CHAPTER VI
THE STORM BREAKS
The morning came in a mist of dull gray clouds that clung in rings about the street lamps like the damp fog of a typical February thaw, yet it was the last day of October. Such weather was uncanny. It added to the strange feeling of impending calamity which had been hanging over the business world during the summer and had broken at last into the fierce storms of disaster of the past two weeks. Men who usually rose at nine o'clock were up at dawn. Some of them hadn't slept at all.
The more optimistic traders on the Stock Exchange expected to-day a change in the market. Stocks had declined for two weeks with appalling swiftness and fatality. Every hour had marked the ruin of men hitherto bulwarks of solidity. Experienced men reasoned and reasoned from experience that there must be a turn somewhere. The bottom surely had been reached. The time for a rally had come. Nine men out of every ten in the market at its close the night before expected the rally to begin at the stroke of the gong the next morning. The men who bought stocks in the closing hour were sure of this.
They rose to curse the weather. For the weather always affects speculation. Wall Street is superstitious. The proud intellect that struts the floor of the Exchange and scorns the powers of his feebler fellow-men carries secretly a horse chestnut in his pocket for luck. Without an exception all these great men believe in signs and wonders, in witches, palmists, spells and hoodoos.
Weather always gets on their nerves. Half the fluctuations of stocks under normal conditions of trade are purely the results of the mental states of the men who buy and sell.
The doctor rose early with a new hope filling his heart which no cloud could obscure. He watched Harriet pour his coffee at breakfast with his old-time smile of good cheer playing about his fine mouth.
Stuart was sleeping late. He was up until one o'clock writing a reply to a peculiarly venomous attack on his integrity which a morning paper had printed. The writer had boldly accused him of being the hired tool of the group of financial cut-throats who were coining millions out of the ruin of others in the destruction of public faith.
His reply was simple and his concluding paragraph was unanswerable, except by an epithet.
"My business is the enforcement of justice. I am the servant of the people. If Wall Street can not stand the enforcement of law, so much the worse for the Street. It's no affair of mine. I didn't make the laws of the State any more than I made the law of gravitation. Nor did I write the Ten Commandments, but I have an abiding faith that they will stand when the last stone in the Stock Exchange building shall have crumbled into dust. I refuse to believe that the only way to save Wall Street is by a sworn officer of the law compounding a felony."
The doctor hurried down town to the office of a friend on Pine Street, an old-fashioned banker and broker whose name had always stood for honesty and fair dealing and conservative business. It was half an hour before the Stock Exchange opened but the dingy little office was packed with an excited crowd of customers. They all talked in low tones as if fearing the spirits of the air that hovered near. An eager group leaned over the bulletin from the London market. London was up half a point. The credulous were pleased. It was a good omen. The pessimists scoffed.
"Rigged from New York!" sneered a fat German the office boy had nicknamed the "Judge."
The doctor was struck with the curiously mottled crowd that jostled one another, waiting for the first cry of the opening quotations. Every walk and profession of life had its representative there—merchants, lawyers, doctors, clerks, clergymen, barbers, boot-blacks, retired capitalists and capitalists about to retire permanently.
The saddest group of all was in the adjoining room reserved for ladies. An opening through the partition wall allowed them to see the quotations as they were placed on the board around which the throng of jostling, smoking, perspiring men moved and stood. Most of these pale excited women with their hats awry and their hair disordered were the wives of solid business and professional men who wouldn't allow their husbands to know of their little venture into stocks for the world. They peeped through the opening occasionally and turned their backs quickly to avoid the gaze of the men.
But the most ominous figures were two or three "vultures" who stood grim and silent on the outer fringe of the moving crowd. Only one or two of the older ones recognized them.
The "Judge" saw them first.
"Ach, Gott, look at dem!" he exclaimed. "They never come except for carrion; they've scented the dead. It's all over with us, poys!"
One of the most curious things in the history of Wall Street is the appearance of these vultures in a panic. They scent the final death-struggle with unerring accuracy. They never buy stocks except in those awful moments of ruin. They hold them grimly until the next tidal-wave of prosperity, sell out at the top, and wait patiently for the next killing. They are the only outsiders who ever make a dollar in Wall Street.
The doctor followed old Dugro, the head of the firm, into his private office and asked his advice. He got it—sharp, short and to the point.
