I awoke with the sense of threatened danger strong in my mind. For a moment I was unable to recall where I was, or on what errand I had come. Then memory returned in a flood, and I sprang from the bed and peered about me.
A dim light struggled in from the darkened window, but no cause for apprehension could be seen. I was the only creature that breathed the air of that bleak and dingy room.
I drew aside the curtain, and threw up the window. It opened merely on a light-well, and the blank walls beyond gave back the cheery reflection of a patch of sunlight that fell at an angle from above.
The fresher air that crept in from the window cleared my mind, a dash of water refreshed my body, and I was ready once more to face whatever might befall.
I looked at my watch. It was eight o'clock, and I had slept four hours in this place. Truly I had been imprudent after my adventure below, but I had been right in trusting Mother Borton. Then I began to realize that I was outrageously hungry, and I remembered that I should be at the office by nine to receive the commands of Doddridge Knapp, should he choose to send them.
I threw back the bolt, but when I tried to swing the door open it resisted my efforts. The key had been missing when I closed it, but a sliding bolt had fastened it securely. Now I saw that the door was locked.
Here was a strange predicament. I had heard nothing of the noise of the key before I lost myself in slumber. Mother Borton must have turned it as an additional precaution as I slept. But how was I to get out? I hesitated to make a noise that could attract attention. It might bring some one less kindly disposed than my hostess of the night. But there was no other way. I was trapped, and must take the risk of summoning assistance.
I rapped on the panel and listened. No sound rewarded me. I rapped again more vigorously, but only silence followed. The house might have been the grave for all the signs of life it gave back.
There was something ominous about it. To be locked, thus, in a dark room of this house in which I had already been attacked, was enough to shake my spirit and resolution for the moment. What lay without the door, my apprehension asked me. Was it part of the plot to get the secret it was supposed I held? Had Mother Borton been murdered, and the house seized? Or had Mother Borton played me false, and was I now a prisoner to my own party for my enforced imposture, as one who knew too much to be left at large and too little to be of use? On a second and calmer thought it was evidently folly to bring my jailers about my ears, if jailers there were. I abandoned my half-formed plan of breaking down the door, and turned to the window and the light-well. Another window faced on the same space, not five feet away. If it were but opened I might swing myself over and through it; but it was closed, and a curtain hid the unknown possibilities and dangers of the interior. A dozen feet above was the roof, with no projection or foothold by which it might be reached. Below, the light-well ended in a tinned floor, about four feet from the window sill.
I swung myself down, and with two steps was trying the other window. It was unlocked. I raised the sash cautiously, but its creaking protest seemed to my excited ears to be loud enough to wake any but the dead. I stopped and listened after each squeak of the frame. There was no sign of movement.
Then I pushed aside the curtain cautiously, and looked within. The room appeared absolutely bare. Gaining confidence at the sight, I threw the curtain farther back, and with a bound climbed in, revolver in hand.
A scurrying sound startled me for an instant, and with a scramble I gained my feet, prepared to face whatever was before me. Then I saw the disappearing form of a great rat, and laughed at my fears.
The room was, as I had thought, bare and deserted. There was a musty smell about it, as though it had not been opened for a long time, and dust and desolation lay heavy upon it. A dark stain on the floor near the window suggested to my fancy the idea of blood. Had some wayfarer less fortunate than I been inveigled to his death in this evil place?
There was, however, nothing here to linger for, and I hastened to try the door. It was locked. I stooped to examine the fastening. It was of the cheapest kind, attached to door and casement by small screws. With a good wrench it gave way, and I found myself in a dark side-hall between two rooms. Three steps brought me to the main hall, and I recognized it for the same through which I had felt my way in the darkness of the night. It was not improved by the daylight, and a strange loneliness about it was an oppression to the spirits. There were six or eight rooms on the floor, and the doors glowered threateningly on me, as though they were conscious that I was an intruder in fear of his life.
The intense stillness within the house, instead of reassuring me, served as a threat. After my experience of the night, it spoke of treachery, not of peace.
I took my steps cautiously down the stairs, following the way that led to the side entrance. The saloon and restaurant room I was anxious to evade, for there would doubtless be a barkeeper and several loiterers about. It could not be avoided, however. As I neared the bottom of the stairs, I saw that a door led from the hallway to the saloon, and that it was open.
I moved slowly down, a step at a time, then from over-cautiousness tripped and came down the last three steps at once with the clatter of a four-horse team.
But nobody stirred. Then I glanced through the open door, and was stricken cold with astonishment. The room was empty!
