There was silence for a moment; then Blagden continued earnestly, "Tubby, if we are right, can you imagine what this is going to mean?

Think of it. Actually to win, instead of losing. No more horror of sudden bulges or drops. No more nightmares of dwindling margins. No more agony of stop orders caught and accounts wiped out. To think of piling up gold, steadily, unceasingly, till we have all we want.

Honestly, it seems too good to be true."

Mills sighed. "That's what I'm afraid of," he rejoined. "I've been a lamb--or a goat, whichever you choose to call it--so long, that I can't make myself believe we can ever take money out of the market.

But there's one comfort; we've always lost before, so if we lose again this time, it won't be a new experience, and we really can't complain."

Blagden rose from his seat. "We mustn't turn faint hearted now!" he cried. "We've been through a good deal in the last ten days, or our nerves would be in better shape. Come on, let's get down to State Street and have it over with. As you say, we can't do more than lose."

A half hour later, they had entered the Exchange Building, ascended to the office of Floyd & Meredith, and were cordially greeted by Farwell, the amiable, bald-headed and inoffensive customers' man. It was still a few minutes to ten; a dozen speculators talked, read, or studied the "dope" in letters, telegrams and financial papers of all descriptions.

Bearishness was in the air. "They're a sale." That was the slogan on every lip; that was the message, express or implied, upon each printed page. From the firm's correspondents in New York came the word, "Sell them on the bulges; don't buy them at any price."

Blagden strolled over to where Farwell was standing. "Not a very bullish crowd in here," he observed.

"You're right, they're not," the customers' man replied. "They're all bears now. And I believe they're right. I think this market is going to break wide open."

"What's a good stock to sell?" asked Blagden.

"I think," Farwell answered, "that the rails will be the most vulnerable. Take Union Pacific, now. Last months' earnings were very poor, and there is talk of labor troubles; I understand they're facing a serious situation. The industrials ought to go down, too. In fact, I think the whole market is a sale, but I believe the rails will drop the most."

Blagden walked over to where Mills was seated, reading the "Boston News Bulletin." "Well," he queried, "what seems to be the big idea?"

Mills looked up from his reading. "The idea," he answered, "is that the country is in a bad way. There's an article here on Union Pacific; it says that in all probability the dividend is going to be cut. If these were the old days, Blagden, and I was relying on my own judgment, I know mighty well what I'd do. I'd sell my head off. The short side looks like a cinch."

"Yes," acknowledged Blagden, "it does. And yet, reasoning from what we know, isn't this the very time to be suspicious?" He turned as he spoke and indicated the little knot of gamblers around the ticker.

"Now," he continued, lowering his voice, "according to what Farwell just told me, practically every man there is short of the market. And I suppose this office is only a sample of a great many others; I suppose that it is fair to guess that the majority of traders are short at this moment. Then comes the question: Are they going to win?

And if looks are any indication, I judge they're not."

Mills gazed at the group. "Blagden," he confided, "I think I begin to see a great light. I never studied a group of speculators before; I was always so busy with my own troubles that I never thought of anyone else. But it's just as you say; those men are a pretty futile looking crowd. There isn't one of them who looks as if he possessed any real ability. There isn't one of them whose judgment you would be apt to trust. I believe we're having a unique experience. We're seeing the game played from the inside."

Ten o'clock came. The ticker whirred; the crowd pressed closer around the tape; and presently Mills and Blagden strolled over and took their places with the rest. Farwell looked up as they approached and with extended forefinger pointed downward to indicate the trend.

"They're weak," he told them. "Awfully weak. You can sell 'em right here. And there's pressure on Union, all right. It's off a point and a half."

"Guess I'll have to sell some, then," said Blagden, and taking his stand where he could read the tape he watched, outwardly calm, but inwardly experiencing the thrill of excitement which comes to the man who is watching the biggest game in the world. The market was active.

Quotation after quotation came whirring forth from the busy machine, and then, all at once, appeared a heavy block of Union Pacific, the figures tallying precisely with the symbols they had learned. Blagden yawned, turned away from the ticker, and walked over to the window.

Presently Mills followed. "You saw it?" whispered Blagden.

"Sure," Mills answered. "They're buying it, and after you left they flashed again to buy Reading and then to buy Southern Railway."

"Well," said Blagden, "there's no use waiting. Here's where we sink or swim." And writing out an order to buy a hundred Union Pacific at the market, he walked across the office to the order clerk, gave him the slip of paper, and resumed his place at the tape.

Yet the market continued to decline, and the crowd of traders became jubilant. Eyes glistened, tongues were loosened, and as the paper profits grew larger before their eyes, more than one speculator, taking advantage of a fleeting rally, wrote out and handed in further orders to sell.