"Go home, Doctor, and stay there. This market is no place for an amateur. It's all I can do to keep the wolf from my door in these days."
"But I've received some important information."
"Keep it dark," old Dugro scowled. "Don't tell it to your worst enemy. If you've got a dollar, nail it up and sleep on the box."
"But I've some information I think I'm going to act on and I want to open a small account with you."
"All right. I've warned you," was the grim answer. "I wish you good luck."
The doctor drew his check for two thousand dollars and smilingly took his place among the crowd before the board. He was never surer of anything in his life than he was of Adam's sincerity. He prided himself on the fact that he was a judge of character. He was sure the cashier was wrong in his accounts; he was equally sure that the information he had received from Bivens's private secretary was accurate, provided, of course, the little weasel carried out the program he had mapped out.
The ticker would tell the story in the first hour. If stocks should sell off three points before noon, he would know. He determined to put this to the test first. He would not sell the market short. He would be content with the big jump the market would make upward when it started.
The ticker began its sharp metallic click.
The crowd stirred as if the electric shock had swept every nerve. A moment of breathless silence and the board boy leaning over the ticker shouted:
"Atch—92½!"
A groan, low, half-stifled, half-articulate came from the room and then a moment of silence followed.
"There, Gott," muttered the "Judge." "I knew London was rigged—I told you so!"
In quick, sharp, startling tones the man at the ticker called out the quotations as the market rapidly sank.
For half an hour the downward movement never paused for a moment. The silence of the crowded room became more and more suffocating. Men stood in their tracks with staring eyes and dry lips as they watched the last hope of a morning rally fade into despair.
The doctor's breath came quicker and his eyes began to sparkle intense excitement.
Now and then old Dugro's stolid face appeared at the door and summoned another man to his inner office—"the chamber of horrors"—where the lambs are sheared. The story was always the same. The customer squirmed and asked for a little more time to watch the market. The old man was adamant.
"I've got to have more money to margin your stock or I'll sell it in five minutes. This firm is sound as a dollar and it's going to stay sound as long as I'm at the helm. If I carry weak accounts I imperil the money of every man who has put his faith in my bank."
If the squirming victim had more money he always put it up. If he had drawn his last dollar he just wiped the cold sweat from his brow and gasped:
"You'll have to sell out."
Quick as a flash the old man's hand was on the telephone and his broker on the floor of the Exchange was executing the order.
As the noon hour drew near the doctor's heart was beating like a sledge hammer. Bivens's programme had been carried out to the letter. Stocks had declined for the first hour a point, and in the second hour suddenly smashed down two more points amid the wildest excitement on the Exchange.
There was a momentary lull and the market hesitated. For ten minutes the sales dragged with only fractional changes—first up, then down.
The moment to buy had come. The doctor was sure of it. Stocks had touched bottom. The big bear pool would turn bull in a moment and the whole market would rise by leaps and bounds.
He called old Dugro.
"Buy for me now, Amalgamated Copper, the market leader, for all I'm worth!"
The broker glared at him.
"Buy! Buy in this market? Man, are you mad?"
"I said buy!" was the firm answer. "What's the limit?"
"Not a share without a stop loss order under it."
"Well, with the stop?"
"I'll buy you 400 shares on a four-point stop."
"And when it goes up five points?" the doctor asked eagerly.
"I'll double your purchase and raise your stop, and every five points up I'll keep on until you are a millionaire!"
The old broker smiled contemptuously, but it was all lost on the doctor.
"Do it quick."
The order was scarcely given before it was executed. Dugro handed the memorandum to Woodman with a grunt.
"It don't take long to get 'em to-day!"
The words had scarcely left his lips when a hoarse cry rose from the crowd hanging over the ticker.
Copper had leaped upward a whole point between sales. A wild cheer swept the room. For ten minutes every stock on the list responded and began to climb.
The doctor's face was wreathed in smiles. Men began to talk and laugh and feel human for the first moment in two weeks.
Dugro grasped the doctor's hand and his deep voice rang above the roar:
"You're a mascot! You've broken the spell! For God's sake stay with us!"
Suddenly another cry came from the crowd at the ticker. The boy at the board sprang to the instrument with a single bound, his eyes blazing with excitement. His cry pierced every ear in the room with horror.
"The hell you say! Down a whole point! No!"
There was a moment's hush, every breath was held. Only the sharp click of the ticker broke the stillness.
