When Bojo returned home after a brief stolen interview with Patsie, he could hardly believe what he had himself witnessed. It seemed incredible that all that magnificence and luxury might be dissipated in a night, could depend upon the wavering of an hour in a mad exchange. But deeper than the feeling of impending disaster—which he even now could not realize—was the disclosure of the true state of affairs in the Drake household. Without telling Patsie the extent of her father's danger, he had told of Drake's applying to his wife for assistance and her refusal. Then Patsie brokenly had told her part, how she had pled with her mother and sought in vain to place before her the true seriousness of the situation, her father's peril and his instant need. To entreaties and remonstrances Mrs. Drake remained deaf, sheltering herself behind an invariable answer. Why should she throw good money after bad? What was to be gained by it? If he had thrown away the family fortune, all the more reason for her to save what she had. The worst was that Dolly was abroad and Doris and her husband were cruising off Palm Beach and the telegram they sent might not reach them in time.
The next morning Bojo waited fitfully for theopening of the Stock Exchange, with the dreaded memories of Haggerdy's prophecies running in his head. It took him back to the days when he himself had been a part of the vast maelstrom of speculation. He breakfasted with one eye on the clock waiting for the hands to advance to the fatal hour of ten. At five minutes past that hour he went feverishly across the way to the ticker in the neighboring hotel brokerage. He had a feeling as though he were being sucked back into the old life of violent emotions and unreal theatrical upsets. He remembered the day before the drop in Pittsburgh & New Orleans when he had waited in the Hauk and Flaspoller offices matching quarters with Forshay to endure the last few intervening minutes before the crisis which was to sweep away their fortunes as a tidal wave obliterates a valley. He had not understood then the ironical laughter in Forshay's eyes, but as he came back again to the old associations he felt himself living over with a new poignant understanding the final act of that tragedy.
Between the Tom Crocker of those breathless days and the ordered self which he had built up during these last months of discipline there seemed to intervene unreal worlds.
The group gathered in the hotel branch of Pitt & Sanderson were indolently interested rather than excited. They were of the flitting and superficial gambling type, youngsters still new to the excitement of the game and old men who could not tear themselves away from their established habit. They formed quite a little coterie in which the differences of age and wealth were obliterated by the commonbond of the daily hazard. He knew the type well, the reckless plunger risking thousands on shallow margins, determined to make or lose all at one killing; the rodent, sharp-eyed, close-fisted veteran, wary from many failures, who was content to play for half a point rise and take his instant profit. The lounging group studied him with a moment's curiosity, seeking in which category to place the intruder, whether among the shifting truant crowd stopping for the moment's information or among that harried occasional group of lost souls who came expectant of nothing but complete disaster.
Bojo went to the tape with almost the feeling with which a reformed drunkard closes his hand over the glass that had once been his destruction. His mind, excited by the memories of the night before, was prepared for a shock. To his surprise the clicking procession of values—Reading, Union Pacific, Amalgamated Copper, Northern Pacific—showed but fractional declines. The break he had come to witness did not develop. He waited a quarter of an hour, half an hour, an hour. The market continued weak but heavy.
"Nothing much doing," he said, turning to his neighbor, a financial rail bird of a rather horsy type, grisled and bald.
"Playing it short?"
"Haven't yet made up my mind. What do you think?" he said, to draw the other on.
"Think?" said the other with the enthusiasm of the gambler's conviction. "Lord, there's only one thing to think. This market's touched bottom twoweeks ago. When it starts to rise watch things go kiting."
"You think so?" said Bojo, with the instinctive tendency to seek hope in the slightest straws that is the strangest part of all the strange acquaintanceships of the moment which speculation engenders. He had to listen for five minutes to impassioned oratory, to hearing all the reasons recounted why the long depression was nothing but psychological and an upward turn a certainty. He slipped away presently, rather relieved at this confidence from a shallow prophet, and when he met Patsie by appointment, the news he brought her dispelled the feelings of foreboding under which she had been suffering the last week.
"After all, perhaps we have been rather panicky," he said, with a new assumption of cheerfulness. "Remember one thing, your father knows this game and when he says that the big group does not intend to have a panic, because they themselves have too much to lose, Patsie, he must know what he is talking about."
"If Doris were only here," she said, her woman's instinct unconvinced.
"You sent the telegram?"
"Last night. I should have had the answer this morning. That's what worries me. Perhaps it won't reach them in time and even if it does it will be over two days before they can get back."
"It would help a good deal," he admitted. The prospect of going to Doris for help after what had happened was one from which he shrank, yet he wasresolved to stop at nothing, willing to sacrifice his pride if only to secure the aid which, knowing their connections, he knew Boskirk could bring the imperilled financier.
"At least I shall do what I can do," she said, with a determined shake of her head.
He looked at her doubtfully. "I am afraid, Patsie, that a few hundred thousands will not help much—but if your mind is made up."
"It is made up."
"Very well, what address shall I give them?" He leaned forward and repeated the number.
Twenty minutes later they were in the office of Swift and Carlson, in the inner room, talking to the senior partner. Thaddeus C. Swift was one of the innumerable agents through whom Daniel Drake operated in the placing of his more serious enterprises, of the older generation of Wall Street, conservative, seemingly unruffled by the swirling tide of strident young men which churned about him. He had known Patsie since her childhood and received her as he would his own daughter, with perhaps a quizzical and searching glance at the young man who waited a little uncomfortably in the background. Patsie opened the conversation directly without the slightest hesitation.
"Mr. Swift," she said imperiously, "you must give me your word that you will keep my confidence." And as this caused the old gentleman to stare at her with a startled look, she added insistently: "You must not say a word of my coming here or whatever I may ask you to do. Promise."
