Twice Percival caught Shepler's regard bent upon them. It amused him to think he detected signs of uneasiness back of the survey, cool, friendly, and guarded as it was on the surface.

At parting, later, Percival spoke for the first time to Miss Milbrey of her engagement.

"You must know that I wish you all the happiness you hope for yourself; and if I were as lucky in love as Mr. Shepler has been, I surely would never dare to gamble in anything else--you know the saying."

"And you, Mr. Bines. I've been hearing so much of your marriage. I hope the rumour I heard to-day is true, that your engagement has been announced."

He laughed.

"Come, now! That's all gossip, you know; not a word of truth in it, and it's been very annoying to us both. Please demolish that rumour on my authority next time you hear it, thoroughly, so they can make nothing out of the pieces."

Miss Milbrey showed genuine disappointment.

"I had thought, naturally--"

"The only member of that household I could marry is not suited to my age."

Miss Milbrey was puzzled.

"But, really, she's not so old."

"No, not so very old. Still, she's going on five, and you know how time flies--and so much disparity in our ages--twenty-one years or so; no, she was no wife for me, although I don't mind confessing that there has been an affair between us, but--really you can't imagine what a frivolous and trifling creature she is."

Miss Milbrey laughed now, rather painfully he fancied.

"You mean the baby? Isn't she a little dear?"

"I'll tell you something, just between us--the baby's mother is--well, I like her--but she's a joke. That's all, a joke."

"I beg your pardon for talking of it. It had seemed so definite.

They're waiting for me--good night--_so_ glad to have seen you--and, nevertheless, she's a very _practical_ joke!"

He watched her with frank, utter longing, as she moved over to Mrs.

Oldaker, tender, girlish, appealing, with the old air of timid wistfulness, kept guard over by her woman's knowledge. His fingers still curved, as if they were loth to forget the clasp of her warm, firm little hand. She was gowned in white fleece, and she wore one pink rose where she could bend her blue eyes down upon it.

And she was going to marry Shepler for his millions. She might even yet regret that she had not waited for him, when his own name had been written up as the wizard of markets, and the master of millions. Since money was all she loved, he would show her that even in that he was pre-eminent; though he would still have none of her. And as for Shepler--he wondered if Shepler knew just what risks he might be taking on.

"Oh, Mutterchen! Wasn't it the jolliest evening?"

They were in the carriage.

"Did you and Mr. Bines enjoy yourselves as much as you seemed to?"

"And isn't his grandfather an old dear? What an interesting little story about that woman. I know just how she felt. You see, sir," she turned to Shepler, "there is always a way to manage a woman--you must find her weakness."

"He's a very unusual old chap," said Shepler. "I had occasion not long since to tell him that a certain business plan he proposed was entirely without precedent. His answer was characteristic. He said, 'We _make_ precedents in the West when we can't find one to suit us.' It seemed so typical of the people to me. You never can tell what they may do. You see they were started out of old ruts by some form of necessity, almost every one of them, when they went West, and as necessity stimulates only the brightest people to action, those Westerners are apt to be of a pretty keen, active, and st.u.r.dy mental type. As this old chap says, they never hang back for lack of precedents; they go ahead and make them. They're not afraid to take sudden queer steps. But, really, I like them both."

"So do I," said his betrothed.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

The Amateur Napoleon of Wall Street

At the beginning of April, the situation in the three stocks Percival had bought so heavily grew undeniably tense. Consolidated Copper went from 109 to 103 in a week. But Percival's enthusiasm suffered little abatement from the drop. "You see," he reminded Uncle Peter, "it isn't exactly what I expected, but it's right in line with it, so it doesn't alarm me. I knew those fellows inside were bound to hammer it down if they could. It wouldn't phase me a bit if it sagged to 95."

"My! My!" Uncle Peter exclaimed, with warm approval, "the way you master this business certainly does win _me_. I tell you, it's a mighty good thing we got your brains to depend on. I'm all right the other side of Council Bluffs, but I'm a tenderfoot here, sure, where everybody's tryin' to get the best of you. You see, out there, everybody tries to make the best of it. But here they try to get the best of it. I told that to one of them smarties last night. But you'll put them in their place all right. You know both ends of the game and the middle. We certainly got a right to be proud of you, son. Dan'l J.

liked big propositions himself--but, well, I'd just like to have him see the nerve you've showed, that's all."

Uncle Peter's professions of confidence were unfailing, and Percival took new hope and faith in his judgment from them daily.

Nevertheless, as the weeks pa.s.sed, and the mysterious insiders succeeded in their design of keeping the stock from rising, he came to feel a touch of anxiety. More, indeed, than he was able to communicate to Uncle Peter, without confessing outright that he had lost faith in himself. That he was unable to do, even if it were true, which he doubted. The Bines fortune was now hanging, as to all but some of the Western properties, on the turning of the three stocks. Yet the old man's confidence in the young man's ac.u.men was invulnerable. No shaft that Percival was able to fashion had point enough to pierce it. And he was both to batter it down, for he still had the gambler's faith in his luck.

