CHAPTER XXXIII.
The Amateur Napoleon of Wall Street
At the beginning of April, the situation in the three stocks Percival had bought so heavily grew undeniably tense. Consolidated Copper went from 109 to 103 in a week. But Percival's enthusiasm suffered little abatement from the drop. "You see," he reminded Uncle Peter, "it isn't exactly what I expected, but it's right in line with it, so it doesn't alarm me. I knew those fellows inside were bound to hammer it down if they could. It wouldn't phase me a bit if it sagged to 95."
"My! My!" Uncle Peter exclaimed, with warm approval, "the way you master this business certainly does win me. I tell you, it's a mighty good thing we got your brains to depend on. I'm all right the other side of Council Bluffs, but I'm a tenderfoot here, sure, where everybody's tryin' to get the best of you. You see, out there, everybody tries to make the best of it. But here they try to get the best of it. I told that to one of them smarties last night. But you'll put them in their place all right. You know both ends of the game and the middle. We certainly got a right to be proud of you, son. Dan'l J. liked big propositions himself—but, well, I'd just like to have him see the nerve you've showed, that's all."
Uncle Peter's professions of confidence were unfailing, and Percival took new hope and faith in his judgment from them daily.
Nevertheless, as the weeks passed, and the mysterious insiders succeeded in their design of keeping the stock from rising, he came to feel a touch of anxiety. More, indeed, than he was able to communicate to Uncle Peter, without confessing outright that he had lost faith in himself. That he was unable to do, even if it were true, which he doubted. The Bines fortune was now hanging, as to all but some of the Western properties, on the turning of the three stocks. Yet the old man's confidence in the young man's acumen was invulnerable. No shaft that Percival was able to fashion had point enough to pierce it. And he was both to batter it down, for he still had the gambler's faith in his luck.
"You got your father's head in business matters," was Uncle Peter's invariable response to any suggestion of failure. "I know that much—spite of what all these gossips say—and that's all I want to know. And of course you can't ever be no Shepler 'less you take your share of chances. Only don't ask my advice. You're master of the game, and we're all layin' right smack down on your genius fur it."
Whereupon the young man, with confidence in himself newly inflated, would hurry off to the stock tickers. He had ceased to buy the stocks outright, and for several weeks had bought only on margins.
"There was one rule in poker your pa had," said Uncle Peter. "If a hand is worth calling on, it's worth raising on. He jest never would call. If he didn't think a hand was worth raising, he'd bunch it in with the discards, and wait fur another deal. I don't know much about the game, but he said it was a sound rule, and if it was sound in poker, why it's got to be sound in this game. That's all I can tell you. You know what you hold, and if 'tain't a hand to lay down, it must be a hand to raise on. Of course, if you'd been brash and ignorant in your first calculations—if you'd made a fool of yourself at the start—but shucks! you're the son of Daniel J. Bines, ain't you?"
The rule and the clever provocation had their effect.
"I'll raise as long as I have a chip left, Uncle Peter. Why, only to-day I had a tip that came straight from Shepler, though he never dreamed it would reach me. That Pacific Cable bill is going to be rushed through at this session of Congress, sure, and that means enough increased demand to send Consolidated back where it was. And then, when it comes out that they've got those Rio Tinto mines by the throat, well, this anvil chorus will have to stop, and those Federal Oil sharks and Shepler will be wondering how I had the face to stay in."
The published rumours regarding Consolidated began to conflict very sharply. Percival read them all hungrily, disregarding those that did not confirm his own opinions. He called them irresponsible newspaper gossip, or believed them to be inspired by the clique for its own ends.
He studied the history of copper until he knew all its ups and downs since the great electrical development began in 1887. When Fouts, the broker he traded most heavily with, suggested that the Consolidated Company was skating on thin ice, that it might, indeed, be going through the same experience that shattered the famous Secretan corner a dozen years before, Percival pointed out unerringly the vital difference in the circumstances. The Consolidated had reduced the production of its controlled mines, and the price was bound to be maintained. When his adviser suggested that the companies not in the combine might cut the price, he brought up the very lively rumours of a "gentlemen's agreement" with the "non-combine" producers.
"Of course, there's Calumet and Hecla. I know that couldn't be gunned into the combination. They could pay dividends with copper at ten cents a pound. But the other independents know which side of their stock is spread with dividends, all right."
When it was further suggested that the Rio Tinto mines had sold ahead for a year, with the result that European imports from the United States had fallen off, and that the Consolidated could not go on for ever holding up the price, Percival said nothing.