"It was one point," groaned the Judge, "now, Gott, it's two—now it's three!"
The last words ended in a scream. Hell had broken loose at last.
The panic had come!
In ten minutes stocks tumbled five points and the doctor's last dollar was swept into space while the whole market plunged down, down, down into the abyss of ruin and despair.
Men no longer tried to conceal their emotion. Some wept, some cursed, some laughed; but the most pitiful sight of all was the man who could do neither, the man with white lips and the strange hunted expression in his eyes who was looking Death in the face for the first time.
A full quarter of an hour of the panic had spent itself before the dazed crowds in the broker's offices read the startling news that caused the big break. The ticker shrieked its message above the storm's din like a little laughing demon:
"The Van Dam Trust Company Has Closed Its Doors and Asked for the Appointment of a Receiver!"
"The Van Dam Trust Company Has Closed Its Doors and Asked for the Appointment of a Receiver!"
"Impossible!"
"A fake!"
"Hell—it's a joke!"
From all who read it at first came these muttered exclamations. It was beyond belief.
The "Judge" was particularly emphatic.
"Dot's a lie, chentlemens! Take my vord for it! Dey haf ninety millions on deposit."
It took the second bulletin with particulars to convince them. Bivens had not kept his solemn pledge. The great bank had stood the run for two hours and closed its doors. And the work of destruction had just begun.
At three o'clock, the doctor walked out of Dugro's office without a dollar. It was utterly impossible for a man of his temperament to realize it. The crash had come so suddenly, its work was so complete and overwhelming it seemed a sort of foolish prank Fate had played on him.
He walked home in a state of strange excitement. He had seen many sights in his eventful life among the people of New York; never had he passed through a scene so weird, so horrible, so haunting as the five hours he had just spent among those men and women whom the struggle for money had transformed into raving, jibbering, snivelling maniacs. It was too absurd to be real. His own loss was appalling but at least he thanked God he was not mad. He yet had two good hands and legs. He could see, hear, smell, taste and feel, and he had a soul with five more senses still turned upward toward the infinite and eternal by which he could see the invisible and hear the inaudible. He felt almost happy by contrast with the fools he had left shuffling over the floor of Dugro's office.
His own sense of loss was merely a blur. The revelation he had just had of the mad lust for money which had begun to possess all classes was yet so fresh and startling he could form no adequate conception of his own position.
It was not until he entered his own door, and paused at the sound of Harriet's voice, that he began to realize the enormity of the tragedy that had befallen him.
CHAPTER VII
AT THE KING'S COMMAND
Bivens's plan would have gone through without a hitch but for one thing. He had overlooked the fact that the Kingdom of Mammon in America has a king and that the present ruler is very much alive. This king has never been officially crowned and his laws are unwritten, but his rule is none the less real, and he is by far the most potent monarch Wall Street has ever known. A man of few words, of iron will, of fiery temper, of keen intellect, proud, ambitious, resourceful, bold, successful, a giant in physique, and a giant in personality. He moves among men with the conscious tread of royalty, thinks big thoughts and does big deeds as quietly and effectively as small men do small ones, and then moves on to greater tasks.
It happens that his majesty is an old time Wall Street banker with inherited traditions about banks and the way their funds should be handled. He had long held a pet aversion. The Van Dam Trust Company had become an offense to his nostrils.
His own bank, hitherto the most powerful in America, is a private concern which bears the royal name. It had long been the acknowledged seat of the Empire of Mammon and within its unpretentious walls the king has held his court for years, extending his sceptre of gold in gracious favour to whom he likes, refusing admission to his presence for those who might offend his fancy.
The Van Dam Trust Company had built a huge palace far up town and its president had attempted to set up a court of his own. He had gathered about him a following, among them an ex-president of the United States. Gold had poured into the treasury of the great marble palace in a constant stream until its deposits had reached the unprecedented sum of $90,000,000, a sum greater than the royal bank itself could boast.
When the king heard the first rumour of the fact that the Van Dam Trust was backing the schemes of the Allied Bankers in their sensational raid on the market his big nostrils suddenly dilated.
At last he had them just where he wanted them. He signed the death warrant of the bank and handed it to his executioner without a word of comment. And then a most curious thing happened. The king summoned to his presence a little dark swarthy man.