It was an exceedingly active day, and one of p.r.o.nounced weakness as well. In the course of another hour, Union Pacific had run off two points more, and then, as a second flash appeared, Blagden bought a second lot, and about two o'clock, as the whole market broke sharply into a state of semi-panic, he purchased the third and last lot of one hundred shares. "And now," he said as he rejoined Mills, "we've done our best. As far as we can tell, we have done exactly what the big men are doing, so if we don't win now, then we never will."

"There's just one thing," rejoined Mills thoughtfully, "that makes me think we will win. And that is this. I've been watching these fellows all day, and I've noticed that while every one of them is ahead on paper, there isn't one solitary man who has actually cashed in.

Everyone says the market is going lower; everyone believes it; some of them claim it's going ten, twenty, thirty points below where it is now. It's been a big day--nearly two million shares--and what I'm asking myself is: If these men, and others like them, are doing the selling, then who in the name of goodness is doing the buying?"

Blagden nodded. "Tubby," he answered, "I've been thinking that same thing. But all I'm wondering is, how much lower will they go? With our margin, we ought to be safe for a long time yet, but I should think the market ought to steady pretty soon."

And indeed, about twenty minutes before the close, the decline ceased, and after a brief period of uncertainty, prices actually began to improve. "Only a rally," was the cry around the ticker. "A rally in a bear market." But to Mills and Blagden, watching the tape with the eye of omniscience, every sign and symbol spelt, "Buy! Buy! Buy!" And by closing time the tone of the market had altered so perceptibly that the enthusiasm of the bears was changed to uneasiness, yet still, so firmly does the human mind cling to its cherished hopes and dreams, that not a man covered, but waited, undecided and irresolute, to see what the morning would bring forth.

So the day ended. And for Mills and Blagden there followed an evening of eager expectancy, and a sleepless night. The tone of all the papers was still bearish and pessimistic; all the emphasis was laid upon the decline, and none upon the rally. But when ten o'clock came around again and the market opened, the tape itself told a far different story, and Mills and Blagden, reading spellbound between the lines, could see the mighty touch of a magician's hand. The attack at the start was bold, direct, incisive. Stocks were up two to three points all around. Then came a reaction; the market was made to "look weak"; and bears regained their courage; and put out fresh lines of shorts; then followed a s.p.a.ce of comparative inaction, with prices holding firm, and finally, in the noon hour, when most of the traders had gone to lunch, there came a sudden upward spurt which carried quotations to new high levels for the day. Then, with the bears securely hemmed in, began a steady, ceaseless advance, irresistible as the sweep of the incoming sea. Up a quarter, back an eighth; up another quarter, back another eighth; so continued the advance. And just at the close, with new bulls rushing in to buy, and terrified bears scrambling for safety, with the market fairly boiling with excitement, suddenly, before Blagden's watching eyes, appeared the flash to sell, and in a twinkling, too eager for his profits to think of waiting to sell upon a scale, he shot the three hundred shares of Union upon the market, and sold them at the top price for the day.

That night, over the most expensive dinner they could invent, the pair, incoherent with happiness, reviewed the day's experiences, and laid their plans for the morrow.

"Seventeen hundred dollars, Tubby," Blagden repeated, over and over again. "Can you grasp it? Seventeen hundred dollars in two days. And that's only a taste; only first blood. Now we'll go short, and down she'll go; then we'll load up again. A flood of gold, Tubby. What does the Bible say? 'The earth is ours and the fullness thereof.'"

And Tubby, his red face much redder even than usual, grew maudlin over the champagne and the thoughts of the delights which awaited him until at last grief a.s.sailed him, and he nearly wept as he uttered the plaint of all the ages, "Sho much fun livin', it's shame to think we're goin' die."

CHAPTER XVIII

Fate is Fickle

In the dim light of the early summer dawn Marshall Hamilton paced restlessly to and fro across his study floor. He had returned from the pursuit of Stoat to find that Helen had summoned Doctor Rowland, the local physician, and had herself superintended the removal of Atherton's body to the room left vacant by Bellingham. Shortly afterward, the doctor had arrived, and although at a first cursory examination he had shaken his head ominously, he was now engaged in a more careful study of the patient's injuries, to see if human skill could restore to life the flame which alternately seemed to flicker, and then to subside, in the breast of the erstwhile chauffeur.

Yet it was not of the injured man that Marshall Hamilton was thinking, for though he realized that it was to Atherton's bravery that he owed his daughter's life, yet long years in the atmosphere of high finance had so accustomed him to viewing the world in its immensity that outside the scope of his own immediate family he had gradually become a man of no emotions whatsoever. Mankind, to him, meant no longer the isolated individual, but a vast, teeming ma.s.s of habits, customs, tendencies; interesting, if studied in the bulk; wearisome and insignificant, if reduced to a single microcosm. And Atherton, therefore, was no more to him than any other p.a.w.n in the game; this p.a.w.n had saved his Queen, and that was all.