The chairs and tables that a few hours ago I had seen scattered about were gone. There was no sign that the place had been occupied in months.
I stepped into the room that I had seen crowded with eager friends and enemies, eating, drinking, ready for desperate deeds. My step echoed strangely with the echo of an untenanted house. The bar and the shelves behind it were swept clear of the bottles and glasses that had filled them. Dust was thick over the floor and walls. The windows were stained and dirty, and a paper sign on each pane informed the passers-by that the house was “To Let.”
Bewildered and apprehensive, I wondered whether, after all, the events of the night, the summons from Dicky Nahl, the walk in the darkness, the scene in the saloon, the encounter with the snake-eyed man, the riot, the rush up the dark stair, and the interview with the old crone, were not a fantastic vision from the land of dreams.
I looked cautiously through the other rooms on the first floor. They were as bare as the main room. The only room in the whole house that held a trace of furniture or occupancy must be the one from which I had escaped. It seemed that an elaborate trap had been set for my benefit with such precautions that I could not prove that it ever had been.
There was, however, no time to waste in prying into this mystery. By my watch it was close on nine o'clock, and Doddridge Knapp might even now be making his way to the office where he had stationed me.
The saloon's front doors were locked fast, but the side door that led from the stairway to the street was fastened only with a spring lock, and I swung it open and stepped to the sidewalk.
A load left my spirits as the door closed behind me. The fresh air of the morning was like wine after the close and musty atmosphere I had been breathing.
The street was but a prosaic place after the haunt of mystery I had just left. It was like stepping from the Dark Ages into the nineteenth century. Yet there was something puzzling about it. The street had no suggestion of the familiar, and it appeared somehow to have been turned end for end. I had lost my sense of direction. The hills were where the bay ought to be. I seemed to have changed sides of the street, and it took me a little time to readjust the points of the compass. I reasoned at last that Dicky Nahl had led me to the street below before turning to the place, and I had not noticed that we had doubled on our course.
I hurried along the streets with but a three-minute stop to swallow a cup of coffee and a roll, and once more mounted the stairs to the office and opened the door to Number 15.
The place was in disorder. The books that had been arranged on the desk and shelves were now scattered about in confusion, as though they had been hurriedly examined and thrown aside in a fruitless search. This was a disturbing incident, and I was surprised to discover that the door into the adjoining room was ajar. I pushed it wide open, and started back. Before me stood Doddridge Knapp, his face pale as the face of a corpse, and his eyes starting as though the dead had risen before him.
The King of the Street stood for a moment staring at me with that strange and fearsome gaze. What was there in that dynamic glance that struck a chill to my spirit as though the very fountain of life had been attacked? Was it the manifestation of the powerful will behind that mask? Or was it terror or anger that was to be read in the fiery eyes that gleamed from beneath those bushy brows, and in the play of the cruel mouth, which from under that yellow-gray mustache gave back the sign of the Wolf?
“Have you any orders, sir?” I asked in as calm a voice as I could command.
“Oh, it's you, is it?” said the Wolf slowly, covering his fangs.
It flashed on me that the attack in the Borton den was of his planning, that Terrill was his tool, and that he had supposed me dead. It was thus that I could account for his startled gaze and evident discomposure.
“Nine o'clock was the time, you said,” I suggested deferentially. “I believe it's a minute or two past.”
“Oh, yes,” said Doddridge Knapp, pulling himself together. “Come in here.”
He looked suspiciously at me as he took a seat at his desk, and motioned me to another.
“I had a little turn,” he said, eying me nervously; “a vertigo, I believe the doctor called it. Just reach my overcoat pocket there, will you?—the left-hand side. Yes, bring me that flask.”
He poured out a small glass of liquor, and the rich odor of brandy rose through the room. Then he took a vial from an inside pocket, counted a few drops into the glass, and drank it at a swallow.
I marveled at the actions of the man, and wondered if he was nerving himself to some deed that he lacked courage to perform.
When he had cleared his throat of the fiery liquor, the Wolf turned to me with a more composed and kindly expression.
“I never drink during business hours,” he said with a trace of apology in his tone. “It's bad for business, and for the drink, too. But this is a little trouble I've had a touch of in the last two months. Just remember, young man, that I expect you to do your drinking after business is over—and not too much then. And now to business,” said my employer with decision. “Take down these orders.”
The King of the Street was himself once more, and I marveled again at the quickness and clearness of his directions. I was to buy one hundred shares of this stock, sell five hundred of that stock, buy one thousand of another in blocks of one hundred, and sell the same in a single block at the last session.