"Sounds quite terrible," said Mr. Swift, smilingindulgently. In his mind he decided that the visit meant a demand for a few hundred dollars for some girlish fancy. "Well, how shall I swear? Cross my heart and all that sort of thing?"
"Mr. Swift, I am serious, awfully serious," stamping her foot with annoyance, "and please do not treat me as a child."
He saw that the matter was of some importance, and scenting perhaps complications, withdrew into a defensive attitude.
"Suppose you tell me a little of what you want of me," he said carefully, "before I give such a promise."
Patsie, who for her reasons did not wish her father to have the slightest suspicion of this visit, hesitated, looked from Mr. Swift to Bojo, and turned away nervously, seeking some new method to gain her end.
"Miss Drake is coming to you as a client," said Bojo, deciding to speak, "to consult you about her interests. So long as it is about her business affairs, it seems quite natural, doesn't it, that you should keep her confidence?"
"Eh, what?" said Mr. Swift, frowning. He seemed to repeat the question to himself, and answered grudgingly: "Of course, of course, that's all right, that's true. If it is only to consult me about your business affairs—"
"'Your promise. No one is to know what I do'""'Your promise. No one is to know what I do'"
"It is absolutely that," said Patsie hastily. She stood beside him, holding out her hand obstinately. "Your promise. No one is to know what I do."
Mr. Swift made a mental reservation and nodded his head. The three sat down.
"How much have I deposited in stocks and bonds to my account?" asked Patsie.
"Do you wish a list?" said Mr. Swift, preparing to touch a button.
"No, no, not now; only the value—in a general way."
"Of course," said Mr. Swift, caging his fingers and looking over their heads to the depths of the ceiling, "of course, it depends somewhat on the state of the market. While what you have is the best of securities, still, as you must know, even the best will not bring to-day what it would a year ago."
"Yes, but in a general way," she insisted.
"In a general way," he said carefully, "I should say what you have would represent a capital of $500,000 to $510,000. Possibly, under favorable conditions, a little more."
Patsie and Bojo looked at him in astonishment.
"You said $500,000?" she said incredulously.
He nodded.
"You are thinking of Doris," she said, bewildered.
"Not at all. That is approximately the value of your holding. Your father deposited with me securities to the value of $260,000 on your coming of age last January."
"Yes, yes; I know that, but—"
"And securities of the par value of $250,000 on the occasion of your sister's marriage."
"He did that?" exclaimed Patsie, her heart in her throat; "he really did that?" Her eyes filled with tears and she turned away hastily with an emotion quite inexplicable to the older man. Bojo himself was much moved at the thought of how the fatherin the face of a supreme conflict had been willing to risk his reserves to provide for the future of his daughters.
Patsie came back, her emotion in a measure controlled. She placed her hand upon the shoulder of Mr. Swift, who continued to gaze at her without comprehension.
"I know you don't understand; you will later. Mr. Swift, I want you to sell every one of my securities, now, immediately. I want everything in cash."
Mr. Swift looked at her as though he had seen a ghost and then rapidly at Bojo. In his mind perhaps was working some fantastic idea of an elopement. Perhaps Patsie guessed something of this, for she blushed slightly and said:
"My father needs it. I want to give it to him."
Her words cleared the atmosphere, though they left Mr. Swift obstinately determined.
"But, Patsie," he said, as a father might to a child, "this is a bombshell. I can't allow you on my own responsibility to do a thing like this on impulse. You should not ask me. How do you know your father is in need? He has not sent you here?"
"No, no; never. Don't you know him better than that? If he knew he never would permit it. That's the difficulty, don't you see? He must never know of it and you must arrange some way so he will never guess it is coming from me."
Mr. Swift stared at her utterly amazed. At length he turned and, addressing Bojo, said:
"You are in the confidence of Miss Drake? If so, perhaps you can help me out. Does she know what she is doing, and is it possible that she has anyvalid reason for believing that her father can possibly be in need of such heroic assistance as this?"
His face expressed so much amazement mingled with consternation at the thought that Daniel Drake could possibly be in difficulties that Bojo for the first time perceived what he should have foreseen, the direct danger to the financier from the suspicion of his true situation which must come from the revelation of Patsie's intentions.
"Mr. Swift," he said, in great perturbation, "I do not know whether we have done wisely in speaking to you so frankly. You will perhaps understand now why Miss Drake insisted on a promise of secrecy."
"What! Daniel Drake in need of money?" said Mr. Swift, staring at him or rather through him, and already perceiving the tremendous significance of this disclosure upon the distraught times.
"At least Miss Drake believes so," said Bojo carefully. "She may exaggerate the necessity. What she is doing she is doing because she has made up her mind herself to do it and not because I have advised her or suggested it in the slightest. You are too good a friend of the family I know, sir, to speak of what has occurred."
"Oh, Mr. Swift," said Patsie, breaking in and seizing his hand impulsively, "youwillhelp me, won't you?"
Mr. Swift gazed at her blankly, a hundred thoughts racing through his mind; still too upset by the news he had just received, which could not fail to be full of significance to his own fortunes, to beable to focus for the moment on the immediate decision.
Patsie repeated her demand with a quivering lip. He came out of his abstraction and began to think, arranging and rearranging a pile of letters before him, convinced at last that the situation was of the highest seriousness.
"Wait, wait a moment; I must think it over," he said slowly. "This is an unusually serious decision you have put up to me. My dear Patsie, you know nothing about such matters; you're a child."
"I am eighteen and I have a right to dispose of what belongs to me."
"Yes, yes, you have the right, but I have the right also to advise you and to make you see the situation as it exists." His manner changed immediately and he said simply and frankly, "Since you have trusted me, you must give me your full confidence. I shan't abuse it. Mr. Crocker, I can see by your manner and your attempt at caution that this matter is not a trifle. Do you know from your own knowledge how serious it is? Please do not hide anything from me."
