An hour passed. At length Jadwin pushed back from the table, drank a glass of ice water, and rose, stretching.
“Lord, I must get some sleep,” he muttered.
He threw off his clothes and went to bed, but even as he composed himself to sleep, the noises of the street in the awakening city invaded the room through the chink of the window he had left open. The noises were vague. They blended easily into a far-off murmur; they came nearer; they developed into a cadence:
“Wheat-wheat-wheat, wheat-wheat-wheat.”
Jadwin roused up. He had just been dropping off to sleep. He rose and shut the window, and again threw himself down. He was weary to death; not a nerve of his body that did not droop and flag. His eyes closed slowly. Then, all at once, his whole body twitched sharply in a sudden spasm, a simultaneous recoil of every muscle. His heart began to beat rapidly, his breath failed him. Broad awake, he sat up in bed.
“H’m!” he muttered. “That was a start—must have been dreaming, surely.”
Then he paused, frowning, his eyes narrowing; he looked to and fro about the room, lit by the subdued glow that came in through the transom from a globe in the hall outside. Slowly his hand went to his forehead.
With almost the abruptness of a blow, that strange, indescribable sensation had returned to his head. It was as though he were struggling with a fog in the interior of his brain; or again it was a numbness, a weight, or sometimes it had more of the feeling of a heavy, tight-drawn band across his temples.
“Smoking too much, I guess,” murmured Jadwin. But he knew this was not the reason, and as he spoke, there smote across his face the first indefinite sensation of an unnamed fear.
He gave a quick, short breath, and straightened himself, passing his hands over his face.
“What the deuce,” he muttered, “does this mean?”
For a long moment he remained sitting upright in bed, looking from wall to wall of the room. He felt a little calmer. He shrugged his shoulders impatiently.
“Look here,” he said to the opposite wall, “I guess I’m not a schoolgirl, to have nerves at this late date. High time to get to sleep, if I’m to mix things with Crookes tomorrow.”
But he could not sleep. While the city woke to its multitudinous life below his windows, while the grey light of morning drowned the yellow haze from the gas jet that came through the transom, while the “early call” alarms rang in neighbouring rooms, Curtis Jadwin lay awake, staring at the ceiling, now concentrating his thoughts upon the vast operation in which he found himself engaged, following out again all its complexities, its inconceivable ramifications, or now puzzling over the inexplicable numbness, the queer, dull weight that descended upon his brain so soon as he allowed its activity to relax.
By five o’clock he found it intolerable to remain longer in bed; he rose, bathed, dressed, ordered his breakfast, and, descending to the office of the hotel, read the earliest editions of the morning papers for half an hour.
Then, at last, as he sat in the corner of the office deep in an armchair, the tired shoulders began to droop, the wearied head to nod. The paper slipped from his fingers, his chin sank upon his collar.
To his ears the early clamour of the street, the cries of newsboys, the rattle of drays came in a dull murmur. It seemed to him that very far off a great throng was forming. It was menacing, shouting. It stirred, it moved, it was advancing. It came galloping down the street, shouting with insensate fury; now it was at the corner, now it burst into the entrance of the hotel. Its clamour was deafening, but intelligible. For a thousand, a million, forty million voices were shouting in cadence:
“Wheat-wheat-wheat, wheat-wheat-wheat.”
Jadwin woke abruptly, half starting from his chair. The morning sun was coming in through the windows; the clock above the hotel desk was striking seven, and a waiter stood at his elbow, saying:
“Your breakfast is served, Mr. Jadwin.”
He had no appetite. He could eat nothing but a few mouthfuls of toast, and long before the appointed hour he sat in Gretry’s office, waiting for the broker to appear, drumming on the arm of his chair, plucking at the buttons of his coat, and wondering why it was that every now and then all the objects in his range of vision seemed to move slowly back and stand upon the same plane.
By degrees he lapsed into a sort of lethargy, a wretched counterfeit of sleep, his eyes half closed, his breath irregular. But, such as it was, it was infinitely grateful. The little, overdriven cogs and wheels of the mind, at least, moved more slowly. Perhaps by and by this might actually develop into genuine, blessed oblivion.
But there was a quick step outside the door. Gretry came in.
“Oh, J.! Here already, are you? Well, Crookes will begin to sell at the very tap of the bell.”
“He will, hey?” Jadwin was on his feet. Instantly the jaded nerves braced taut again; instantly the tiny machinery of the brain spun again at its fullest limit. “He’s going to try to sell us out, is he? All right. We’ll sell, too. We’ll see who can sell the most—Crookes or Jadwin.”
“Sell! You mean buy, of course.”
“No, I don’t. I’ve been thinking it over since you left last night. Wheat is worth exactly what it is selling for this blessed day. I’ve not inflated it up one single eighth yet; Crookes thinks I have. Good Lord, I can read him like a book! He thinks I’ve boosted