“And the last thing you do,” he continued, “buy every share of Omega that is offered. There'll be a big block of it thrown on the market, and more in the afternoon. Buy it, whatever the price. There's likely to be a big slump. Don't bid for it—don't keep up the price, you understand—but get it.”
“If somebody else is snapping it up, do I understand that I'm not to bid over them?”
“You're not to understand anything of the kind,” he said, with a little disgust in his tone. “You're to get the stock. You've bought and sold enough to know how to do that. But don't start a boom for the price. Let her go down. Sabe?”
I felt that there was deep water ahead.
“Perfectly,” I said. “I think I see the whole thing.”
The King of the Street looked at me with a grim smile.
“Maybe you do, but all the same you'd better keep your money out of this little deal unless you can spare it as well as not. Well, get back to your room. You've got your check-book all right?”
Alone once more I was in despair of unraveling the tangle in which I was involved. I felt convinced that Doddridge Knapp was the mover in the plots that sought my life. He had, I felt sure, believed me dead, and was startled into fear at my unheralded appearance. Yet why should he trust me with his business? I could not doubt that the buying and selling he had given to my care were important. I knew nothing about the price of stocks but I was sure that the orders he had given me involved many thousands of dollars. Yet it might be—the thought struck home to me—that the credit had not been provided for me, and my checks on the Nevada Bank would serve only to land me in jail.
The disturbed condition of the books attracted my attention once more. The volumes were scattered over the desk and thrown about the room as though somebody had been seeking for a mislaid document. I looked curiously over them as I replaced them on the shelves. They were law-books, California Reports, and the ordinary text-books and form-books of the attorney. All bore on the fly-leaf the name of Horace H. Plymire, but no paper or other indication of ownership could I find.
I wondered idly who this Plymire might be, and pictured to myself some old attorney who had fallen into the hands of Doddridge Knapp, and had, through misfortune, been forced to sell everything for the mess of pottage to keep life in him. But there was small time for musing, and I went out to do Doddridge Knapp's bidding in the stock-gambling whirlpool of Pine Street.
There was already a confused murmur of voices about the rival exchanges that were the battlegrounds of millionaires. The “curbstone boards” were in session. The buyers who traded face to face, and the brokers who carried their offices under their hats, were noisily bargaining, raising as much clamor over buying and selling a few shares as the most important dealer in the big boards could raise over the transfer of as many thousands.
It was easy to find Bockstein and Eppner, and there could be no mistaking the prosperity of the firm. The indifference of the clerks to my presence, and the evident contempt with which an order for a hundred shares of something was being taken from an apologetic old gentleman were enough to assure me of that.
Bockstein and Eppner were together, evidently consulting over the business to be done. Bockstein was tall and gray-haired, with a stubby gray beard. Eppner was short and a little stooped, with a blue-black mustache, snapping blue-black eyes, and strong blue-black dots over his face where his beard struggled vainly against the devastating razor. Both were strongly marked with the shrewd, money-getting visage. I set forth my business.
“You wand to gif a larch order?” said Bockstein, looking over my memoranda. “Do you haf references?”
“Yes,” echoed Eppner. “References are customary, you know.” He spoke in a high-keyed voice that had irritating suggestions in it.
“Is there any reference better than cash?” I asked.
The partners looked at each other. “None,” they replied.
“How much will secure you on the order?”
They named a heavy margin, and the sum total took my heart into my mouth. How large a balance I could draw against I had not the faintest idea. Possibly this was a trap to throw me into jail as a common swindler attempting to pass worthless checks. But there was no time to hesitate. I drew a check for the amount, signed Henry Wilton's name, and tossed it over to Bockstein.
“All ridt,” said the senior partner. “Zhust talk it ofer vit Misder Eppner. He goes on der floor.”
I knew well enough what was wanted. My financial standing was to be tested by the head of the firm, while the junior partner kept me amused.
Eppner was quick to take my ideas. A few words of explanation, and he understood perfectly what I wanted.
“You have not bought before?” It was an interrogation, not an assertion.
“Oh, yes,” I said carelessly, “but not through you, I believe.”
“No, no, I think not. I should have remembered you.”
I thought this might be a favorable opportunity to glean a little information of what was going on in the market.
“Are there any good deals in prospect?” I ventured.
I could see in the blue-black depths of his eyes that an unfavorable opinion he had conceived of my judgment was deepened by this question. There was doubtless in it the flavor of the amateur.
“We never advise our customers,” was the high-keyed reply.
“Certainly not,” I replied. “I don't want advice—merely to know what is going on.”
“Excuse me, but I never gossip. It is a rule I make.”