"I won't," said Bojo. "I know of my personal knowledge and I believe it to be as serious as it can possibly be."
The two men exchanged a glance and the look in both their eyes told Swift even more than his words revealed, more than he wished Patsie herself to suspect.
"Suppose the very worst were true," said Mr. Swift after a moment's thought, "that your fatherwas in danger of complete failure? I am merely supposing this extreme case to show you the difficulty of my position. Your father has placed these securities to your account with the distinct intention that whatever happens to him you shall be provided for as his other daughters are provided for, and undoubtedly his wife is taken care of. If I should allow you to do this, even as a matter of sentiment it is possible in an extreme case everything you have as well as everything your father possesses might be wiped away. Do you realize that?"
"And that's just what I am afraid may happen," she exclaimed, worried beyond the thought of caution by her forebodings.
"And you are willing to take the risk of losing everything?" he said slowly; "for after all there is no reason why you should sacrifice what belongs to you rightfully and legally even if your father should fail completely."
"No reason?" she cried. "Do you think for a moment that money means anything to me when he, my father, the one who has given it to me, needs it?"
"But if even this won't save him?" he persisted, shaking his head.
"What has that got to do with the question?" she said impatiently, almost angrily. "Everything I have I want him to have. That's all there is to it."
He gazed at her fresh and ardent face a moment and then laid his hand over hers, muttering something underneath his breath which Bojo did not catch, although he divined its reverence.
"Then you will do as I wish?" she cried joyfully, guessing his surrender.
He nodded, gave a helpless glance to Bojo and cleared his throat huskily. "As you wish, my dear," he said very gently.
"And you will sell everything at once?" she cried.
"I can't promise that," he said quietly. "Such a block of securities can't be thrown on the market all at once. But I will do my best."
"But how long will it take?" she said in dismay.
"Four days, possibly five."
"But that will be too late. I must have it all the day after to-morrow."
"That will mean a serious sacrifice," he said.
"What do I care? I must have it by to-morrow night."
"You are determined?"
"Absolutely."
"It will have to be so then."
"And when that is done," she cried joyfully, clapping her hands in delight, "you will help me to send it to him so he will never suspect it?"
He nodded, yielding every point, perhaps more moved than he cared to show.
They left the office after Patsie had signed the formal order.
At the house they found a telegram from Doris.
Dear Patsie, your telegram has thrown us into the greatest anxiety. Jim and I are leaving at once. Will be in New York day after to-morrow. Courage. We will do everything to help.
Dear Patsie, your telegram has thrown us into the greatest anxiety. Jim and I are leaving at once. Will be in New York day after to-morrow. Courage. We will do everything to help.
Doris.
This news and their success of the morning restored their spirits immeasurably. It seemed as though clouds had suddenly cleared away and left everything with a promise of sunshine and fair weather. They lunched almost gaily. Mrs. Drake still kept her room and Patsie was impatient for the day to pass and the next one to have the certainty that the sale was achieved. Confident from her first success she declared once Doris was back she would go with her sister to her mother and shame her if they could not persuade her into a realization of the gravity of the situation. When Bojo left they had even forgotten for the space of half an hour that such bugbears as Wall Street, loans and banks could exist. The realization of the seriousness of human disasters had somehow left them simple and devoid of artifices or coquetry before each other. He found again in her the Patsie of earlier days. He comprehended that she loved him, had always loved him, that the slight misunderstanding that had momentarily arisen between them had come from the long summer renunciation and the passionate jealousy of one sister for the other. He comprehended this all, but did not take advantage of his knowledge. On leaving her he held her a moment, his hands on her shoulders, gazing earnestly into her eyes. From this intensity of his look she turned away a little frightened, not quite reconciled. Already his, but still hesitating before the final avowal. The knowledge of how indispensable he was to her in these moments of trial restrained him in the impulsive movement towards her. He took her hand and bowed over it a deep bow, a little quixotic perhaps, and hurriedaway without trusting himself to speak. Outside he went rushing along as though the blocks were mere steps, swinging his cane and humming to himself gloriously. He was so happy that the thought that any one else could be unhappy, that any disaster could threaten her or any one who belonged to her, seemed incredible.
"Everything is going to turn out all right," he repeated to himself confidently. "Everything; I feel it."
He went back to the Court radiant and gay and dressed for dinner, surprising Granning, who came in preoccupied and anxious, with the flow of animal spirits. At the sight of his contagious happiness Granning looked at him with a knowing smile.
"Well, things aren't so black after all, then?"
"You bet they're not!"
"Glad to hear it. You had me scared last night. My guess is that something besides stocks and bonds must have cheered you up," he added suspiciously with a wise nod of his head. "Glad to see it, old fellow. You've been mum and gloomy as a hippopotamus long enough."
"Have I?" said Bojo, laughing with a little confusion. "Well, I'm not going to be any longer. You're an old hippopotamus yourself." He got him around the knees and flung him with an old time tackle on the couch, and they were scrambling and laughing thus when the telephone rang. It was Patsie's voice, very faint and pitiful.
"Have you heard? The Clearing House has refused to clear for the Atlantic Trust. Oh, Bojo, what does it mean?"
Bojo came away from the telephone with a face so grave that Granning greeted him with an involuntary exclamation:
"Good heavens, Bojo, what's wrong?"
"The Atlantic Trust has gone under. The Clearing House refused to clear. You know what that means."
"But, I say, you're not affected. You've been out of the market for months. I say, you didn't have anything up."