"You got your father's head in business matters," was Uncle Peter's invariable response to any suggestion of failure. "I know that much--spite of what all these gossips say--and that's all I _want_ to know. And of course you can't ever be no Shepler 'less you take your share of chances. Only don't ask _my_ advice. You're master of the game, and we're all layin' right smack down on your genius fur it."

Whereupon the young man, with confidence in himself newly inflated, would hurry off to the stock tickers. He had ceased to buy the stocks outright, and for several weeks had bought only on margins.

"There was one rule in poker your pa had," said Uncle Peter. "If a hand is worth calling on, it's worth raising on. He jest never _would_ call.

If he didn't think a hand was worth raising, he'd bunch it in with the discards, and wait fur another deal. I don't know much about the game, but _he_ said it was a sound rule, and if it was sound in poker, why it's got to be sound in this game. That's all I can tell you. You know what you hold, and if 'tain't a hand to lay down, it must be a hand to raise on. Of course, if you'd been brash and ignorant in your first calculations--if you'd made a fool of yourself at the start--but shucks! you're the son of Daniel J. Bines, ain't you?"

The rule and the clever provocation had their effect.

"I'll raise as long as I have a chip left, Uncle Peter. Why, only to-day I had a tip that came straight from Shepler, though he never dreamed it would reach me. That Pacific Cable bill is going to be rushed through at this session of Congress, sure, and that means enough increased demand to send Consolidated back where it was. And then, when it comes out that they've got those Rio Tinto mines by the throat, well, this anvil chorus will have to stop, and those Federal Oil sharks and Shepler will be wondering how I had the face to stay in."

The published rumours regarding Consolidated began to conflict very sharply. Percival read them all hungrily, disregarding those that did not confirm his own opinions. He called them irresponsible newspaper gossip, or believed them to be inspired by the clique for its own ends.

He studied the history of copper until he knew all its ups and downs since the great electrical development began in 1887. When Fouts, the broker he traded most heavily with, suggested that the Consolidated Company was skating on thin ice, that it might, indeed, be going through the same experience that shattered the famous Secretan corner a dozen years before, Percival pointed out unerringly the vital difference in the circ.u.mstances. The Consolidated had reduced the production of its controlled mines, and the price was bound to be maintained. When his adviser suggested that the companies not in the combine might cut the price, he brought up the very lively rumours of a "gentlemen's agreement" with the "non-combine" producers.

"Of course, there's Calumet and Hecla. I know that couldn't be gunned into the combination. They could pay dividends with copper at ten cents a pound. But the other independents know which side of their stock is spread with dividends, all right."

When it was further suggested that the Rio Tinto mines had sold ahead for a year, with the result that European imports from the United States had fallen off, and that the Consolidated could not go on for ever holding up the price, Percival said nothing.

The answer to that was the secret negotiations for control of the European output, which would make the Consolidated master of the copper world. Instead of disclosing this, he pretended craftily to be encouraged by the mere generally hopeful outlook in all lines. Western Trolley, too, might be overcapitalised, and Union Cordage might also be in the hands of a piratical clique; but the demand for trolley lines was growing every day, and cordage products were not going out of fashion by any means.

"You see," he said to his adviser, "here's what the most conservative man in the Street says in this afternoon's paper. 'That copper must necessarily break badly, and the whole boom collapse I do not believe.

There is enough prosperity to maintain a strong demand for the metal through another year at least. As to Western Trolley and Union Cordage, the two other stocks about which doubt is now being so widely expressed in the Street, I am persuaded that they are both due to rise, not sensationally, but at a healthy upward rate that makes them sound investments!'

"There," said Percival, "there's the judgment of a man that knows the game, but doesn't happen to have a dollar in either stock, and he doesn't know one or two things that I know, either. Just hypothecate ten thousand of those Union Cordage shares and five thousand Western Trolley, and buy Consolidated on a twenty per cent margin. I want to get bigger action. There's a good rule in poker: if your hand is worth calling, it's worth raising."

"I like your nerve," said the broker.

"Well, I know some one who has a sleeve with something up it, that's all."

By the third week in April, it was believed that his holdings of Consolidated were the largest in the Street, excepting those of the Federal Oil people. Uncle Peter was delighted by the magnitude of his operations, and by his newly formed habits of industry.

"It'll be the makings of the boy," he said to Mrs. Bines in her son's presence. "Not that I care so much myself about all the millions he'll pile up, but it gives him a business training, and takes him out of the pin-head cla.s.s. I bet Shepler himself will be takin' off his silk hat to your son, jest as soon as he's made this turn in copper--if he has enough of Dan'l J.'s grit to hang on--and I think he has."