“It might interfere with your opportunities to pick up a good bargain now and then,” I suggested, as the blue-black man seemed at a loss for words.
“We never invest in stocks,” was the curt reply.
“Excellent idea,” said I, “for those who know too much or too little.”
Eppner failed to smile, and could think of nothing to say. I was a little abashed, notwithstanding the tone of haughty indifference I took. I began to feel very young before this machine-like impersonation of the market.
Bockstein relieved the embarrassment of the situation by coming in out of breath, with a brave pretense of having been merely consulting a customer in the next room.
“You haf exblained to Misder Eppner?” he inquired. “Den all is done. Here is a card to der Board Room. If orders you haf to gif, Eppner vill dake dem on der floor. Zhust gif him der check for margin, and all is vell.”
At the end of this harangue I found myself outside the office, with Bockstein's back waddling toward the private room where the partners were to have their last consultation before going to the Board.
My check had been honored, then, and Bockstein had assured himself of my solvency. In the rebound from anxiety, I swelled with the pride of a capitalist—on Doddridge Knapp's money.
In the Board Room of the big Exchange the uproar was something astonishing. The confusion outside had given me a suggestion that the business of buying and selling stocks was carried on in a somewhat less conventional manner than the trade in groceries. But it had not quite prepared me for the scene in the Exchange.
The floor was filled with a crowd of lunatics, howling, shaking fists, and pushing and scrambling from one place to another with the frenzy of a band of red men practising the scalp dance by the bright glow of the white man's fire-water. A confused roar rose from the mob, and whenever it showed signs of flagging a louder cry from some quarter would renew its strength, and a blast of shouts and screams, a rush of struggling men toward the one who had uttered the cry, and a waving of fists, arms, and hats, suggested visions of lynching and sudden death.
After a little I was able to discover a method in the outbreaks of apparent lunacy, and found that the shouts and yells and screams, the shaking of fists, and the waving of arms were merely a more or less energetic method of bidding for stocks; that the ringing of gongs and the bellow of the big man who smiled on the bear-garden from the high desk were merely the audible signs that another stock was being called; and that the brazen-voiced reading of a roll was merely the official announcement of the record of bargains and sales that had been going on before me.
It was my good fortune to make out so much before the purchase of the stocks on my order list was completed. The crisis was at hand in which I must have my wits about me, and be ready to act for myself. Eppner rushed up and reported the bargains made, handing me a slip with the figures he had paid for the stocks. He was no longer the impassive engine of business that he had appeared in the back room of his office. He was now the embodiment of the riot I had been observing. His blue-black hair was rumpled and on end. His blue-black eyes flashed with animation. The blue-black dots that showed where his beard would be if he had let it were almost overwhelmed by the glow that excitement threw into his sallow cheeks.
“Any more orders?” he gasped. He was trembling with excitement and suppressed eagerness for the fray.
“Yes,” I shouted above the roar about me. “I want to buy Omega.”
He gave a look that might have been a warning, if I could have read it; but it was gone with a shrug as though he would say, “Well, it's no business of mine.”
“How much?” he asked. “Wait!”
He started away at a scream from the front, but returned in a moment. He had bought or sold something, but I had not the least idea what it was, or which he had done.
“It's coming!” he yelled in my ear.
The gong rang. There was a confused cry from the man at the big desk. And pandemonium let loose.
I had thought the riot that had gone before as near the climax of noise as it was possible to get. I was mistaken. The roar that followed the call was to the noise that had gone before as is the hurricane to the zephyr. There was a succession of yells, hoots, cries and bellows; men rushed wildly at each other, swung in a mad dance, jumped up and down; and the floor became a frantic sea of fists, arms, hats, heads, and all things movable.
“Omega opens at sixty-five,” shouted Eppner.
“Bid sixty,” I shouted in reply, “but get all you can, even if you have to pay sixty-five.”
Eppner gave a bellow, and skated into a group of fat men, gesticulating violently. The roar increased, if such a thing were possible.
In a minute Eppner was back, perspiring, and I fancied a trifle worried.
“They're dropping it on me,” he gasped in my ear. “Five hundred at sixty-two and one thousand at sixty. Small lots coming fast and big ones on the way.”
“Good! Bid fifty-five, and then fifty, but get them.”
With a roar he rushed into the midst of a whirling throng. I saw twenty brokers about him, shouting and threatening. One in his eagerness jumped upon the shoulders of a fat man in front of him, and shook a paper under his nose.
I could make out nothing of what was going on, except that the excitement was tremendous.