"No, no," said Bojo grimly. He went and sat down, his head in his hands. "I'm not thinking of myself. Some one else. I can't tell you; you must guess. It will probably all be out soon enough. By George, this is a cropper."
"I think I understand," said Granning slowly. He sat down in turn, kicking his toes against the twisted andirons on the hearth. "The Atlantic Trust—and a billion—who knows, a billion and a half deposits! What the deuce are we coming to? It will hit us all—bad times!"
Bojo got up heavily and went out. Hardly had he stepped from the leafy isolation of the Court into the strident conflict of Times Square when he felt the instant alarm that great disasters instantaneouslyconvey to a metropolitan crowd. Newspaper trucks were screaming past, halting to fling out great bunches of the latest extras to fighting, scrambling groups of street urchins who dispersed, screaming their shrill evil in high-pitched, contagion-spreading voices. Every one was devouring the last panic-ridden sheet, some hurrying home, others stopping in their tracks spellbound to read to the end. He bought an extra hastily from a strident newsboy who thrust it in his face. The worst was true. The great Atlantic Trust had been refused clearance. Darkest suspicions were thrown upon its solvency. The names of other banks, colossal institutions, were linked under the same awful rumors. The morrow would see a run on a dozen banks such as the generation had not witnessed. He hailed a taxicab and hurried uptown. Drake had told him that everything depended upon the Atlantic Trust. Now that this had gone under did this mean his absolute ruin? Patsie was already waiting for him as he drew up before the great gray stone mansion. She flung herself in his arms, trembling and physically unnerved. He was afraid that she was going to collapse completely and began solicitously to whisper in her ear many deceptive words of hope and comfort.
"It may not be so bad. Your father—have you seen your father? How do you know what he has done? Perhaps he has come to some agreement this afternoon. Perhaps he has saved himself by some bold stroke. I believe him capable of anything."
She stopped the futile flow of words with her fingers across his lips.
"Oh, how happy we were this afternoon," she said, for the moment almost breaking down. But immediately the Spartan courage which was at the bottom of her character prevailed. She drew herself up, saying so quietly that he was surprised:
"Bojo, we mustn't deceive ourselves. This is the end, I know it. Whatever is to come we must help immediately."
"Yet I still feel, I can't help it, that something may have happened. He may have been able to do something to-day."
"I wish I could feel so," she said sadly.
With her hand still in his she led the way into the great library, which seemed a region of mystifying and gloomy things, lit only by the lights of the desk lamps.
"All we can do is to wait," she said.
"Have you seen your mother?" he said at last.
She shook her head. "It is useless. I have no influence over her. Doris perhaps, or Doris' husband; she might do something for fear of what others might think of her, but she wouldn't do it for me."
"I can't understand it at all," he said, shaking his head.
"I can," she said quietly. "My mother doesn't love him. She has never loved him. She married him just as Doris and Dolly married, for money, for position."
"But even then—"
"Yes, even then," she took up with a laugh that had tears in it. "Wouldn't you think that for thesake of the family name and honor, out of just simple ordinary gratitude for what had been given her, she would part with the half, even a third of her fortune? But you do not know my mother. When she has made up her mind nothing will ever change it."
"Let us hope you are wrong."
She laughed again and began walking up and down, her hands clenched, trying to think of some way out.
"Poor Dad, just when he needs all his courage to go on fighting! This, too, has broken him up. That's the only sort of a blow he couldn't get over."
The butler came in at this moment, announcing dinner.
"No, no; not for me," she said. "I couldn't; but you, perhaps?"
"No, not until your father comes back."
The butler went out. Bojo held out his hand to her, saying: "Come here; sit down by me." Worn out by the strain of emotions, she obeyed quietly. She came to take a seat on the sofa beside him, looked a moment into his eyes, saw the depths of tenderness and sympathy there and with a tired, fleeting smile laid her head gratefully on his shoulder.
It was almost eleven o'clock before Drake came wearily in. They were exhausted with the long tensity of their vigil, waiting for every sound that would announce his arrival, but at his entrance they stood up, vibrantly alert. One glance at Drake, at the hunted and harassed look across his foreheadtold Bojo that the worst had happened. Patsie went to her father bravely with a steady smile that never wavered and put her arms around his neck.
"Pretty bad, isn't it, Dad?" she said.
He nodded, incapable for the moment of speech.
"I am so sorry. Never mind, even if we have to begin at the bottom we will win out again."
Bojo had come up and taken his free hand, looking in his eyes anxiously for the answer.
"I guess the game is up," said Drake at last. "There is only one chance, and though I swore I never would do it—" he stopped a moment, running his hand over Patsie's golden curls, "I guess I'll have to swallow my pride," he said.
"You're going to her," said the daughter, shuddering.
"Once more," he said, grimly.
Leaving her he went to the little table by the desk and poured out a stiff drink.
"Whew, what a day! Two hours more and I might have pulled through; I thought I had it all fixed up, but that Clearing House mess ended that! You can't sell men eggs at five cents a piece when they know to-morrow they can get the same at three cents."
He tried to smile, but back of it all Bojo was alarmed to see the disorder in the physical and moral man which had gained over him since yesterday. Despite Drake's determination to assume a stoic attitude he felt the biting bitterness and revolt that was gnawing at his soul.
Patsie wanted him to sit down to rest a moment,to have something, if only a morsel, brought in, but he refused absent-mindedly.
"No, no, I must get it over with. I must know where I stand."
Still he delayed his departure, evidently revolting against the rôle which he had determined to play.
"Your mother is home?" he said abruptly.
"She is home—in her room," said Patsie.
He took a final turn before at last making up his mind, then he gave a short gesture of his hand towards them, saying:
"Wait."
The next moment he went out, not with the old accustomed swinging gait, but with a lagging step as though already convinced of the futility of his errand.
