Wimperley read and handed it silently to Riggs. The little man swallowed a lump in his throat. "By G.o.d!" he said unsteadily, "but he's got sand, no doubt about it."

"What's that?" Stoughton demanded dully, and, reaching out, glanced at the telegram. "Why throw Robert Fisher to the wolves? They're doing well enough as it is," he grunted, and relapsed into a brooding silence.

Then began to arrive inquiries from country banks and cancellations from country subscribers. Wimperley read them out as they came in, and, well informed though he was of the wide distribution of Consolidated stock, experienced a slow amazement at the broad range of his followers. Their messages were indignant, despairing, threatening and pathetic. He began to wonder why he had accepted a responsibility which was now for the first time unveiled in such startling proportions. Yesterday the Consolidated was a name to conjure with. To-day it was an epitome of human fear and desperation.

Ten seconds before the noon gong struck on the Exchange, a frantic broker lifted a bull like voice above the uproar.

"Sell five thousand consol at thirty-two, thirty-two!" He bellowed it out raucously. The selling order had been flashed from Toronto.

"Taken at thirty-two," snapped Marsham's operator, who had opened the perilous game that morning, and, smiling, jotted a note on his cuff. He had made just eighty thousand dollars on that one transaction. The market strengthened a little in the afternoon on short covering, the matter of investment being thrown to the winds. Consolidated was now a gambling counter, and the closing quotation stood at thirty-five. Former values had shrunk by some eight millions. Gone was that laborious upbuilding into which Clark and the rest had thrown their very souls; overcast were the efforts of seven years. It was, to most people, a question of what might be made of what was left. The works remained, but, the public concluded, the iron and steel section, the heart of the thing, was unsound. Such is the communicable essence of fear.

At ten minutes after three the directors met to face a situation which was, in all truth, serious enough. Philadelphia banks, smarting from loans made on Consolidated stock, had declined further credit. The first payment of a million dollars for steel rails was indefinitely deferred.

Creditors, galvanized by the events of the day, poured in ceaseless demands that their accounts be liquidated, but moneys due the Consolidated for pulp had been realized and diverted into the building of railways and the construction of the rail mill. Birch, his face very grave, ran over all this in a level monotone of a voice, while the rest wearily admitted its truth, and in the middle of the rehearsal a message was brought in from Clark.

Greatly regret events of to-day but am unshakenly confident for the future, given sufficient time to remedy defect in rails which should not take long. Chemical a.n.a.lyses show too high carbon and this can be rectified. Now awaiting remittance for payroll.

Wimperley read it without a trace of accentuation, while Stoughton got up and stared, as once before, at the sky line of Philadelphia.

"Well," drawled Birch dryly, "we've heard from our prophet."

"He's got more confidence in our future than we have in his past," put in Riggs.

Stoughton turned, "What about the payroll?"

"If you have a million or so to spare, we'll send it up. There's more to be met than the payroll." The voice was a trifle insulting, but Stoughton did not notice it, and Birch went on. "There's just one thing we can do, if we can't get money to run."

"Well?" jerked out Riggs, "say it."

"Shut down."

Wimperley's long fingers were drumming the table. He did not fancy himself as the president of a great company in whose works not a wheel was turning.

"I'd like to find some other way out of it. There's going to be h.e.l.l to pay here, but--"

"Perhaps the ingenious gentleman at St. Marys could help out," said Birch acidly.

At that came a little silence and there appeared the vision of Clark in his office, with his achievements dissolving before his eyes.

"Robert Fisher is no financier," struck in Stoughton wearily.

Wimperley smiled in spite of himself. "Perhaps not, but he mesmerized us into that office. There's only one thing I can see--issue debentures secured by first mortgage."

"Who'll take 'em? We used up all our arguments long ago. Philadelphia doesn't want a mortgage on Robert Fisher, and what about the Pennsylvania farmer?"

"What about him?" asked Wimperley pettishly.

"As I know him, he's a bad loser--he works too hard for it. This is a case of new money from outside, and I for one don't feel like doing any traveling."

"In other words we've demonstrated that whether or not by any fault of ours, we've made a mess of it," said Stoughton with utter candor.

"Something remarkably like it."

"And when Clark told us, months ago, that he wouldn't draw any salary, and that a lot of others were only drawing half salary to help out till the rail mill got going, we should have made provision for possible mistakes, and seen as well that we were getting in over our ears."

"But Clark believed all he told us," piped Riggs with a flash of loyalty.

"Of course he did, and he still does, and because he is still only twenty years ahead of his time he's all the more dangerous."

"Let's get back to this payroll," blurted Stoughton who was getting more and more uncomfortable.

"Fishing's pretty good up there, let him fish for it." The voice of Birch was like ice. He was one of those who by nature are fitted for cold and ruthless action in time of stress. Most of his money had been made across the dissecting table of enterprises, and not at their birth.

He was a financial surgeon, but no midwife, and had only been magnetized into his past support by the hypnotic personality of Clark. He was grimly mindful that Marsham, after waiting for years for his opening, had got more than even. Birch's cold mind now wondered for the first time whether, after all, the cut throat game he had once loved to play was worth the candle. Here was American credit and effort ma.s.sacred by American ruthlessness and revenge. Marsham had pounced upon a weak point in the Consolidated's armor and pierced deep into the body corporate. He had struck to kill.

"And would you shut down the pulp mill--market's good now?" persisted Stoughton.

"I'd rivet the whole thing tight. The railway never paid,--at least directly--that we could reckon. It's costing more to ship pulp on our own boats than the rate at which we could ship by contract--and if they are not going to bring back c.o.ke, why run them? Gentlemen, this means a smash--an interval of anxiety, discomfort, loss of prestige, and--"

"Go on, Elisha--" barked Riggs. "Oh, please go on!"

"Prestige--and later reconstruction. In the meantime, we don't spend a cent on running anything, and find out exactly what we owe. Then comes new money, and," he added cynically, "a new bunch of directors."

"And who will arrange that?" Riggs demanded abruptly.

"One Robert Fisher Clark--if he has not lost all his power of magnetism."

"Aren't you guessing a little too fast?"

"No, it's quite possible. His argument will be that we didn't back him to the necessary limit--that another million would have done it--and,"

concluded Birch reflectively, "that may be perfectly true. But G.o.d knows we did what we could. What's this one?" He glanced at Wimperley, who was reading a telegram just brought in.

Waiting your remittance for payroll, necessary that this be provided to-day, otherwise I antic.i.p.ate serious disturbance here. It is advisable that I do not come to Philadelphia just yet as my leaving here would be wrongly interpreted.

R.F.C.

There fell a moment's silence, instantly recognized by all four as the precursor of grave events. Birch had spoken the thought that lurked in all their minds. To continue running meant another payroll to be met.

It now appeared suicidal to have stretched their resources to the limit of their credit, but not one of them had remotely dreamed that a few thousand tons of steel rails were to drag the whole structure to toppling destruction. Birch, as usual, first pulled himself together.

"It's put up or shut up, and we've got to tell Clark right now."

Little Riggs sighed despondently. This meeting would soon be over and the decision made, after which he would have to face a totally unexpected set of conditions and a circle of friends and investors who would regard him with close and uncomfortable interest.

"Well, I suppose it's shut up!" he hazarded unsteadily.