The answer to that was the secret negotiations for control of the European output, which would make the Consolidated master of the copper world. Instead of disclosing this, he pretended craftily to be encouraged by the mere generally hopeful outlook in all lines. Western Trolley, too, might be overcapitalised, and Union Cordage might also be in the hands of a piratical clique; but the demand for trolley lines was growing every day, and cordage products were not going out of fashion by any means.
"You see," he said to his adviser, "here's what the most conservative man in the Street says in this afternoon's paper. 'That copper must necessarily break badly, and the whole boom collapse I do not believe. There is enough prosperity to maintain a strong demand for the metal through another year at least. As to Western Trolley and Union Cordage, the two other stocks about which doubt is now being so widely expressed in the Street, I am persuaded that they are both due to rise, not sensationally, but at a healthy upward rate that makes them sound investments!'
"There," said Percival, "there's the judgment of a man that knows the game, but doesn't happen to have a dollar in either stock, and he doesn't know one or two things that I know, either. Just hypothecate ten thousand of those Union Cordage shares and five thousand Western Trolley, and buy Consolidated on a twenty per cent margin. I want to get bigger action. There's a good rule in poker: if your hand is worth calling, it's worth raising."
"I like your nerve," said the broker.
"Well, I know some one who has a sleeve with something up it, that's all."
By the third week in April, it was believed that his holdings of Consolidated were the largest in the Street, excepting those of the Federal Oil people. Uncle Peter was delighted by the magnitude of his operations, and by his newly formed habits of industry.
"It'll be the makings of the boy," he said to Mrs. Bines in her son's presence. "Not that I care so much myself about all the millions he'll pile up, but it gives him a business training, and takes him out of the pin-head class. I bet Shepler himself will be takin' off his silk hat to your son, jest as soon as he's made this turn in copper—if he has enough of Dan'l J.'s grit to hang on—and I think he has."
"They needn't wait another day for me," Percival told him later. "The family treasure is about all in now, except ma's amethyst earrings, and the hair watch-chain Grandpa Cummings had. Of course I'm holding what I promised for Burman. But that rise can't hold off much longer, and the only thing I'll do, from now on, is to hock a few blocks of the stock I bought outright, and buy on margins, so's to get bigger action."
"My! My! you jest do fairly dazzle me," exclaimed the old man, delightedly. "Oh, I guess your pa wouldn't be at all proud of you if he could see it. I tell you, this family's all right while you keep hearty."
"Well, I'm not pushing my chest out any," said the young man, with becoming modesty, "but I don't mind telling you it will be the biggest thing ever pulled off down there by any one man."
"That's the true Western spirit," declared Uncle Peter, beside himself with enthusiasm. "We do things big when we bother with 'em at all. We ain't afraid of any pikers like Shepler, with his little two and five thousand lots. Oh! I can jest hear 'em callin' you hard names down in that Wall Street—Napoleon of Finance and Copper King and all like that—in about thirty days!"
He accepted Percival's invitation that afternoon to go down into the Street with him. They stopped for a moment in the visitors' gallery of the Stock Exchange and looked down into the mob of writhing, dishevelled, shouting brokers. In and out, the throng swirled upon itself, while above its muddy depths surged a froth of hands in frenzied gesticulation. The frantic movement and din of shrieks disturbed Uncle Peter.
"Faro is such a lot quieter game," was his comment; "so much more ca'm and restful. What a pity, now, 'tain't as Christian!"
Then they made the rounds of the brokers' offices in New, Broad, and Wall Streets.
They reached the office of Fouts, in the, latter street, just as the Exchange had closed. In the outer trading-room groups of men were still about the tickers, rather excitedly discussing the last quotations. Percival made his way toward one of them with a dim notion that he might be concerned. He was relieved when he saw Gordon Blythe, suave and smiling, in the midst of the group, still regarding the tape he held in his hands. Blythe, too, had plunged in copper. He had been one of the few as sanguine as Percival—and Blythe's manner now reassured him. Copper had obviously not gone wrong.
"Ah, Blythe, how did we close? Mr. Blythe, my grandfather, Mr. Bines."
Blythe was the model of easy, indolent, happy middle-age. His tall hat, frock coat with a carnation in the lapel, the precise crease of his trousers, the spickness of his patent-leathers and his graceful confidence of manner, proclaimed his mind to be free from all but the pleasant things of life. He greeted Uncle Peter airily.