Twice Eppner reported to me. The stock was being hammered down stroke by stroke. There was a rush to sell. Fifty-five—fifty-three—fifty, came the price—then by leaps to forty-five and forty. It was a panic. At last the gong sounded, and the scene was over. Men staggered from the Exchange, white as death, some cursing, some angry and red, some despairing, some elate. I could see that ten had lost for one who had gained.
Eppner reported at the end of the call. He had bought for me twelve thousand five hundred shares, over ten thousand of them below fifty. The total was frightful. There was half a million dollars to pay when the time for settlement came. It was folly to suppose that my credit at the Nevada was of this size. But I put a bold face on it, gave a check for the figure that Eppner named, and rose.
“Any more orders?” he asked.
“Not till afternoon.”
As I passed into the street I was astonished at the swift transformation that had come over it. The block about the Exchange was crowded with a tossing throng, hundreds upon hundreds pushing toward its fateful doors. But where cheerfulness and hope had ruled, fear and gloom now vibrated in electric waves before me. The faces turned to the pitiless, polished granite front of the great gambling-hall were white and drawn, and on them sat Ruin and Despair. The men were for the most part silent, with here and there one cursing; the women, who were there by scores, wept and mourned; and from the multitudes rose that peculiar whisper of crowds that tells of apprehension of things worse to come. And this, I must believe, was the work of Doddridge Knapp.
Doddridge Knapp was seated calmly in my office when I opened the door. There was a grim smile about the firm jaws, and a satisfied glitter in the keen eyes. The Wolf had found his prey, and the dismay of the sheep at the sight of his fangs gave him satisfaction instead of distress.
The King of the Street honored me with a royal nod.
“There seems to have been a little surprise for somebody on the Board this morning,” he suggested.
“I heard something about it on the street,” I admitted.
“It was a good plan and worked well. Let me see your memoranda of purchases.”
I gave him my slips.
He looked over them with growing perplexity in his face.
“Here's twelve thousand five hundred shares of Omega.”
“Yes.”
“You paid too much for that first lot.” He was still poring over the list.
“It's easier to see that now than then,” I suggested dryly.
“Humph! yes. But there's something wrong here.” He was comparing my list with another in his hand.
“There!” I thought; “my confounded ignorance has made a mess of it.” But I spoke with all the confidence I could assume: “What's the matter, now?”
“Eleven thousand and twelve thousand five hundred make twenty-three thousand five hundred; and here are sales of Omega this morning of thirty-three thousand eight hundred and thirty.” He seemed to be talking more to himself than to me, and to be far from pleased.
“How's that? I don't understand.” I was all in the dark over his musings.
“I picked up eleven thousand shares in the other Boards this morning, and twelve thousand five hundred through you, but somebody has taken in the other ten thousand.” The King of the Street seemed puzzled and, I thought, a little worried.
“Well, you got over twenty-three thousand shares,” I suggested consolingly. “That's a pretty good morning's work.”
The King of the Street gave me a contemptuous glance.
“Don't be a fool, Wilton. I sold ten thousand of those shares to myself.”
A new light broke upon me. I was getting lessons of one of the many ways in which the market was manipulated.
“Then you think that somebody else—”
The King of the Street broke in with a grim smile.
“Never mind what I think. I've got the contract for doing the thinking for this job, and I reckon I can 'tend to it.”
The great speculator was silent for a few moments.
“I might as well be frank with you,” he said at last. “You'll have to know something, to work intelligently. I must get control of the Omega Company, and to do it I've got to have more stock. I've been afraid of a combination against me, and I guess I've struck it. I can't be sure yet, but when those ten thousand shares were gobbled up on a panicky market, I'll bet there's something up.”
“Who is in it?” I asked politely.
“They've kept themselves covered,” said the King of the Street, “but I'll have them out in the open before the end. And then, my boy, you'll see the fur fly.”
As these words were uttered I could see the yellow-gray goatee rise like bristles, and the fangs of the Wolf shine white under the yellow-gray mustache.
“I've got a few men staked out,” he continued slowly, “and I reckon I'll know something about it by this time to-morrow.” There was the growl of the Wolf in his voice.
“Now for this afternoon,” he continued. “There's got to be some sharp work done. I reckon the falling movement is over. We've got to pay for what we get from now on. I've got a man looking after the between-Board trading. With the scare that's on in the chipper crowd out there, I look to pick up a thousand shares or so at about forty.”
“Well, what's the program?” I asked cheerfully.
“Buy,” he said briefly. “Take everything that's offered this side of seventy-five.”
“Um—there's a half-million wanted already to settle for what I bought this morning.”
