Even now he did not wish to force the ugly fact--seeking to put it from him with plausible reasonings. After all, what had Drake done? Told him a lie? No. He had specially cautioned him not to jump to conclusions, warned him against doing anything on his own initiative.

"Yes, that's true," he said with a sigh of relief, as though a great ethical question had been disposed of. "He played square, absolutely square. There's nothing wrong in it."