Mr. Stackpole paused, for Mr. Hand was holding up a fat, pink digit.
“No more of that,” he was saying, solemnly. “It can’t be done. I, for one, won’t sink another dollar in this proposition at this time. I’d rather throw what I have on the market and take what I can get. I am sure the others feel the same way.”
Mr. Hand, to play safe, had hypothecated nearly all his shares with various banks in order to release his money for other purposes, and he knew he would not dare to throw over all his holdings, just as he knew he would have to make good at the figure at which they had been margined. But it was a fine threat to make.
Mr. Stackpole stared ox-like at Mr. Hand.
“Very well,” he said, “I might as well go back, then, and post a notice on our front door. We bought fourteen thousand shares and held the market where it is, but we haven’t a dollar to pay for them with. Unless the banks or someone will take them over for us we’re gone—we’re bankrupt.”
Mr. Hand, who knew that if Mr. Stackpole carried out this decision it meant the loss of his one million five hundred thousand, halted mentally. “Have you been to all the banks?” he asked. “What does Lawrence, of the Prairie National, have to say?”
“It’s the same with all of them,” replied Stackpole, now quite desperate, “as it is with you. They have all they can carry—every one. It’s this damned silver agitation—that’s it, and nothing else. There’s nothing the matter with this stock. It will right itself in a few months. It’s sure to.”
“Will it?” commented Mr. Hand, sourly. “That depends on what happens next November.” (He was referring to the coming national election.)
“Yes, I know,” sighed Mr. Stackpole, seeing that it was a condition, and not a theory, that confronted him. Then, suddenly clenching his right hand, he exclaimed, “Damn that upstart!” (He was thinking of the “Apostle of Free Silver.”) “He’s the cause of all this. Well, if there’s nothing to be done I might as well be going. There’s all those shares we bought today which we ought to be able to hypothecate with somebody. It would be something if we could get even a hundred and twenty on them.”
“Very true,” replied Hand. “I wish it could be done. I, personally, cannot sink any more money. But why don’t you go and see Schryhart and Arneel? I’ve been talking to them, and they seem to be in a position similar to my own; but if they are willing to confer, I am. I don’t see what’s to be done, but it may be that all of us together might arrange some way of heading off the slaughter of the stock tomorrow. I don’t know. If only we don’t have to suffer too great a decline.”
Mr. Hand was thinking that Messrs. Hull and Stackpole might be forced to part with all their remaining holdings at fifty cents on the dollar or less. Then if it could possibly be taken and carried by the united banks for them (Schryhart, himself, Arneel) and sold at a profit later, he and his associates might recoup some of their losses. The local banks at the behest of the big quadrumvirate might be coerced into straining their resources still further. But how was this to be done? How, indeed?
It was Schryhart who, in pumping and digging at Stackpole when he finally arrived there, managed to extract from him the truth in regard to his visit to Cowperwood. As a matter of fact, Schryhart himself had been guilty this very day of having thrown two thousand shares of American Match on the market unknown to his confreres. Naturally, he was eager to learn whether Stackpole or anyone else had the least suspicion that he was involved. As a consequence he questioned Stackpole closely, and the latter, being anxious as to the outcome of his own interests, was not unwilling to make a clean breast. He had the justification in his own mind that the quadrumvirate had been ready to desert him anyhow.
“Why did you go to him?” exclaimed Schryhart, professing to be greatly astonished and annoyed, as, indeed, in one sense he was. “I thought we had a distinct understanding in the beginning that under no circumstances was he to be included in any portion of this. You might as well go to the devil himself for assistance as go there.” At the same time he was thinking “How fortunate!” Here was not only a loophole for himself in connection with his own subtle side-plays, but also, if the quadrumvirate desired, an excuse for deserting the troublesome fortunes of Hull & Stackpole.
“Well, the truth is,” replied Stackpole, somewhat sheepishly and yet defiantly, “last Thursday I had fifteen thousand shares on which I had to raise money. Neither you nor any of the others wanted any more. The banks wouldn’t take them. I called up Rambaud on a chance, and he suggested Cowperwood.”
As has been related, Stackpole had really gone to Cowperwood direct, but a lie under the circumstances seemed rather essential.
“Rambaud!” sneered Schryhart. “Cowperwood’s man—he and all the others. You couldn’t have gone to a worse crowd if you had tried. So that’s where this stock is coming from, beyond a doubt. That fellow or his friends are selling us out. You might have known he’d do it. He hates us. So you’re through, are you?—not another single trick to turn?”
“Not one,” replied Stackpole, solemnly.
“Well, that’s too bad. You have acted most unwisely in going to Cowperwood; but we shall have to see what can be done.”
Schryhart’s idea, like that of Hand, was to cause Hull & Stackpole to relinquish all their holdings for nothing to the banks in order that, under pressure, the latter might carry the stocks he and the others had hypothecated with them until such a time as the company might be organized