The bushy brows drew down, but the King of the Street answered lightly:
“Your check is good for a million, my boy, as long as it goes to settle for what you're ordered to buy.” Then he added grimly: “I don't think you'd find it worth much for anything else.”
There was a knock at the door beyond, and he hastily rose.
“Be here after the two-thirty session,” he said. And the Wolf, huge and masterful, disappeared with a stealthy tread, and the door closed softly behind him.
A million dollars! My check honored for unlimited amounts! Doddridge Knapp trusting me with a great fortune! I was overwhelmed, intoxicated, with the consciousness of power.
Yet this was the man who had brought death to Henry Wilton, and had twice sought my life in the effort to wrest from me a packet of information I did not have. This was the man whose face had gleamed fierce and hateful in the lantern's flash in the alley. This was the man I had sworn to bring to the gallows for a brutal crime. And now I was his trusted agent, with control, however limited, of millions.
It was a puzzle too deep for me. I was near coming to Mother Borton's view that there was something uncanny about Doddridge Knapp. Did two spirits animate that body? What was the thread that should join all parts of the mystery into one harmonious whole?
I wondered idly who Doddridge Knapp's visitor might be, but as I could see no way of finding out, and felt no special concern over his identity or purposes, I rose and left the office. As I stepped into the hall I discovered that somebody had a deeper curiosity than I. A man was stooping to the keyhole of Doddridge Knapp's room in the endeavor to see or hear. As he heard the sound of my opening door he started up, and with a bound, was around the turn of the hall and pattering down the stairs.
In another bound I was after him. I had seen his form for but a second, and his face not at all. But in that second I knew him for Tim Terrill of the snake-eyes and the murderous purpose.
When I reached the head of the stairs he was nowhere to be seen, but I heard the patter of his feet below and plunged down three steps at a time and into Clay street, nearly upsetting a stout gentleman in my haste. The street was busy with people, but no sign of the snake-eyed man greeted me.
Much disturbed in mind at this apparition of my enemy, I sought in vain for some explanation of his presence. Was he spying on Doddridge Knapp? Did he not stand on a better footing with his employer than this? He was, I must suppose, trusted with the most secret and evil purposes of that strange man, and should be able to speak with him on even terms. Yet here he was, doing the work of the merest spy. What wickedness was he planning? What treachery was he shaping in his designs on the man whose bread he was eating and whose plans of crime he was the chief agent to assist or execute?
I must have stood gaping in the street like a countryman at a fair as I revolved these questions in my mind without getting an answer to them, for I was roused by a man bumping into me roughly.
I suspected that he had done it on purpose, but I begged his pardon and felt for my watch. I could find none of my personal property missing, but I noticed the fellow reeling back toward me, and doubled my fist with something of an intention to commit a breach of the peace if he repeated his trick. I thought better of it, and started by him briskly, when he spoke in a low tone:
“You'd better go to your room, Mr. Wilton.” He said something more that I did not catch, and, reeling on, disappeared in the crowd before I could turn to mark or question him.
I thought at first that he meant the room I had just left. Then it occurred to me that it was the room Henry had occupied—the room in which I had spent my first dreadful night in San Francisco, and had not revisited in the thirty hours since I had left it.
The advice suited my inclination, and in a few minutes I was entering the dingy building and climbing the worn and creaking stairs. The place lost its air of mystery in the broad sunshine and penetrating daylight, and though its interior was as gloomy as ever, it lacked the haunting suggestions it had borrowed from darkness and the night.
Slipped under the door I found two notes. One was from Detective Coogan, and read:
“Inquest this afternoon. Don't want you. Have another story. Do you want the body?”
The other was in a woman's hand, and the faint perfume of the first note I had received rose from the sheet. It read:
“I do not understand your silence. The money is ready. What is the matter?”
The officer's note was easy enough to answer. I found paper, and, assuring Detective Coogan of my gratitude at escaping the inquest, I asked him to turn the body over to the undertaker to be buried at my order.
The other note was more perplexing. I could make nothing of it. It was evidently from my unknown employer, and her anxiety was plain to see. But I was no nearer to finding her than before, and if I knew how to reach her I knew not what to say. As I was contemplating this state of affairs with some dejection, and sealing my melancholy note to Detective Coogan, there was a quick step in the hall and a rap at the panel. It was a single person, so I had no hesitation in opening the door, but it gave me a passing satisfaction to have my hand on the revolver in my pocket as I turned the knob.
It was a boy, who thrust a letter into my hand.
“Yer name Wilton?” he inquired, still holding on to the envelope.
“Yes.”