When Bivens received this order to appear at court he was dumfounded. He had long worshipped and feared the king with due reverence and always spoke his name with awe. To be actually called into his august presence in such a crisis was an undreamed-of honour.
He was sure that his majesty had heard of his generous offer to help the Van Dam Trust in its hour of trouble and meant to reward him with promotion to high rank in the Empire.
He hastened into the royal presence with beating heart.
A court official conducted him into the king's private room where the ruler sat alone, quietly smoking.
The sovereign glanced up with quick energy.
"Mr. Bivens, I believe?"
The little man bowed low.
"I hear that you are about to aid the Van Dam Trust with four millions in cash?"
Bivens smiled with pride.
"My secretary will deliver the money to the bank within an hour."
The king suddenly wheeled in his big arm chair, raised his eyebrows and fixed the little man with a stare that froze the blood in his veins. When he spoke at length his tones were smooth as velvet.
"If I may give you a suggestion, Mr. Bivens, I would venture to say that the Van Dam Trust Company is beyond aid. The larger interests of the nation require the elimination of this institution and its associates.
"I have heard good reports of you and I wish to save you from the disaster about to befall the gentlemen who have been conducting the present campaign in Wall Street. If your secretary will report to me at once with the four millions you have set aside for the Van Dam Company I shall be pleased to place your name on my executive council in the big movement we begin to-day. The other gentlemen whom I have thus honoured are now waiting for me in the adjoining room. They represent a banking power that is resistless at the present moment.
"When the Van Dam Trust closes its doors to-day, a temporary panic will follow. We will give the gentlemen who started this excitement a taste of their own medicine, render a service to the nation, and, incidentally of course, earn an honest dollar or two for ourselves. I trust I have your hearty support in this programme?"
Bivens again bowed low.
"My hearty support and my profoundest gratitude!"
"I'll expect your secretary with your check for four millions within thirty minutes."
The king waved a friendly gesture of dismissal and the little dark figure tremblingly withdrew.
It was not until he had reached the seclusion of his own office that the magnitude of the crisis through which he had passed fully dawned on Bivens. One of the dreams of his life had been to touch elbows with this mighty ruler at whose name he had often trembled. To-day he had joined the magic circle of those about the throne. The place had been bought at a fearful price. But the end would justify the means. No one knew with clearer perception than he what the king meant by his "suggestions." They were orders. He had been ordered to stab his associates.
At first he had raged in silent fury, but as the king continued his wonderful speech and revealed his generous intentions, his anger had melted into glowing gratitude.
"After all, business means war!" he exclaimed, "a war in which dog eat dog and devil take the hindmost becomes sooner or later the supreme law."
It hurt to break his word—the pledge he had made the president of the Van Dam Company—but it was unavoidable. Their death warrant had already been signed. His money would only be sunk in the bottomless pit the king had dug beneath them. He felt himself for the moment in the grip of forces beyond human control, blind, inevitable, overwhelming. The only thing for a sane man to do was to ride the storm and take care of himself. He had found a place of safety. And such a place—at the right hand of the king himself.
He had dreamed of making a paltry five millions when the raid on the market had ended. Now his very soul stood blinded by the splendour of the vision before him. Beyond a doubt in the holocaust which would follow the day's work he would more than treble his entire fortune, perhaps multiply it by four. He could see it all before it happened. His slender hands trembled as he fumbled his beard and his bead eyes became two scintillating points of light. The thirst for gold was now a raging fever and his blood molten fire. The lust for gain had ceased to be a human passion—it was the hunger of a beast.
Without a moment's hesitation he gave the cruel orders that sent his associates hurling over the precipice. As the day progressed he stood with one hand on the tape of his private ticker and the other holding the receiver of the telephone which connected him with the floor of the Stock Exchange. He received no word from friend or foe without. Only the king's messenger could reach him. He paused not a moment for food or drink, and at three o'clock when the market closed he stood with a hundred yards of tape from the ticker coiled serpent like about his legs, the wreck of empires of wealth beneath his feet, his heart still beating a single wild cry—"more, more, more!"
What a day! In all the annals of man's inhumanity to his fellow-man never were there more opportunities for generosity, for kindly deeds and noble acts of kingly heroism. Never were so few recorded.