But with regard to the banker's own affairs, so strangely disturbed by this mysterious sequence of events which had threatened the system of which he was the chief, here the situation was disconcerting in the extreme. Only once before, in the twenty years of his leadership, had there been room even for a suspicion that their secret was in danger, and then, without waiting to discover whether or not these suspicions were well founded, the man who had been the occasion of them had suddenly disappeared, and everything had continued as before. But this recent chain of incidents had been infinitely more alarming, for there had been a cohesion between them which seemed to indicate not the haphazard gropings of a single individual, but the concerted effort of a group of bold and intelligent men.

To be sure, the attempt of McKay's chauffeur to follow his employer had not caused them any great anxiety. Precautions, of course, had been taken; among others, the placing of detectives at the houses of both McKay and Hamilton; but no further trouble had been antic.i.p.ated, and the discovery by one of the detectives that Bellingham was secretly working over the tape had come as an unwelcome shock, for the incident of the chauffeur and the labors of the secretary had been so closely connected in point of time that it seemed improbable that they could have been merely a coincidence. And although, in the case of Bellingham, further investigation might perhaps have shown that the secretary was merely one of the many innocuous "chart fiends," and that there was nothing sinister in his study of the tape, this possibility was strongly negatived by Bellingham's sudden flight, an event which had necessitated his murder upon the very eve of his departure from the country. And here, with this double tragedy, the banker had confidently expected the disturbance to cease, instead of which had ensued, with almost incredible boldness, the events of the night, and the endeavor, within an ace of being successful, at capturing the cypher which held the key to the seemingly purposeless fluctuations of the stock market. Thus the banker was most profoundly disturbed. By what possible chance the secret could have been fathomed--how the impregnable defence of forty years had all at once been beaten down--was wholly incomprehensible. And yet, grave as the situation was, there was still much for which to be thankful. For if Atherton's bullet had not gone to its mark, and the marauder had escaped with the watch, there might easily have resulted a scandal which would have shaken the country from one end to the other. But as it was, it appeared that although by the narrowest of margins they had managed to escape, and the next task was to be on the alert to see whether more attempts would be made, or whether this, as he most devoutly hoped, would be the last.

A knock at the door aroused him, and the imperturbable Martin stood aside to admit Doctor Howland, gray-haired, a trifle bent, but still a hale and vigorous man.

"Well," asked Mr. Hamilton, "how do you find him?"

"He's badly off," the doctor answered. "There's no doubt about that.

He is still unconscious, and his heart action is distinctly unfavorable. In fact, Mr. Hamilton, to put it bluntly, I should say that he is at the point of death. Your daughter is still with him; she has been most helpful; but I have sent for a nurse, who will come at once. We will do all we can, and of course, if you say the word, there are other men whom you cay call in consultation. Charles Carrington, for instance, has done wonders in these cases, and Kennedy is good, also, though of the two, I believe Carrington is the more skillful."

The banker nodded. "I see," he responded briefly. "Yes, I think we should do what we can. By all means, I had better send for Carrington."

The doctor jotted a number on a sc.r.a.p of paper, handed it to the financier, and was about to leave the room when Helen Hamilton, her face as pale as death, met him upon the threshold. "Quick, doctor,"

she cried, "he's delirious, and trying to get up. I've left Martin with him." And with a deep-drawn breath she added imploringly, "Oh, isn't there anything that you can do?"

The doctor, without replying, strode quickly up the stairs, the banker following at his heels, while Helen, sinking into a chair, and striving to keep back the tears, prayed imploringly to Heaven for the life of the man she loved.

They found Atherton tossing restlessly from side to side, his eyes wide-open and gla.s.sy, the flush of fever in his cheeks. Martin was at his side, but as they entered, the bell rang sharply and the butler left the room, leaving Marshall Hamilton and the Doctor alone with the injured man.

Atherton was no longer violent, but plainly enough the events of the last few weeks were pa.s.sing, in chaos, through his disordered brain, for he muttered to himself unceasingly, and presently, as his voice gathered strength, they could distinguish clearly what he said, although the words seemed ironically trivial. "I like dogs," he whispered confidentially. "He's a good little pup. I'm glad he's all right."

Again Martin entered the room. "A telephone message for Doctor Rowland," he announced. "They would like him to come to Mrs. Horton's at once."

The doctor turned to the financier. "A childbirth case," he explained.

"I must go, and as a matter of fact, there is very little that I can do here. The nurse will arrive at any moment; I have explained to her everything that is to be done. You had better get Carrington." And he hastily left the room.