“That's yourn, then.” And he was prepared to make a bolt.
“Hold on,” I said. “Maybe there's an answer.”
“No, there ain't. The bloke as gave it to me said there weren't.”
“Well, here's something I want you to deliver,” said I, taking up my note to Detective Coogan. “Do you know where the City Hall is?”
“Does I know—what are yer givin' us?” said the boy with infinite scorn in his voice.
“A quarter,” I returned with a laugh, tossing him the coin. “Wait a minute.”
“Yer ain't bad stuff,” said the boy with a grin. I tore open the envelope and read on the sheet that came from it:
“Sell everything you bought—never mind the price. Other orders off. D. K.”
I gasped with amazement. Had Doddridge Knapp gone mad? To sell twelve thousand five hundred shares of Omega was sure to smash the market, and the half-million dollars that had been put into them would probably shrink by two hundred thousand or more if the order was carried out.
I read the note again.
Then a suspicion large enough to overshadow the universe grew up in my brain. I recalled that Doddridge Knapp had given me a cipher with which he would communicate with me, and I believed, moreover, that he had no idea where I might be at the present moment.
“It's all right, sonny,” I said. “Trot along.”
“Where's yer letter?” asked the boy, loyally anxious to earn his quarter.
“It won't have to go now,” I said coolly. I believed that the boy meant no harm to me, but I was not taking any risks.
The boy sauntered down the hall, singingMy Name Is Hildebrandt Montrose, and I was left gazing at the letter with a melancholy smile.
“Well, I must look like a sucker if they think I can be taken in by a trick like that,” was my mental comment. I charged the scheme up to my snake-eyed friend and had a poorer opinion of his intelligence than I had hitherto entertained. Yet I was astonished that he should, even with the most hearty wish to bring about my downfall, contrive a plan that would inflict a heavy loss on his employer and possibly ruin him altogether. There was more beneath than I could fathom. My brain refused to work in the maze of contradictions and mysteries, plots and counterplots, in which I was involved.
I took my way at last toward the market, and, hailing a boy to whom I intrusted my letter to Detective Coogan, walked briskly to Pine Street.
The street had changed its appearance in the two or three hours since I had made my way from the Exchange through the pallid, panic-stricken mob. There were still thousands of people between the corner of Montgomery Street and Leidesdorff, and the little alley itself was packed full of shouting, struggling traders. The thousands were broken into hundreds of groups, and men were noisily buying and selling, or discussing the chances of the market when the “big Board” should open once more. But there was an air of confidence, almost of buoyancy, in place of the gloom and terror that had lowered over the street at noon. Plainly the panic was over, and men were inspirited by a belief that “stocks were going up.”
I made a few dispositions accordingly. Taking Doddridge Knapp's hint, I engaged another broker as a relief to Eppner, a short fat man, with the baldest head I ever saw, a black beard and a hook-nose, whose remarkable activity and scattering charges had attracted my attention in the morning session.
Wallbridge was his name, I found, and he proved to be as intelligent as I could wish—a merry little man, with a joke for all things, and a flow of words that was almost overwhelming.
“Omega? Yes,” chuckled the stout little broker, after he had assured himself of my financial standing. “But you ought to have bought this morning, if that's what you want. It was hell popping and the roof giving 'way all at once.” The little man had an abundant stock of profanity which he used unconsciously and with such original variations that one almost forgot the blasphemy of it while listening to him. “You ought to have been there,” he continued, “and watched the boys shell 'em out!”
“Yes, I heard you had lively times.”
“Boiling,” he said, with coruscating additions in the way of speech and gesture. “If it hadn't been for Decker and some fellow we haven't had a chance to make out yet the bottom of the market would have been resting on the roof of the lower regions.” The little man's remark was slightly more direct and forcible, but this will do for a revised version.
“Decker!” I exclaimed, pricking up my ears. “I thought he had quit the market.”
As I had never heard of Mr. Decker before that moment this was not exactly the truth, but I thought it would serve me better.
“Decker out of it!” gasped Wallbridge, his bald head positively glistening at the absurdity of the idea. “He'll be out of it when he's carried out.”
“I meant out of Omega. Is he getting up a deal?”
The little broker looked vexed, as though it crossed his mind that he had said too much.
“Oh, no. Guess not. Don't think he is,” he said rapidly. “Just wanted to save the market, I guess. If Omega had gone five points lower, there would have been the sickest times in the Street that we've seen since the Bank of California closed and the shop across the way,”—pointing his thumb at the Exchange,—“had to be shut up. But maybe it wasn't Decker, you know. That's just what was rumored on the Street, you know.”