"He is doing it for his daughters," thought Bojo; "only that would make him so humble himself." He felt with a little compunction that he had judged Drake rather harshly, for in these last interviews it had seemed to him at times that there had been an absence of that gameness which in his mind he would like to have associated with the romantic figure of the manipulator. Now with the secrets of the household laid bare to him he felt strongly the inner vulnerability of such men. Able outwardly to defy the great turns of fortune and present a smiling front to adversity, yet unable to resist the mortal blow which strikes at the vital regions in their sentiments and their affections. Implacable as he had been, neither giving nor asking quarter in his struggles with his own kind, Bojo at length realized thetenderness and pride amounting almost to a weakness with which he idolized his own. What he had seen working in the soul of the man in this last half hour made him feel more than simply the ruin of his worldly possessions. The moment was too tense for words, the issue too tremendous. They sat side by side, his hand over hers, staring ahead, waiting.
Ten minutes, half an hour elapsed without a sound. He pictured to himself to what arguments and entreaties the desperate father must resort, trying through his inexperience to visualize the drama in one of these domestic scenes which pass unguessed.
Patsie heard him first. She sprang up with a sharp intaking of her breath. He rose less precipitately, hearing at last the sound of returning footsteps. The next moment Drake came into the room and stood gazing at the two erect figures of the young man and the young girl. Then he tried to smile and couldn't. Her instinct guessed on the instant what had happened. She went to him swiftly and put her arms about his shoulders as though to support him.
"Never mind, Dad," she said bravely. "Don't you care, money isn't everything in this world. Whatever happens, you've got me."
The next day the deluge broke.
On leaving Patsie and her father he had gone down the Avenue in a vain hope that his father might be in town, hoping to catch him at his hotel. On his way to his amazement he perceived a long line of curious shapes stretched along the sidewalk. As he came nearer he saw a file of men and women, some standing, some seated, camped out for the night. Then he noticed above all the great white columns of the Atlantic Trust and he realized that these were the first frightened outposts of the army of despair and panic which would come storming at the doors on the morrow. By the morning a dozen banks scattered over the city were besieged by frantic hordes of depositors, a dozen others hastily preparing against the impending tide of evil rumor and disaster.
With the opening of the Stock Exchange the havoc began, for with the threatened collapse of gigantic banking systems orders came pouring in from all over the country to sell at any price. In the wild hours that ensued holdings were thrown on the market in such quantities that the machinery of the Stock Exchange was momentarily paralyzed. Stocks were selling at half a dozen figures simultaneously, untilit became a human impossibility for the frantic brokers to fulfil the demands that came pouring in on them to sell at any price. Any rumor was believed and shouted frantically: receivers were to be appointed for a dozen institutions: the State Superintendent's investigation was showing incredible defalcations and misuses of funds. Indictments were to be returned against the most prominent men in the financial world, and at the close of the day on top of the wildest fabrications of the imagination came the supreme horror of fact. Majendie, the president of the Atlantic Trust, was dead, slain by his own hand. But what happened this day would be nothing to the morrow.
At Patsie's frantic request Bojo went down in the late forenoon to see Mr. Swift. He had to wait almost an hour in the outer offices, watching breathless, frantic men, men of fifty and sixty as panic-stricken as youngsters of twenty-five, breaking under the strain of their first knowledge of overwhelming ruin, an indiscriminate convulsive mass pouring in and out. Then a door opened and a secretary issued him in. Mr. Swift received him with an agitated clutch of the hand, and valuing the precious seconds, without waiting for his questions, burst out:
"Mr. Crocker, it's absolutely humanly impossible for me to do what Miss Drake requested. We disposed yesterday of over forty thousand dollars. To sell now would be a financial slaughter to which I simply will not give my permission. Moreover, it's all very well to talk of selling, but who's going to buy?"
"If you can't sell," said Bojo, gloomily, "MissDrake would like to know what you could raise on her holdings as security."
"She wants to know?" said Mr. Swift, on edge with the anxiety of twenty operations to be safe-guarded, "I'll tell you. Not a hundred thousand dollars, nor ten thousand. There isn't an institution that would dare weaken its cash supply to-day on any security offered. Mr. Crocker, say for me that I absolutely and completely refuse to offer a single security." A door opened and back of the secretary the faces of two new visitors were already to be seen. Mr. Swift with scant ceremony seized his hand and dismissed him. "It can't be done, that's all; it can't be done."
