"I think he likes you, Dan," said Haggerdy slowly.

"No. He wants to make sure of getting the stock. He doesn't want a scramble for it," said Drake. "I'm surprised to hear you talking such nonsense."

Haggerdy rose, shaking his head impressively.

"A mistake, Dan--a mistake." He waited a moment and then played his last card. "Of course, if you sell out in this, it's understood Gunther'll see you through on the rest. And that may mean the question of the roof over your head."

"That means credit at the bank--that I'll be allowed to put up good collateral like a respectable member of the crowd?"

"Phrase it as you will, that's it. Gunther will buy out your Trust Company holdings for what you paid for them and he'll see you through on Indiana Smelters--that means something saved out of the wreck--and, Dan, there's a big smash up just over the horizon."

"I thought that was the proposition," said Drake, ruminating. "Well, Jim, it's more than ever no."

"Why more than ever?"

"Because this in good old-fashioned English means just one thing--getting out, saving my skin at the expense of others."

"Quite so--every man for himself."

"Not with me. I've given my word on the c.o.ke and Iron deal. I'll see it through. Tell Gunther I'll sell out at 80 all or nothing, and give him twenty-four hours."

Haggerdy stretched out his hand in farewell.

"Are you sure of the other fellows, Dan?" he said slyly.

"I don't give a d.a.m.n what the other fellows may do. I've given my word and I stand by that."

"I'm sorry for you, Dan," said Haggerdy, shaking his head ominously.

"Telephone me if you change your mind."

"Thanks for your wishes, but don't lose any sleep--expecting," said Drake, laughing.

Bojo came out aghast.

"You don't mean to say the Atlantic Trust is in danger," he cried, foreseeing all in a glance the structures that would go toppling.

"It's in danger, all right," said Drake moodily, "but they won't--they don't dare let it close--impossible!"

"And if you can't raise two million?"

Drake shrugged his shoulders.

"But surely there's some way," Bojo cried helplessly, "some friends--there must be a way to raise it. This house surely is worth twice that--it isn't mortgaged, is it?"

"No, it's quite clear, but it belongs to my wife," said Drake, and again there came into his face that shadow of broken despair which Bojo had noticed a score of times.

"But then--does she realize--"

"Yes, she knows," said Drake to himself. It was easy to see that the interview with Haggerdy had profoundly convinced him. "Mrs. Drake's fortune outside of that is fully three millions, which I have given her--"

"But why haven't you told her and your daughter--they ought--" Suddenly he stopped short, his eyes met Drake's and a suspicion of the truth struck him. "You don't mean--"

"Don't," said Drake helplessly, and for the first time he caught a glimpse of the vastness of his inner suffering. The next minute he had hurriedly recovered his mask, saying: "Don't ask me about that-- I can't-- I must not tell you."

"Mrs. Drake has refused to help you!" exclaimed Bojo, carried away. "She has--she has. I see it by your face."

Drake walked to the fireplace and stood gazing down. Presently he nodded as though talking to himself.

"Yes; my wife could come to my a.s.sistance. I have been forced to ask her. She won't. I have been living in a fool's paradise. That's what hurts!"

CHAPTER XXVII

PATSIE'S SCHEME

When Bojo returned home after a brief stolen interview with Patsie, he could hardly believe what he had himself witnessed. It seemed incredible that all that magnificence and luxury might be dissipated in a night, could depend upon the wavering of an hour in a mad exchange. But deeper than the feeling of impending disaster--which he even now could not realize--was the disclosure of the true state of affairs in the Drake household. Without telling Patsie the extent of her father's danger, he had told of Drake's applying to his wife for a.s.sistance and her refusal.

Then Patsie brokenly had told her part, how she had pled with her mother and sought in vain to place before her the true seriousness of the situation, her father's peril and his instant need. To entreaties and remonstrances Mrs. Drake remained deaf, sheltering herself behind an invariable answer. Why should she throw good money after bad? What was to be gained by it? If he had thrown away the family fortune, all the more reason for her to save what she had. The worst was that Dolly was abroad and Doris and her husband were cruising off Palm Beach and the telegram they sent might not reach them in time.

The next morning Bojo waited fitfully for the opening of the Stock Exchange, with the dreaded memories of Haggerdy's prophecies running in his head. It took him back to the days when he himself had been a part of the vast maelstrom of speculation. He breakfasted with one eye on the clock waiting for the hands to advance to the fatal hour of ten. At five minutes past that hour he went feverishly across the way to the ticker in the neighboring hotel brokerage. He had a feeling as though he were being sucked back into the old life of violent emotions and unreal theatrical upsets. He remembered the day before the drop in Pittsburgh & New Orleans when he had waited in the Hauk and Flaspoller offices matching quarters with Forshay to endure the last few intervening minutes before the crisis which was to sweep away their fortunes as a tidal wave obliterates a valley. He had not understood then the ironical laughter in Forshay's eyes, but as he came back again to the old a.s.sociations he felt himself living over with a new poignant understanding the final act of that tragedy.

Between the Tom Crocker of those breathless days and the ordered self which he had built up during these last months of discipline there seemed to intervene unreal worlds.

The group gathered in the hotel branch of Pitt & Sanderson were indolently interested rather than excited. They were of the flitting and superficial gambling type, youngsters still new to the excitement of the game and old men who could not tear themselves away from their established habit. They formed quite a little coterie in which the differences of age and wealth were obliterated by the common bond of the daily hazard. He knew the type well, the reckless plunger risking thousands on shallow margins, determined to make or lose all at one killing; the rodent, sharp-eyed, close-fisted veteran, wary from many failures, who was content to play for half a point rise and take his instant profit. The lounging group studied him with a moment's curiosity, seeking in which category to place the intruder, whether among the shifting truant crowd stopping for the moment's information or among that harried occasional group of lost souls who came expectant of nothing but complete disaster.

Bojo went to the tape with almost the feeling with which a reformed drunkard closes his hand over the gla.s.s that had once been his destruction. His mind, excited by the memories of the night before, was prepared for a shock. To his surprise the clicking procession of values--Reading, Union Pacific, Amalgamated Copper, Northern Pacific--showed but fractional declines. The break he had come to witness did not develop. He waited a quarter of an hour, half an hour, an hour. The market continued weak but heavy.

"Nothing much doing," he said, turning to his neighbor, a financial rail bird of a rather horsy type, grisled and bald.

"Playing it short?"

"Haven't yet made up my mind. What do you think?" he said, to draw the other on.

"Think?" said the other with the enthusiasm of the gambler's conviction.

"Lord, there's only one thing to think. This market's touched bottom two weeks ago. When it starts to rise watch things go kiting."

"You think so?" said Bojo, with the instinctive tendency to seek hope in the slightest straws that is the strangest part of all the strange acquaintanceships of the moment which speculation engenders. He had to listen for five minutes to impa.s.sioned oratory, to hearing all the reasons recounted why the long depression was nothing but psychological and an upward turn a certainty. He slipped away presently, rather relieved at this confidence from a shallow prophet, and when he met Patsie by appointment, the news he brought her dispelled the feelings of foreboding under which she had been suffering the last week.

"After all, perhaps we have been rather panicky," he said, with a new a.s.sumption of cheerfulness. "Remember one thing, your father knows this game and when he says that the big group does not intend to have a panic, because they themselves have too much to lose, Patsie, he must know what he is talking about."

"If Doris were only here," she said, her woman's instinct unconvinced.

"You sent the telegram?"

"Last night. I should have had the answer this morning. That's what worries me. Perhaps it won't reach them in time and even if it does it will be over two days before they can get back."