“Pretty bum weather for this time of the year.”
Cressler nodded. He took off his hat, and pushed the hair back from his forehead with a slow, persistent gesture; then as the ticker began to click again, he faced around quickly, and crossing the room, ran the tape through his fingers.
“God,” he muttered, between his teeth, “I hope your men didn’t lose any time. It’s up again.”
There was a step at the door, and as Crookes called to come in, the office messenger entered and put a slip of paper into his hands. Crookes looked at it, and pushed it across his desk towards Cressler.
“Here you are,” he observed. “That’s your trade. Five hundred May, at a dollar ten. You were lucky to get it at that—or at any price.”
“Ten!” cried the other, as he took the paper.
Crookes turned away again, and glanced indifferently over his letters. Cressler laid the slip carefully down upon the ledge of the desk, and though Crookes did not look up, he could almost feel how the man braced himself, got a grip of himself, put all his resources to the stretch to meet this blow squarely in the front.
“And I said another eighth would bust me,” Cressler remarked, with a short laugh. “Well,” he added, grimly, “it looks as though I were busted. I suppose, though, we must all expect to get the knife once in a while—mustn’t we? Well, there goes fifty thousand dollars of my good money.”
“I can tell you who’s got it, if you care to know,” answered Crookes. “It’s a pewter quarter to Government bonds that Gretry, Converse & Co. sold that wheat to you. They’ve got about all the wheat there is.”
“I know, of course, they’ve been heavy buyers—for this Unknown Bull they talk so much about.”
“Well, he ain’t Unknown to me,” declared Crookes. “I know him. It’s Curtis Jadwin. He’s the man we’ve been fighting all along, and all hell’s going to break loose down here in three or four days. He’s cornered the market.”
“Jadwin! You mean J.—Curtis—my friend?”
Crookes grunted an affirmative.
“But—why, he told me he was out of the market—for good.”
Crookes did not seem to consider that the remark called for any useless words. He put his hands in his pockets and looked at Cressler.
“Does he know?” faltered Cressler. “Do you suppose he could have heard that I was in this clique of yours?”
“Not unless you told him yourself.”
Cressler stood up, clearing his throat.
“I have not told him, Mr. Crookes,” he said. “You would do me an especial favor if you would keep it from the public, from everybody, from Mr. Jadwin, that I was a member of this ring.”
Crookes swung his chair around and faced his desk.
“Hell! You don’t suppose I’m going to talk, do you?”
“Well. … Good morning, Mr. Crookes.”
“Good morning.”
Left alone, Crookes took a turn the length of the room. Then he paused in the middle of the floor, looking down thoughtfully at his trim, small feet.
“Jadwin!” he muttered. “Hm! … Think you’re boss of the boat now, don’t you? Think I’m done with you, hey? Oh, yes, you’ll run a corner in wheat, will you? Well, here’s a point for your consideration Mr. Curtis Jadwin, ‘Don’t get so big that all the other fellows can see you—they throw bricks.’ ”
He sat down in his chair, and passed a thin and delicate hand across his lean mouth.
“No,” he muttered, “I won’t try to kill you any more. You’ve cornered wheat, have you? All right. … Your own wheat, my smart Aleck, will do all the killing I want.”
Then at last the news of the great corner, authoritative, definite, went out over all the country, and promptly the figure and name of Curtis Jadwin loomed suddenly huge and formidable in the eye of the public. There was no wheat on the Chicago market. He, the great man, the “Napoleon of La Salle Street,” had it all. He sold it or hoarded it, as suited his pleasure. He dictated the price to those men who must buy it of him to fill their contracts. His hand was upon the indicator of the wheat dial of the Board of Trade, and he moved it through as many or as few of the degrees of the circle as he chose.
The newspapers, not only of Chicago, but of every city in the Union, exploited him for stories. The history of his corner, how he had effected it, its chronology, its results, were told and retold, till his name was familiar in the homes and at the firesides of uncounted thousands. Anecdotes were circulated concerning him, interviews—concocted for the most part in the editorial rooms—were printed. His picture appeared. He was described as a cool, calm man of steel, with a cold and calculating grey eye, “piercing as an eagle’s”; as a desperate gambler, bold as a buccaneer, his eye black and fiery—a veritable pirate; as a mild, small man with a weak chin and a deprecatory demeanour; as a jolly and roistering “high roller,” addicted to actresses, suppers, and to bathing in champagne.
In the Democratic press he was assailed as little better than a thief, vituperated as an oppressor of the people, who ground the faces of the poor, and battened in the luxury wrung from the toiling millions. The Republican papers spoke solemnly of the new era of prosperity upon which the country was entering, referred to the stimulating effect of the higher prices upon capitalised industry, and distorted the situation to an augury of a sweeping Republican victory in the next Presidential campaign.
Day in and day out Gretry’s office, where Jadwin now fixed his headquarters, was besieged. Reporters waited in the anteroom for whole half days to get but a nod and a word from the great man. Promoters, inventors, small financiers, agents, manufacturers, even “crayon artists” and horse dealers, even tailors and yacht builders rubbed shoulders with one another outside the door marked “Private.”
Farmers from Iowa or Kansas come to town to sell their little