Martial war at least has for its justification the flag and the life of a nation for which it stands the gleaming symbol in the sky, and in real war they do not kill the wounded or fire on women and children. Even the Turk does not fire on a hospital. But in this war which maniacs waged for gold, they fired on women and children without mercy and when night had fallen they searched the field, dragged out and stabbed to death the wounded!
When the president of the Van Dam Trust Company failed to receive the promised millions from Bivens he called his telephone and receiving no answer sprang into his automobile and dashed down town to the little main office.
When the clerk at the door informed him that Mr. Bivens could not be seen by anyone, he turned quickly on his heel, drove back to the palatial house of his bank, smiled sadly at the mob in front of its huge pillars, ordered its bronze doors closed, walked around the corner to his home, locked himself in his room and blew his brains out.
CHAPTER VIII
A RAY OF SUNLIGHT
For a week the panic held the financial world in the grip of death. A dozen banks had closed their doors and a score of men who had long boasted their courage among men had died the death of cowards when put to the test.
One of the most curious results of the panic was the revulsion of popular feeling against the daring and honest young officer of the law who had rendered the greatest service to the people wrought by any public servant in a generation.
His enemies saw their opportunity. When the panic was at its worst they opened their artillery of slander and falsehood. The people who yesterday had shouted his praises for the fearless work in their behalf joined his enemies and vied with each other now in reviling him. He was hailed as the arch traitor of the people, the man who had used his high office to produce a panic and carve a fortune out of the ruin of millions whose deposits were tied up in banks that might never again open their doors.
Stuart, stung to desperation by their infamous charges, attempted at first to repel them. He stopped at last in disgust and maintained afterward a dignified silence.
From the first day of the run Bivens had laughed in the face of the crowd that besieged the door of his big Broadway bank. He stood on top of the granite steps and shouted in their faces:
"Come on, you dirty cowards! I've got your money inside waiting for you, every dollar of it, one hundred cents on the dollar!"
The crowd made no reply. They merely moved up in line in stolid silence a little closer to the door. Each day this line had grown longer. Bivens was not worrying. The king had spoken. The people outside did the worrying. They had lost faith in everything and every man. What they wanted was cash. They camped on the doorstep at night and in grim silence held their place in line.
The folly of these people in their insane efforts to wreck Bivens's bank was making impossible a return to normal business.
Stuart determined to face this crowd and have it out with them. He believed that a bold appeal to their reason would silence his critics and allay their insane fears.
He told Bivens of his purpose over the telephone, and the financier protested vigorously:
"Don't do it, Jim, I beg of you," he pleaded. "It will be a waste of breath. Besides, you risk your life."
"I'll be there when the bank opens at ten o'clock to-morrow morning," was the firm answer.
Stuart left his office at three and hurried to his room. He wished to be alone and collect the vague ideas of passionate appeal which he felt rioting through his mind. He stood by his window looking across the square. The fall winds had strewn the grass with dead leaves and the half-bare limbs swayed desolately. The big houses on the north side, were unusually quiet. He could see crêpe fluttering from two doors. The widow of the dead president of a suspended bank lived in one of them; in the other the widow of a great man who was found dead in his office the second day of the panic. He had been buried yesterday.
A feeling of stupid depression crept over his senses, and held them in its deadly embrace. He couldn't think. He gave up the effort and asked Harriet to go with him for a ramble over the hills, up the Hudson. They took the subway to the end of the line, climbed to the top of the hills overlooking the river, sat down in the woods on a fallen tree and watched the sun slowly sink in scarlet glory behind the Palisades.
Neither had spoken for several minutes. He loved these rambles with his slender golden-haired little pal, because it wasn't necessary to talk. She had developed the rarest of all gifts among womankind, a genius for silence. He wondered at it, too, for she was such a little chatterbox as a kid.
A squirrel climbed down from a tree nearby where he was storing his winter food, paused, and looked up in surprise at his unexpected visitors. Stuart smiled and pressed Harriet's hand, nodding toward the squirrel. She smiled an answer in silence. The faintest little flush tinged the smooth white skin of her neck at the touch of his hand, but he never noticed it.
A ruffled grouse suddenly sprang on the end of the log, cocked his head in surprise and stood trembling with fear, uncertain whether the intruders in his domain were friend or foe.
Harriet saw him first, gently pressed Stuart's hand and whispered:
"Look, Jim."
As Stuart turned his head, the bird rose with a roar that brought a cry of terror to the girl's lips. Involuntarily she gripped his hand and nestled closer.
