A few moments after Gretry had gone Jadwin heard the ticker on the other side of the room begin to chatter furiously; and at the same time he could fancy that the distant thunder of the Pit grew suddenly more violent, taking on a sharper, shriller note. He looked at the tape. The one-cent rise had been effected.
“You will hold out, will you, you brute?” muttered Jadwin. “See how you like that now.” He took out his watch. “You’ll be running in to me in just about ten minutes’ time.”
He turned about, and calling a clerk, gave orders to have Hargus found and brought to him.
When the old fellow appeared Jadwin jumped up and gave him his hand as he came slowly forward.
His rusty top hat was in his hand; from the breast pocket of his faded and dirty frock coat a bundle of ancient newspapers protruded. His shoestring tie straggled over his frayed shirt front, while at his wrist one of his crumpled cuffs, detached from the sleeve, showed the bare, thin wrist between cloth and linen, and encumbered the fingers in which he held the unlit stump of a fetid cigar.
Evidently bewildered as to the cause of this summons, he looked up perplexed at Jadwin as he came up, out of his dim, red-lidded eyes.
“Sit down, Hargus. Glad to see you,” called Jadwin.
“Hey?”
The voice was faint and a little querulous.
“I say, sit down. Have a chair. I want to have a talk with you. You ran a corner in wheat once yourself.”
“Oh. … Wheat.”
“Yes, your corner. You remember?”
“Yes. Oh, that was long ago. In seventy-eight it was—the September option. And the Board made wheat in the cars ‘regular.’ ”
His voice trailed off into silence, and he looked vaguely about on the floor of the room, sucking in his cheeks, and passing the edge of one large, osseous hand across his lips.
“Well, you lost all your money that time, I believe. Scannel, your partner, sold out on you.”
“Hey? It was in seventy-eight. … The secretary of the Board announced our suspension at ten in the morning. If the Board had not voted to make wheat in the cars regular—”
He went on and on, in an impassive monotone, repeating, word for word, the same phrases he had used for so long that they had lost all significance.
“Well,” broke in Jadwin, at last, “it was Scannel your partner, did for you. Scannel, I say. You know, Dave Scannel.”
The old man looked at him confusedly. Then, as the name forced itself upon the atrophied brain, there flashed, for one instant, into the pale, blurred eye, a light, a glint, a brief, quick spark of an old, long-forgotten fire. It gleamed there an instant, but the next sank again.
Plaintively, querulously he repeated:
“It was in seventy-eight. … I lost three hundred thousand dollars.”
“How’s your little niece getting on?” at last demanded Jadwin.
“My little niece—you mean Lizzie? … Well and happy, well and happy. I—I got”—he drew a thick bundle of dirty papers from his pocket, envelopes, newspapers, circulars, and the like—“I—I—I got, I got her picture here somewheres.”
“Yes, yes, I know, I know,” cried Jadwin. “I’ve seen it. You showed it to me yesterday, you remember.”
“I—I got it here somewheres … somewheres,” persisted the old man, fumbling and peering, and as he spoke the clerk from the doorway announced:
“Mr. Scannel.”
This latter was a large, thick man, red-faced, with white, short whiskers of an almost wiry texture. He had a small, gimlet-like eye, enormous, hairy ears, wore a sack suit, a highly polished top hat, and entered the office with a great flourish of manner and a defiant trumpeting “Well, how do, Captain?”
Jadwin nodded, glancing up under his scowl.
“Hello!” he said.
The other subsided into a chair, and returned scowl for scowl.
“Oh, well,” he muttered, “if that’s your style.”
He had observed Hargus sitting by the other side of the desk, still fumbling and mumbling in his dirty memoranda, but he gave no sign of recognition. There was a moment’s silence, then in a voice from which all the first bluffness was studiously excluded, Scannel said:
“Well, you’ve rung the bell on me. I’m a sucker. I know it. I’m one of the few hundred other Goddamned fools that you’ve managed to catch out shooting snipe. Now what I want to know is, how much is it going to cost me to get out of your corner? What’s the figure? What do you say?”
“I got a good deal to say,” remarked Jadwin, scowling again.
But Hargus had at last thrust a photograph into his hands.
“There it is,” he said. “That’s it. That’s Lizzie.”
Jadwin took the picture without looking at it, and as he continued to speak, held it in his fingers, and occasionally tapped it upon the desk.
“I know. I know, Hargus,” he answered. “I got a good deal to say, Mr. David Scannel. Do you see this old man here?”
“Oh-h, cut it out!” growled the other.
“It’s Hargus. You know him very well. You used to know him better. You and he together tried to swing a great big deal in September wheat once upon a time. Hargus! I say, Hargus!”
The old man looked up.
“Here’s the man we were talking about, Scannel, you remember. Remember Dave Scannel, who was your partner in seventy-eight? Look at him. This is him now. He’s a rich man now. Remember Scannel?”
Hargus, his bleared old eyes blinking and watering, looked across the desk at the other.
“Oh, what’s the game?” exclaimed Scannel. “I ain’t here on exhibition, I guess. I—”
But he was interrupted by a sharp, quick gasp that all at once issued from Hargus’s trembling lips. The old man said no word, but he leaned far forward in his chair, his eyes fixed upon Scannel, his breath coming short, his fingers dancing against his chin.
“Yes, that’s him, Hargus,” said Jadwin. “You and he had a big deal on your hands a long time ago,” he continued, turning suddenly upon Scannel, a pulse in his temple beginning to beat.