Bojo went out and telephoned the result. He even tried, though he knew the futility of the attempt, to place a loan at two banks where he was known, one his own and the other the depository for the Crocker Mills. At the first he got no further than a subordinate, who threw up his hands at the first mention of his plan. At the latter he gained a moment's opportunity to state his demand to the vice-president, who had known him from childhood. The refusal was as instantaneous. The banks were coming to the aid of no one, frightened for their own security. He even attempted to call up his father on long distance, but after long, tedious waits he was unable to locate him. What he would have asked of him he did not quite know, only that he was seeking frantically some means, some way, to come to the assistance of the girl he loved, even though in his heart he knew the futility of her attempt; perhaps even despite his admiration for her unselfishness,glad that the sacrifice could not be made. He went up later in the afternoon to explain to her all he had tried to do, to get her to go for a short ride up the river in order to snatch a little rest and calm, but Patsie refused obstinately. She was afraid that at any moment her father might return and call for her, declaring that she must be ready to go to him. Perhaps she had fears that she did not express even to him, but she remained as she had remained all day, waiting feverishly. Drake did not come back until long after midnight. Then there were conferences to be held in his library far into the gray morning. Everything seemed topsy-turvy. The night was like the daytime. At every hour an automobile came rustling up, a hurried ring of the bell followed by a ghostly flitting passage into the library of strange, hurrying figures. Drake was no longer the dejected, resigned man, broken in pride and courage, of the night before. He put them aside hastily with a swift, convulsive hug for his daughter and a welcoming handshake for Bojo. He would say nothing and they could guess nothing of all the desperate remedies that were being discussed and acted upon in the shifting conference within the library. It was after four o'clock when Bojo left, after persuading Patsie of the uselessness of further vigil. He felt too tremulously awake for need of sleep. He went down the Avenue and in the convalescing gray of the weak and sickly dawn passed the growing lines of depositors still obstinately clinging to their posts, feeling as though he were walking a world of nightmares and alarms. About seven o'clock he came back to the Court for a tub and acup of coffee. There he received news of Fred DeLancy, who had been in frantically the night before begging for loans to back up his disappearing margins. Neither Marsh nor Granning could come to his assistance and he had left absolutely unnerved, vowing that he would be wiped out if he could not raise only ten thousand dollars before the morrow. Bojo shook his head. He had no desire to help him. The few thousands he still retained seemed to him something miraculously solid and precious in the whirling evaporation of fictitious values. There was nothing he could do before the arrival of Doris and her husband, if anything could be done then. He went down again to Wall Street merely as a matter of curiosity and entered the spectators' gallery in the Stock Exchange. The panic there had become a delirium. He stood leaning over the railing gazing profoundly down into this frenzy which had once been his life. Removed from its peril—judging it. What he saw was ugly to look upon. A few figures stood out grim, game and defiant to the last, meeting the crisis as sportsmen facing the last chance. But for the rest, the element of the human seemed to have disappeared in the animal madness of beasts trapped awaiting destruction. These shifting, struggling, contending clumps of men, shrieking and hoarse, all strength cast to the winds, fighting for the last disappearing rung of financial security, gave him a last final distaste of the life he had renounced. He went out and passed another howling group of savages on the curb, feeling all at once the high note of tragedy that lies in the manifestation of obliterating rage of a great people disposingfinally of all the shallow horde of petty parasites that are eliminated by the cleansing force of a great panic.
Doris arrived in the late afternoon and there was a family consultation, at which he was not present. Whatever might have been done the week before the issue had been decided. Drake's fate was in the hands of Gunther, to whose house he had been summoned that night to learn the terms which would be accorded him by the group of financial leaders who had been hastily organized to save the country from the convulsion which now threatened to overwhelm every industry and every institution.
At midnight Drake returned a ruined man, stripped of every possession, a bankrupt. Only Patsie and Bojo were there when he came in. A certain calm seemed to have replaced the unnatural febrile activity of the last forty-eight hours, the calm of accepted defeat, the end of hopes, the certainty of failure.
"It's over," he said with a nod of recognition. "They got me. I'm rather hungry; let's have something to eat."
"What do you mean by it's over?" said Patsie, coming towards him. "You lost?" He nodded. "How much?"
"Stripped clean."
"You mean that there's nothing left, not a cent?"
For the first time the old hunted look came back to his eyes. "It's worse than that," he said. "It's what's got to be made good. Your Daddy is a bankrupt, Patsie, one million and a half to the bad."
"You owe that?"
"Pretty close to it."
"But what will you do? They can't put you to prison."
"Oh, no," he said grimly, "there's nothing to be ashamed of in it; that is, so far." He stopped a moment and watching him closely they both divined that he was thinking of his wife. "If worse comes to worse," he added moodily, "I've got to find some way of paying that over, every cent of it."
"But, Mr. Drake," said Bojo hastily, "surely there is no reason why you should feel that way. Others have met misfortune—been forced into bankruptcy. Every one will know that it could not be helped, that conditions were against you, that you were forced into it."
"And every one," he said quickly, speaking without reserve for the first time, "will say that Dan Drake knew how to fail at the right time and in the right way." He gave a wave of his hand as though to indicate the great house of which he was thinking, and added bitterly: "What will they think of this, when this goes on? They'll think just one thing—that I worked a crooked, double-crossing game and salted away my fortune behind a petticoat! By God, that's what hurts!" He brought down his fist with an outburst of anger such as they had never seen in him before and sprang up trembling and heavy. "No, by Heavens, if I fail she can't go on with her millions." The rage that possessed him made him seemingly oblivious to their presence. "Oh, what a fool, a blind, contemptible fool I've been! If she is worth a cent she is worth four millions to-day, and every cent I made for her, I gave to her. Talk about business heads, there is not a one of us can touchher. Oh, she's known all right what she has been doing all these years. She took no chances. She knew when to work me and how to work me. Clever? Yes, she's clever and as cold as they make 'em. Under all her pretense of being weak and sickly, tears and hysterics, you can't beat her."
"Oh, Daddy, Daddy," said Patsie, laying her hand on his arm to calm him, "she can't, she won't refuse to come to your help now when it's a question of honor, our honor and her honor. I know, I promise you, we will pay over every cent of what you owe."
"You think so? Try!"
"Daddy," said Patsie quietly, "I have $500,000 you gave me. Bojo and I tried our best to sell them and raise money for you. If you had only let me know sooner perhaps we could have. Every cent of that will go to you. Doris, too, I know, will give her third. We will only ask my mother for what we are giving ourselves. That she will not refuse, she cannot, she won't dare. Daddy, there is one thing you must not worry about. We won't let any one say a single word against you. Every cent you owe shall be paid. I'll promise you that."
At the first mention of what she had done, Drake turned and stared at her, deaf to what had followed. When she ended tears were in his eyes. For a moment he could not control his voice.
"You did that?" he said at last. "You would have done that?"
"Why, Dad," she said, smiling, "I couldn't do anything else."
He took her suddenly in his arms and the touchof kindness broke him down where everything else had failed. Bojo turned hastily away, not to intrude on the sanctity of the scene. When a long moment afterwards Patsie called him back from the window where he had been standing Drake seemed to have grown suddenly old and feeble.
"I want you to wait here, Bojo dear," she said as determined as her father seemed without will or energy. "I am going to settle this now. I am going to see my mother. Don't worry."
She went out after bending lightly for a last kiss and a touch of her hand, over the weak shoulders.
Left alone, there was a long silence. Finally Drake arose and began to pace the floor, talking to himself, stopping from time to time with sudden contractions of the arms, clutches of the fists, to take a long breath and shake his head. When Bojo was least expecting it, he came to him abruptly and said:
"Tom, I tell you this, and you may believe I mean it—that it's going to be. Not one cent will I take from that child. With all that I provided for the others she's not going to be left a pauper. It's got to be my wife who stands by me in this." In his excitement he seized the young man by the wrist so that the fingers cut into his flesh. "It's got to be her and only her, do you understand, or else—" He stopped with a wild glance, with a disorder that left Bojo cold with apprehension, and suddenly as though afraid to say too much Drake dropped the young man's wrist roughly and went and sat down, covering his face with his hands.
"I mean it," he said, and several times he repeated the phrase as though to himself.
They spoke no more. Bojo on the edge of his chair sat staring at the older man, turning over what he had heard, not daring to think. At the end of a long wait a maid knocked and came in.
"Mr. Crocker, please. Miss Drake would like you to come to her mother's room."
Bojo, startled, sprang up hastily, saying: "All right, right away." He turned, striving to find a word of encouragement, hesitated, and went out.
When he came into the little sitting room which gave on to Mrs. Drake's private apartments he found the two confronting each other, Patsie erect and scornful, with flashing, angry eyes, and her mother, in a hastily donned wrapper and bedroom cap, clutching a sort of blue lace quilt, sunk hysterically in the depths of a great armchair. At the first glance he guessed the scene of cries and reproaches which had just ended. At his entrance Mrs. Drake burst out furiously:
"I won't have it; I won't be insulted like this. Mr. Crocker, I desire you, I command you, to leave the room. It's enough that my daughter should take advantage of me. I will not be shamed before strangers."
"Lock the door," said Patsie quietly, "and keep the key."
He did so and came back to her side.
"Don't mind what she says," said Patsie scornfully. "She's not ill, she's not hysterical, it's all put on: she knows just what she's doing."
At this Mrs. Drake burst into exaggerated sobs and shrank down into the chair, covering her facewith the quilt she clung to, without perception of the grotesqueness of her act.
"Now, you're going to listen to me," said Patsie, striving to remain calm through her anger. "You don't fool me the least bit, so you might just as well listen quietly. I know just how much money you have and every cent of it has been given to you by my father. You are worth over four million dollars, I know that."
"It's not true, that's a lie," said Mrs. Drake with a scream.
"It is true," continued Patsie calmly, "and you know it's true. This house is yours and everything in it. Do you want me to tell you exactly what stocks and bonds you have at the present moment? Shall I have my father come in, too, and tell us in detail just what he has given you all these years? Do you want that?" She waited a moment and added scornfully: "No, I rather guess that is not what you want. I asked you before to help raise a loan to save him from losing what he had. You could have done it: you refused. Now I am asking you to give exactly what I shall give and what Doris will give, $500,000, so there will be nothing, not the slightest reproach against his good name, against the name you bear and I bear. Will you do it or not?"
"You don't know what you are talking about," cried the mother wildly. "It's $500,000 now, it's $500,000 to-morrow and then it's everything. You want me to ruin myself. You think just because he's gone on risking everything, just because he never could be satisfied, that I should suffer, too. Youwant me to make a pauper of myself. Well, I won't. What right had he to risk money that didn't belong to him? What right have you to reproach me, abuse me?"
Bojo attempted to burst in on the stream of meaninglessness and repeated phrases. He, too, saw through the assumption of hysteria, shielding behind a cloak of weakness a cold and covetous woman.
"My dear Mrs. Drake," he said icily, "you are proud of your position in society. Let me put this to you. Don't you realize that if your husband fails for a million and a half and you continue living as you have lived that it will be a public scandal? Don't you realize what people will say?"
"No, I don't," she cried: "I don't admit any such ridiculous nonsense. I know that I have a right to my life, to my existence. I know what is mine is mine. If he has lost money, other people have lost money in the same way who gamble just as he has. They should take their losses, too, without coming to people who are not responsible, who don't believe in such things. And then what good will it do? The money's mine. Why throw good money after bad? I tell you that he has never had a thought about the duties and responsibilities to his family; I have. I won't impoverish myself, I won't impoverish my family, I won't, I won't, and I won't be badgered and brow-beaten in this brutal way. You're a bad daughter, you've always been a disobedient, wicked daughter. You've always been this way to me from the first. Now you think you can force me into this, but you shan't."
"Mother," started Patsie stonily, but she was interrupted by a fresh torrent of words.
"No, no, I can't, I won't, I'm ill, I have been ill for days. Do you want to kill me? I suppose that's what you want. Go on. Put me down, make me ill. Oh, my God, my God, I can't stand it, I can't stand it. I can't. Ring for the doctor, the doctor or some one."
"Come away," said Bojo, taking Patsie by the arm as Mrs. Drake went into the paroxysm which she knew was perfectly assumed. "It's useless trying to say anything more to her. To-morrow perhaps Doris and her husband may have more effect."
They went out without even looking back.
Patsie was in such a rage of indignation, shaking from head to foot, that he had to take her in his arms and quiet her.
"What shall we say to Daddy?" she said at last in despair.
"Lie," he said. "Tell him that it will be done."
But when they came back into the library Drake was gone. He didn't return all that night. Afterwards from what they learned he must have spent the night hours in wandering about the city.
The next morning Mrs. Drake locked her doors, sent word by a doctor that she was too ill to see any one, that seeing them might have disastrous effects. Despite which they forced an entrance and with Doris and her husband present went over again the same shameful and degrading scene of the night before. Nothing could shake Mrs. Drake, neither remonstrances nor scorn nor tears. Drake returnedhaggard and wild-eyed towards noon to learn the result, which they were unable to conceal from him. He went out immediately. At five o'clock he was taken to a hospital, having been run over by an autobus. Various stories as to how this happened were circulated. The insurance company which carried his life insurance attempted to prove suicide in vain. The testimony of witnesses all seemed to point to an accident. He had started across the street, had lost his hat and in stooping to pick it up slipped and fallen underneath the wheels.
Death resulted a few hours later.
When Daniel Drake's affairs were wound up it was found that with the sums derived from his life insurance there remained a deficit of a little over $400,000. In this crisis the old loyal and generous spirit of Doris returned for perhaps the last time. She wished to take upon herself the total indebtedness, but Patsie would not listen to this. She would have preferred perhaps in her devotion to the name of her father to have shouldered all the responsibility with a certain fierce pride. In the end the sum was divided. The younger sister left the house of her mother and went to stay for a short while at Doris's.
It was given out officially that Mrs. Drake's health had been wrecked by the family catastrophes. She left shortly for Paris, Rome and the Italian Riviera, where her health speedily improved and she passed the remainder of her life as an exile with a pronounced aversion to anything American.
The panic which swept over the country, leveling the poor and rich alike, gradually subsided into a long period of depression. Fred DeLancy lost every cent he had and became dependent upon his wife's career. He dropped completely out of society. A few of his friends saw him at rare moments, but whenever hecould he avoided such encounters, for they recalled to him the expectations of his earlier days. Fate, which had played him several rude turns, had however a compensation in store. With the arrival of the dance craze several years later Mr. and Mrs. Fred DeLancy, who were of the first to seize its possibilities, became suddenly the rage of society, and in the letting down of barriers that followed the frantic rush from boredom among our most conservative sets the DeLancys regained curiously enough a certain social position. Adversity had taught him the value of making money. Guided by the hands of one of those remarkable and adroit personages that instigate and expand popularity, the press agent, Fernando Wiskin, a genius of diplomacy, the DeLancy craze overran the country. They had their own restaurant, with dancing studios attached, and an after midnight dancing club. They appeared in the movies, made trips to Europe. They set a dozen fashions, they inspired sculptors, illustrators and caricaturists, and raised up a host of imitators, some better and some worse. Properly coached, they received fees for instruction a surgeon might envy, but as once a gambler always a gambler, what they made miraculously they spent hugely, and despite all warnings it would surprise no one if with the turning of the fickle public from one fad to another the DeLancys, after spending $50,000 a year, would end just as poor as they began.
Roscoe Marsh, hard hit by the panic, after steady reverses consequent upon a rather visionary adventure into journalism, found himself compelled to part with his newspaper to a syndicate organized by hisown city editor, a man who had come up from the ranks, who had long bided his opportunity, a self-made American of the type that looks complacently upon the arrival in the arena of the sons of great fortunes with a belief that an equalizing Providence has sent them into the world to be properly sheared. Marsh, despite these reverses, still retained a considerable fortune, constantly augmented by a large family of uncles, aunts and cousins whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to die at opportune moments. He became interested in many radical movements, rather from the need of dramatic excitement than love of publicity or any deep conviction. At the bottom, however, he believed himself the most sincere man in the world, and for a long time continued to believe that he had a mission to perform.
George Granning became one of the solid men of the steel trade. Of the four young men who had met that night on the Astor roof and prophesied their futures he was the only one to fulfil his program to the minutest detail. He married, rose to the managership of the Garnett foundries, left them to become general manager of a subsidiary to the steel corporation at a salary of which he had never dreamed. He became a close student of industrial conditions and outside of his business career found time to serve on many boards of arbitration and industrial investigation. Though his intellectual growth had been slower than his more gifted companions he had never relinquished a single fact acquired. At thirty-five he was constantly broadening, constantly curious for new interests. He went into politics and became more and more a power inparty councils, and though not aspiring to office himself was speedily appointed to offices of social research and usefulness.
The panic extended its paralyzing influence over the histories of industries of the nation. A month after the events recorded in the last chapter Bojo was still deliberating on his course of action when he learnt by accident the serious crisis confronting the Crocker Mills. With the knowledge that his father needed him he hesitated no longer, and taking the train by impulse one morning arrived as his father was sitting down to breakfast with the announcement that he had come to stay.
Before the year was over he had married Patsie, settled down in the little mill town to face the arduous struggle for the survival of the fabric which his father had so painfully erected. For three years he worked without respite, more arduously than he believed it was possible for any man to work. Due to this devotion the Crocker Mills weathered the financial depression and emerged triumphantly with added strength as a leader and model among factory communities of the world. Despite the sacrifices and extraordinary demands made upon his knowledge and his youth, he found these years the best in his life, with a realization that his leadership had its significance in the welfare and growth of thousands of employees. When, the battle won, he removed with his family to New York and larger interests, there were times when he confided to his wife that life seemed to be robbed of half its incentive. In connection with Granning, to whom he had grown closer in bonds of friendship, he devoted his time andmoney more and more to the problems of Americanizing the great alien industrial populations of this country with such enthusiasm that he in more than one quarter was suspected of believing in the most radical socialistic ideas.