"Scared you out of a year's growth, didn't he?"
"He certainly did."
"What a flood of memories the whir of those wings brings back to my tired soul," Stuart dreamily cried; "of woods and fields and hills and valleys of the South, where men and women yet live a sane human life! I'd begun to forget there were any hills and fields."
"I wish I lived down South, Jim!"
"Why?"
"I don't know, it's just an idea of mine. I suppose I get it from hearing you tell about their old-fashioned ways, their neighbourly habits and the sweet home life."
The man was silent. The deep soft note of a mallard drake far above the treetops caused him to look up.
He seized Harriet's arm.
"Watch now, little pal—the river—you'll see a flock of ducks swing into that open space under the sun!"
He had scarcely spoken when the ducks circled the broad sweep of the river in a graceful curve, their wings flashing in the rays of the setting sun, and slowly one at a time dropped their feet and pitched in the little smooth bay at the foot of the hill. The sun was just sinking behind the tree tops on the Palisades, lighting the calm mirror-like surface of the water with every colour of the rainbow.
"Now, look behind you, dear!" Stuart exclaimed.
"Why, it's the moon just rising, isn't it? I never saw the moon rising through the treetops before. It's glorious, isn't it?"
"Yes, it's full moon to-night. See how high the tide is on the river banks. It's just high water now—the highest, fullest tide of the month. It will be less to-morrow and the next and the next day until it falls back to its lowest point two weeks from now, then starts climbing up again for the next full moon. Every sailor, man and bird, knows this. I wonder how many men and women in this money-mad city know that the tide ever ebbs and flows around Manhattan Island at all."
"It's wonderful—isn't it?"
"What dear, the men and women of New York or the tides?"
"Both, Jim, when we try to understand them, isn't it all God's work?"
"I don't know, child. I sometimes think God made the world and only man or the devil built the cities afterward. I believe the reason why the spirit grows savage and we forget that we are human here so often is that we never see the sun or moon. We never hear the stir of wings in the sky, feel the throb of Nature's heart in the ebb and flow of tides, or walk with our heads among the stars."
Harriet sat in thoughtful silence a while and a curious searching look crept into her eyes as she softly asked:
"You have seen much of Mr. Bivens lately, Jim—I've wondered if you have never yet looked your dead love in the face?"
"No, little pal."
"You are still afraid?"
An answer started to his lips and he choked it back.
She laid her warm hand on his.
"Tell me, I want to help you. Wearepals, you know."
"Well, I'm ashamed to confess it dear, but I am afraid, horribly afraid! I've been fighting some grim battles, but I'll have to see her sooner or later."
"I wish you wouldn't," the girl said, wistfully.
"I'll try to keep away—but every turn in the wheel seems only to bring us closer. My association with Bivens in this prosecution of crime was not of my choosing, but it came. I shall be compelled to see him often."
"Does she know that you are afraid?"
"I think not. She feels that I've never forgiven her treachery, but come, dearie, it's growing dark, we must hurry. I've a hard night's work before me. You've helped me immensely."
"How?"
"I don't know, child. The sunlight just seems to get tangled in your hair, and it always shines in your eyes day and night. You warm me into life and health, just being near you."
Harriet smiled tenderly, and hurried across the hills in silence by his side.
When they passed out of the last clump of trees near the subway station she looked up into his face and slowly asked:
"Did any one else ever have that effect on you, Jim?"
"Yes," he answered soberly.
"Who?"
The question was asked in a low whisper, but it was not so low that Stuart failed to catch its accent of pain.
He laughed, teasingly.
"My mother."
"And no one else?"
"No one else."
"Well, I'm jealous of that sort of influence. I wish a monopoly."
"You have it, dear. Somehow others bring pain and storm and stress. But you have always brought peace and rest."
"Then I'm content."
She looked up and laughed softly.
CHAPTER IX
BENEATH THE SKIN
Stuart rose next morning with a dull headache. The more he had puzzled over the speech he should make to the mob besieging Bivens's bank the more doubtful seemed the outcome. Still to remain silent longer, amid the accusations which were being daily hurled at him, was intolerable. He was possessed with a fierce desire to meet at least one of his foes face to face.