I suspected that my little broker knew more than he was willing to tell, but I forbore to press him further; and giving him the order to buy all the Omega stock he could pick up under fifty, I made my way to Eppner.
The blue-black eyes of that impassive agent snapped with a glow of interest when I gave him my order to sell the other purchases of the morning and buy Omega, but faded into a dull stare when I lingered for conversation.
I was not to be abashed.
“I wonder who was picking up Omega this morning?” I said.
“Oh, some of the shorts getting ready to fill contracts,” he replied in his dry, uninterested tones.
“I heard that Decker was in the market for the stock,” I said.
The blue-black eyes gave a flash of genuine surprise.
“Decker!” he exclaimed. Then his eyes fell, and he paused a moment before replying in his high inflexible voice. “He might be.”
“Is he after Omega, or is he just bracing up the market?”
“Excuse me,” said Eppner with the cold reflection of an apologetic tone, “but we never advise customers. Are you walking over to the Exchange?”
In the Exchange all was excitement, and the first call brought a roar of struggling brokers. I could make nothing of the clamor, but my nearest neighbor shouted in my ear:
“A strong market!”
“It looks that way,” I shouted back. It certainly was strong in noise.
I made out at last that prices were being held to the figures of the morning's session, and in some cases were forced above them.
The excitement grew as the call approached Omega. There was an electric tension in the air that told of the anxious hopes and fears that centered in the coming struggle. The stock was called at last, and I looked for a roar that would shake the building and a scene of riot on the floor that would surpass anything I had witnessed yet.
It failed to come. There was almost a pause in the proceedings.
I caught a glimpse of Doddridge Knapp across the room, looking on with a grim smile on the wolf jaws and an apparently impassive interest in the scene. I marveled at his coolness when his fortune, perhaps, turned on the events of the next five minutes. He gave no sign, nor once looked in my direction.
The clamor on the floor began and swelled in volume, and a breath of visible relief passed over the anxious assembly.
Wallbridge and Eppner made a dive at once for a yelling broker, and a cold chill ran down my back. I saw then that I had set my brokers bidding against each other for the same stock.
“Great Mammon!” I thought. “If Doddridge Knapp ever finds it out, what a circus there will be!”
“She's going up!” said my neighbor with a shout of joy. He owned none of the stock, but like the rest of the populace he was a bull on principle.
I nodded with a dubious attempt to imitate his signs of satisfaction.
Forty-five—forty-seven—fifty-five—it was going up by leaps. I blessed the forethought that had suggested to me to put a limit on Wallbridge and stop the competition between my agents at fifty. The contest grew warmer. I could follow with difficulty the course of the proceedings, but I knew that Omega was bounding upward.
The call closed amid animation; but the excitement was nothing compared to the scene that had followed the fall in the morning. Omega stood at eighty asked, and seventy-eight bid, and the ship of the stock gamblers was again sailing on an even keel. Some hundreds had been washed overboard, but there were thousands left, and nobody foresaw the day when the market would take the fashion of a storm-swept hulk, with only a chance survivor clinging here and there to the wreckage and exchanging tales of the magnificence that once existed.
The session was over at last, and Wallbridge and Eppner handed me their memoranda of purchases.
“You couldn't pick Omega off the bushes this afternoon, Mr. Wilton,” said Wallbridge, wiping his bald head vigorously. “There's fools at all times, and some of 'em were here and ready to drop what they had; but not many. I gathered in six hundred for you, but I had to fight for it.”
I thanked the merry broker, and gave him a check for his balance.
Eppner had done some better with a wider margin, but all told I had added but three thousand one hundred shares to my list. I wondered how much of this had been sold to me by my employer. Plainly, if Doddridge Knapp was needing Omega stock he would have to pay for it.
There was no one to be seen as I reached Room 15. The connecting door was closed and locked, and no sound came from behind it. I turned to arrange the books, to keep from a bad habit of thinking over the inexplicable. But there was nothing exciting enough, in the statutes or reports of court decisions or text-books, to cover up the questions against which I had been beating in vain ever since I had entered this accursed city.
An hour passed, and no Doddridge Knapp. It was long past office hours. The sun had disappeared in the bank of fog that was rolling up from the ocean and coming in wisps and streamers over the hills, and the light was fast failing.
Just as I was considering whether my duty to my employer constrained me to wait longer, I caught sight of an envelope that had been slipped under the door. I wondered, as I hastily opened it and brought its inclosure to the failing light, how it could have got there. It was in cipher, but it yielded to the key with which Doddridge Knapp had provided me. I made it out to be this: