What have you done with your portfolio, Mr. Dalby?'
'I've diversified as much as possible,' Dalby replied.
'That's fancy talk. It means you're already out of the markets, doesn't it?' Potter asked. When the broker didn't answer right away, Potter nodded. 'I thought so. I'm getting out while the getting is at least tolerable, if not good. Place those sell orders right this minute. I want to make sure you do it. I'll be back for my money this afternoon, mind you, and I expect to have it.' He didn't quite say, I know where you live, Dalby, but it hung in the air.
Only after the broker made the necessary telephone calls did Clarence Potter leave his office. When he stepped back out onto the streets of Charleston, he still felt panic in the air. A newsboy shouted, 'France leaves the gold standard!' Another one called, 'London market plunges again! Big selloff in Richmond!' And yet another cried, 'President Mitchel calls for calm! Confederate dollar still sound, he says!'
Potter hoped Burton Mitchel was right about that last. If the currency went out the window as it had right after the war, there'd be hell to pay, but no money for the Devil. Will I have to buy gold? Potter wondered. Is there any gold to buy? I'll worry about that later. First things first. Banknotes. Nice brown banknotes. Let me get a good, fat wad of them and I can laugh at the world for a while.
When he went back to Ulysses Dalby's office that afternoon, the newspaper hawkers were talking about the beating the Richmond exchange had taken, and about the one the New York exchange had taken, too. He set his teeth and hoped the broker hadn't decamped with his money.
Betty the decorative secretary led him into Dalby's office. Just seeing Dalby made him let out a sigh of relief. He let out another one when Dalby handed him a thick sheaf of brown banknotes. What he let out after counting the money was more on the order of a grunt of pain. 'This is all?' he demanded.
'That's all, Mr. Potter. I tried to warn you: you don't get top dollar in a bear market,' Ulysses Dalby said. 'Here are the transaction records. I'm not cheating you.'
'Well, maybe you don't,' Potter said after carefully checking the records. He did his best to sound philosophical. 'But I would have got a lot less if I'd waited till tomorrow or the day after or next week, wouldn't I?'
Dalby nodded. 'I have to say you would have. I'm also going to ask you one thing more: in what bank do you intend to put your money now that you've got it?'
'Why, the First Secession Bank and Trust,' Potter answered. 'I've been doing business with them since I came down here after the war. You must know that. How come?'
'Mm… It may be nothing. You're a good judge of banks-I think the First Secession is a pretty solid outfit. It may come through all this just fine.'
Clarence Potter stared at him. 'It may, you say?' Dalby nodded again. Potter whistled softly. 'You think it's going to be as bad as that? Banks going under, the way they did in '88 and '04?'
'Yes, it may be that bad,' the broker answered after a little thought. 'On the other hand, it may be a good deal worse.' Potter started to laugh, thinking Dalby had made a grim sort of joke. But Dalby's face was serious, even somber. 'I'm not kidding, Mr. Potter,' he said. 'I'm not kidding at all. In the last couple of panics, our markets took a beating, and so did Wall Street up in the USA, but the rest of the world went on about its business. It's not like that this time, sir. I wish to heaven it were. This time… It won't do much to Africa, I suppose, and maybe not to China, either-the heathen Chinese are already about as bad off as they can be. But I don't believe anyplace else will get off untouched.'
Potter whistled again, an even lower, even more mournful note. He might have been tolling the passing of an era. Maybe I am, he thought. 'My God,' he said aloud. 'And I thought I was a pessimist.'
'I watched the ticker tape all day, Mr. Potter. I watched it get further and further behind the sales it was supposed to be listing,' Dalby said. 'When I saw you this morning, I still had some hope. I'd say it died about an hour and a half ago. Maybe I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong. I hope so. But I don't think so, not any more.'
He looked shellshocked. That was exactly how he looked, Potter realized. He'd been through too much, like men in the Army of Northern Virginia during the war. They'd got that stunned, beaten look on their faces, too. Half the time after that, they didn't care if they lived or died. Dalby didn't seem to, not right now.