He took his breakfast early and walked down town to his office through the Bowery and Centre Street as he was in the habit of doing occasionally. Everything rubbed him the wrong way this morning. Every sight and sound of the city seemed to bruise and hurt. Never before had the ugliness of the elevated railroad struck him with such crushing hopelessness. He felt that its rusty hideous form, looming against the sky line, was a crime. The crowded trolley cars, the rushing, rattling lines of drays, the ugly, dirty, cheap-looking people hurrying past—it was all horrible!
The sense of loneliness and isolation grew upon him—a sort of dumb hatred of all these unthinking stolid beasts of burden who were bending their backs daily to their stupid tasks, trampling each other to death, too, in their own mad sordid scramble for money.
He paused at the Brooklyn Bridge and stood in silence while the black torrent of unmeaning faces, whose expression this morning was distinctly inhuman, rolled past and spread out into the square and streets.
He was glad for the moment that not one of them knew him, though he was daily giving his life to their service.
He turned and pushed his way through the throngs, crossed the City Hall Square and in a few minutes reached the Broadway corner on which the Bivens bank stood. Its magnificent marble façade, crowned with gilded dome, gleamed white and solemn in the morning sun like some proud temple man had built to the worship of God.
The crowd about its doors, which had not yet been opened, was unusually large and turbulent. With the aid of two officers he pushed and fought his way unrecognized through the mob and at last reached the side entrance of the bank.
Bivens, watching from within, opened the door and he stepped inside.
"Jim, if you try to speak to that gang of madmen you're a fool," the financier began, with a scowl. "What they need is not eloquence, they need a club."
"You can't blame them for wanting their money, Cal, after all it's theirs, not yours, you know."
"You're going to talk to them?"
"I'm going to try."
"It's a foolish and dangerous thing to do."
"Nonsense. They are at least human. They have reason."
A low howl of rage stirred the crowd without. A fight for place in the line had broken out.
"Is that reason?" Bivens asked, cynically. "It's not even human. It's the growl of the beast that always sleeps beneath the skin."
"I haven't lost faith in my fellow-men yet," was the dogged answer.
"All right, good luck. I know your intentions are the best. You think it's your duty to yourself and the people. I'm sorry I can't stay to hear you. I've an important meeting this morning. I must go at once. I've instructed my detectives inside to stand by you if you need help."
"Thanks, I won't need them."
The little swarthy figure paused at the door.
"Don't fool yourself into believing anybody in that crowd cares about the work you have done in their service. Scores of them are under deep personal obligations to me. But I'm leaving this building by my neighbour's roof this morning. You don't want to forget, Jim, that the rabble for whom even Christ lived and died, shouted in his face at last 'Crucify him! Crucify him!'"
Stuart smiled at the incongruous farce of Bivens's familiarity with the Bible—yet there was no mistaking the fact of his emotions and the sincerity of his religious faith. The little financier had already begun to pose to himself as a martyr and a public benefactor. In spite of howling mobs and crushing markets he was busy now saving the credit of the Nation! He was one of the group of the king's council engaged in that important work. The "undesirable" had been eliminated and now a vast pool was being formed to support the market and kindly hold the securities until the people could get their breath and make money enough to buy them back at a profit. In due time he knew that his name would be enrolled with the king's as a patriot and public benefactor.
Bivens lingered a moment as if reluctant to give up dissuading Stuart, waved him a friendly adieu at last, stepped into the elevator and left by the roof.
It was yet fifteen minutes to ten, the hour for opening the bank's doors, and Stuart decided to address the crowd immediately.
In accordance with Bivens's instructions the cashier opened the bronze doors and squeezed through, admitting Stuart and two detectives. At the sight of the cashier a thrill of horror swept the crowd—half-groan, half-sigh, half-cry, inarticulate, inhuman, beastly in its grovelling fear.
"Great God!"
"They're going to suspend!"
"It's all over!"
The groans melted into broken curses and exclamations and died into silence as the cashier lifted his hand.
"I have the honour, gentlemen, of presenting this morning a distinguished servant of the people who has a message for you, the man whose unselfish devotion to the cause of Justice has earned him the right to a hearing, the Honourable James Stuart, your District Attorney."
The young lawyer stepped from the doorway in front of the cashier, who retired.
A roar of rage swept the crowd. Howls, curses, catcalls, hisses, hoots and yells were hurled into his face. It was a new experience in Stuart's life. He flushed red, stood for a moment surveying the mob with growing anger, and lifted his hand for silence.