"Come down to see how we do it, eh, Mr. Bines? It's vastly engrossing, on my word. Here's copper just closed at 93, after opening strong this morning at 105. I hardly fancied, you know, it could fall off so many of those wretched little points. Rumours that the Consolidated has made large sales of the stuff in London at sixteen, I believe. One never can be quite aware of what really governs these absurd fluctuations."
Percival was staring at Blythe in unconcealed amazement. He turned, leaving Uncle Peter still chatting with him, and sought Fouts in the inner office. When he came out ten minutes later Uncle Peter was waiting for him alone.
"Your friend Mr. Blythe is a clever sort of man, jolly and light-hearted as a boy."
"Let's go out and have a drink, before we go up-town."
In the café of the Savarin, to which he led Uncle Peter, they saw Blythe again. He was seated at one of the tables with a younger man. Uncle Peter and Percival sat down at a table near by.
Blythe was having trouble about his wine.
"Now, George," he was saying, "give us a real lively pint of wine. You see, yourself, that cork isn't fresh; show it to Frank there, and look at the wine itself—come now, George! Hardly a bubble in it! Tell Frank I'll leave it to him, by Gad! if this bottle is right."
The waiter left with the rejected wine, and they heard Blythe resume to his companion, with the relish of a connoisseur:
"It's simply a matter of genius, old chap—you understand?—to tell good wine—that is really to discriminate finely. If a chap's not born with the gift he's an ass to think he can acquire it. Sometime you've a setter pup that looks fit—head good, nose all right—all the markings—but you try him out and you know in half an hour he'll never do in the world. Then it's better to take him out back of the barn and shoot him, by Gad! Rather than have his strain corrupt the rest of the kennel. He can't acquire the gift, and no more can a chap acquire this gift. Ah! I was right, was I, George? Look how different that cork is."
He sipped the bubbling amber wine with cautious and exacting appreciation. As the waiter would have refilled the glasses, Blythe stopped him.
"Now, George, let me tell you something. You're serving at this moment the only gentleman's drink. Do it right, George. Listen! Never refill a gentleman's glass until it's quite empty. Do you know why? Think, George! You pour fresh wine into stale wine and what have you?—neither. I've taught you something, George. Never fill a glass till it's empty."
"It beats me," said Uncle Peter, when Blythe and his companion had gone, "how easy them rich codgers get along. That fellow must 'a' made a study of wines, and nothing worse ever bothers him than a waiter fillin' his glass wrong."
"You'll be beat more," answered Percival, "when I tell you this slump in copper has just ruined him—wiped out every cent he had. He'd just taken it off the ticker when we found him in Fouts's place there. He's lost a million and a half, every cent he had in the world, and he has a wife and two grown daughters."
"Shoo! you don't say! And I'd have sworn he didn't care a row of pins whether copper went up or down. He was a lot more worried about that champagne. Well, well! he certainly is a game loser. I got more respect fur him now. This town does produce thoroughbreds, you can't deny that."
"Uncle Peter, she's down to 93, and I've had to margin up a good bit. I didn't think it could get below 95 at the worst."
"Oh, I can't bother about them things. Just think of when she booms."
"I do—but say—do you think we better pinch our bets?"
Uncle Peter finished his glass of beer.
"Lord! don't ask me," he replied, with the unconcern of perfect trust. "Of course if you've lost your nerve, or if you think all these things you been tellin' me was jest some one foolin' you—"
"No, I know better than that, and I haven't lost my nerve. After all, it only means that the crowd is looking for a bigger rake-off."
"Your pa always kept his nerve," said Uncle Peter. "I've known him to make big money by keepin' it when other men lost theirs. Of course he had genius fur it, and you're purty young yet—"
"I only thought of it for a minute. I didn't really mean it."
They read the next afternoon that Gordon Blythe had been found dead of asphyxiation in a little down-town hotel under circumstances that left no doubt of his suicide.
"That man wa'n't so game as we thought," said Uncle Peter. "He's left his family to starve. Now your pa was a game loser fur fair. Dan'l J. would'a' called fur another deck."
"And copper's up two points to-day," said Percival, cheerfully. He had begun to be depressed with forebodings of disaster, and this slight recovery was cheering.
"By the way," he continued, "there may be another gas-jet blown out in a few days. That party, you know, our friend from Montana, has been selling Consolidated right and left. Where do you suppose she got any such tip as that? Well, I'm buying and she's selling, and we'll have that money back. She'll be wiped off the board when Consolidated soars."