Stowing your money in your mattress was a joke that went at least as far back as money and mattresses. Potter wondered which of those had come first. Joke or not, he did just that with the banknotes he'd got from Ulysses Dalby. The next morning, he closed out his account at the First Secession Bank and Trust. The lines at the bank weren't too bad. 'I assure you, sir,' said the young clerk who gave him his money, 'we are perfectly sound.'
'I believe you, son,' Potter answered. 'That's why I'm doing this now. Who knows how the devil you're going to be in a couple of weeks, though?'
The clerk didn't try to tell him everything would be fine. He found himself wishing the fellow would have.
He went to the Whig Party meeting the following Tuesday more out of morbid curiosity than for any other reason. The stock exchanges hadn't got any better. They'd kept right on sinking, Richmond faster than New York. Lines outside the banks were starting to get longer-and more anxious.
The meeting went very much as Potter expected-very much as he'd feared-it would. It put him in mind of a lot of maiden ladies talking-or rather, trying not to talk-about sex. The lawyers and businessmen circled the building crash like a man circling a rattlesnake in a small room. They couldn't ignore it, but they didn't want to deal with it, either. They kept making noises about 'changing conditions' and 'uncertainty' and 'a seeming slump in the business cycle.'
Clarence Potter stuck up his hand. He needed a while to be recognized. He wasn't surprised; he'd expected they wouldn't want to notice him. He'd proved himself a gadfly, and they didn't like that. But he was, or could be, a patient gadfly. At last, the chairman had no choice but to turn his way and ask, 'Yes, Mr. Potter?'
'Boys,' Potter said, 'the jig is up.'
Bang! The chairman rapped loudly for order. 'Have you anything more germane to say, Mr. Potter, or may we move on to the next order of business?'
'What is the next order of business in the middle of a crash?' Potter demanded. 'Sending out for more strings so we can fiddle while the market burns?' Bang! went the gavel again. Potter ignored it. 'Next Congressional elections are only a few months away,' he said harshly. 'If this is as bad as it looks, how do we intend to send one single solitary Whig incumbent back to Richmond for the new Congress? We'd better be thinking about that, eh, before we worry about anything else. And we'd better try to keep the country on its feet so it'll be in some sort of shape to want to vote for us. How are we supposed to go about that?'
Bang! Bang! Bang! 'Mr. Potter, you are as thoroughly out of order as it is possible for one man to be,' the chairman all but shouted.
'You're right,' Potter agreed. 'But the country is a lot further out of order than I can be, and so are the Whigs. I have one last question, gentlemen, and then I'm done: if this turns out to be as bad as it looks right now, how the hell do you propose to keep those Freedom Party yokels from trying to pick up the pieces?'
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! The gavel descended again and again, a veritable fusillade of banging. That succeeded in silencing Clarence Potter. But, he noticed, no one tried to answer his question. He'd expected nothing different, nothing better. He'd hoped for something better, but he knew too well the difference between hope and expectation. He walked out of the meeting gloomy, but he'd figured he would.
A couple of days later, after watching stocks tumble lower yet, after listening on the wireless to a speech by President Mitchel that was as full of misplaced optimism as any he'd ever heard, he decided to telephone Anne Colleton. He wasn't even sure she would remember him; a brief acquaintance in a political squabble a couple of years before didn't necessarily constitute an introduction.
But she said, 'Oh, yes, Mr. Potter. I do appreciate the help you gave me against that fool of a Braxton Donovan. What's on your mind today?'
'I don't know, frankly,' he answered. 'The main reason I called was to see how you were doing. If anyone could land on her feet in this mess, you're the one.'
'I'm not too bad,' she said. 'As soon as I saw which way the wind was blowing, I sold out as fast as I could. I got hurt. I didn't get wiped out. If I'd stayed in the market a little longer, I would have. How about you, Mr. Potter?'
'About the same,' he told her. 'I could have done better if I'd left a couple of days sooner, but I'm getting by for the time being. An awful lot of people aren't, though, and it may get worse before it gets better.'