The answer was a storm of hisses. Apparently he hadn't a friend in all the swaying mass of howling maniacs. He drew his heavy brows down over his eyes and the square jaws ground together with sullen determination. He folded his arms deliberately and waited for silence. Evidently these people had swallowed every lie his enemies had printed. It was incredible that rational human beings should be such fools, but it was true.
For a moment the hideous thought forced itself into his soul that a life of unselfish public service was futile. In all this babel of jangling cries and cat-calls not one voice was lifted in decent protest. He felt that his work was a failure and he had been pitching straws against the wind.
As wave after wave of idiotic hissing rose and fell only to swell again into greater fury a feeling of blind rage filled his being. He understood at last the persistence in the human mind of the doctrine of hell. It was a necessity of the moral universe. God simply must consume such trash. Nothing else could be done with it.
With a sudden impulse, he threw his right hand high above his head and his voice boomed over the crowd in a peal of command. The effect was electrical. A painful hush followed. The swaying mass stood rooted in their tracks by the tones of authority his first word had expressed.
"Gentlemen!"
He paused and his next words were spoken in intense silence.
"My answer to the extraordinary greeting you have given me this morning is simple. I am not working for your approval, I work for my own approval, because I must in obedience to the call within me. Long ago in my life I gave up ambition and ceased to ask anything for myself. You cannot destroy my career because I cherish none. If I succeed in the work to which I have been called it is well. If I fail, it is also well. I have done my duty and obeyed the call to the service of my fellow-man!"
Again he paused as his voice choked with deep emotion. The crowd stared as if in a spell.
"The scene you are enacting here this morning is a disgrace to humanity. You have surrendered to the unmeaning fear that drives a herd of swine over a precipice. You have, by an act of your will, joined in a movement to paralyze the motive power of the world—faith! There is but one thing that runs this earth of ours for a single day—faith in one another.
"You are scrambling here for a few dollars in this bank. What can you do with it when you draw it out? There is not enough cash in the world to transact a single day's business. Business is run on credit—faith.
"Faith is the sustaining force of all personal and social life; a panic is its end—a lapse to the level of the beast of the field whose life is ruled by fear.
"Banks were not made as strong boxes for the hoarding of money. Money was hoarded in strong boxes centuries before banks were invented. Banks are institutions of public credit, to facilitate the useful circulation of money, not its withdrawal from use. The business of a bank is to keep money moving and make it do the world's work. You are attempting to stop the work by the destruction of its faith."
Suddenly a man who had quietly pushed his way through the crowd sprang on the step before the speaker and thrust a revolver into his face.
A cry of horror swept the crowd, as Stuart paused, turned pale and looked steadily down the flashing barrel into the madman's eyes.
"Who started this work of destruction?" he cried—"You—You—-Do you hear me? And I've been commanded by God Almighty to end this trouble by ending you!"
As Stuart held the glittering eyes levelled at him across the blue-black barrel he could see the man's nervous and uncertain finger twitching at the trigger.
For the first time in his conscious existence he felt the stinging anguish of physical fear. Never had life—life for its own sake with strong sound limbs and alert mind—seemed so sweet. At the first touch of fear his tall body had suddenly stiffened and the pallor of death shrouded his face. The next instant came the conscious shame and horror of the moment's cowardice. The crowd that watched the tragic situation had not known, but he knew and it was enough. His face flushed red and his deep set eyes began to sparkle with anger, the red animal-anger of power wrought to insane fury. Every nerve and muscle and sinew quivered with the desire to kill, a consuming passionate desperate lust! His fingers closed involuntarily as the claws of a beast and he drew his breath with trembling intensity.
For one brief instant he hated all men. Not merely the fool who had shamed his soul with fear but all the mob of hissing howling brutes that surged about him and all the millions like them that crawl over the earth.
There was a pause of only a few seconds while these ideas flashed with the vividness of lightning through his imagination. The crowd noted no pause of any kind. His action seemed instantaneous.
With a sudden panther-like spring he leaped across the five feet which separated him from the man who held the revolver. His left hand gripped the weapon and threw it into the air as it was fired while his right hand closed on the throat of his assailant. With his knee against the man's breast he hurled him down the steps, wrenched the revolver from his hand and with a single blow knocked him into insensibility.