CHAPTER XXXII
PERFECTING THE DOUBLE CROSS
To get back to my story. I realized that though one disaster had been averted, I was far from any haven of rest. Remembering my cue, however, I asked innocently:
"Have you all decided to sell more of the stock, Mr. Rogers?"
"All? Why no," he said. "Just let me show you where we stand now. All the unsold stock, roughly forty-eight millions, has been divided up and each man has to carry his own. That's easy, because Stillman will carry them all at the bank, for they are all good, Lewisohn, Morgan, Olcott, Flower, Daly, and the others. The only loose stock will be Mr. Rockefeller's, yours, and mine, and that we must turn into money before we can bring out the second section. You have been losing sight of the fact, Lawson, that we have millions upon millions tied up here, and Mr. Rockefeller has decided he will not go ahead until we have turned this venture into money."
Marvellous, marvellous man! He unrolled the new scheme as openly and as freely as though he were a world's philanthropist explaining a new benefaction and I an enthusiastic minister employed to carry the glad tidings to the people. The plot was obvious. In spite of Flower and Stillman and all the talk of our taking a rest he was back on his black courser again, in a new saddle, with a freshly lighted lantern, and the old blackjack newly leaded. And I was the only one who could stalk the game. I listened.
"Now let me show you, Lawson, what a pretty campaign I have laid out," he went on. "I've pledged all the others to hold their stock and I've got it rigged in such a way they can't let go a share without my knowing of it. Then I've got them all enthusiastic and have formed a pool at Flower's office which, if necessary, can buy 500,000 shares, and what with the money they have made and the promise that they will be let in on the second section if they're good, we ought to have things pretty much our own way."
The scheme seemed to be perfect for robbing every one in sight, and here was I being taken right in—I who had but one thought: to get those I had mired on to firm soil and myself outside the breastworks of this pirate stronghold.
"It looks perfect, Mr. Rogers," I said. "Now where do I come in on all this?"
He shrugged his shoulders impatiently. "You see as well as I can tell you," he replied evasively.
"I take it that you want me to unload our stock on to the pool and the other members of the syndicate?" I asked with a brutal frankness that I realized, after I heard the words, was almost indecent.
"What is the use of putting it that way, Lawson?" he replied angrily. "You know I mean nothing of the sort. You know I want you to keep every one you can from selling, and simply supply the legitimate demand that can be worked up among the subscribers all over the country. If worked as you can work it, this ought to clean up our stock without any one's being hurt."
I understood perfectly. If Mr. Rogers and I had been on terms of flippancy instead of dignity, at this stage we should have given each other the wink. Just what he wanted done I knew. He knew I knew what he wanted, and I knew he knew I knew, and yet we were pretending not only that we knew nothing but that there was really nothing to know.
Fortunately, at this stage of the duel Mr. Rogers' secretary arrived with my checks and stock, and while we were verifying these, I had time to study my mental chess-board for the next move. The papers were all passed at last and then I entered into some explanation of my own intentions. I told Mr. Rogers that for the time being I would hold all my stock, but that I intended to borrow a stack of money on it from Stillman through my brokers, for I fully intended to support the market, as my belief in the stock was absolute.
I could have sworn Mr. Rogers inwardly chuckled at my fatuity, but I went right on:
"If Mr. Rockefeller has decided that your share and his of the allotment must, in whole or in part, be turned into money before the second section is tackled, there's nothing for it but to go ahead, and I will put in great work for you (I didn't add, "my work, if I can make it, will keep you in as long as the public have a share"), because," said I, "my one ambition now is to complete the second section and get things in such shape that those people I have had locked-in so long can get out, if they care to."
It was an intricate problem that was thus settled, for Mr. Rogers well knew that it would be useless to attempt to sell big quantities of Amalgamated without my detecting it, and he dared not ask me to have a hand in his plot without including my own stock. When he saw I intended to stand by my baby, and yet was so anxious to get to the second section that I would accede to Mr. Rockefeller's wishes, he perceived that the situation was ideal for his purposes.
"Let me glance over that subscription list," I said; and I opened up the book, for book it really was.
My readers may surmise how intense was my interest in scanning the results of my work. This great stack of bank sheets before me was the official list of the subscription, stitched together in seventeen sections of twenty pages each; twenty-eight names, with city, State, street number addresses, and amounts subscribed to a page, all in ink in longhand.
"Better take them with you to the hotel and go carefully over the names and amounts," put in Mr. Rogers. "It certainly is a long job, but one that you must tackle some time, and the sooner the better."
Here was the missing link in my chain of evidence, delivered directly into my hands without a word of persuasion or cajolery. Providence played that hand for me surely. I concealed my jubilance by rattling along vociferously:
"I shall have to work over this a heap, sending out circulars and what not. It would have been better to have had it in typewriting, but I suppose Stillman didn't dare intrust it to the machine people. However, I can divide up the seventeen sections among different people and none will know the whole story. I will keep it in Boston with the other papers, and—gracious! what's this?"
"What is it?" he asked, smiling at my excitement.
In front of me was the section beginning with the "Mc's," and the largest subscription on the page was 6,000 shares—1,200 allotment. I followed the line back to the name. It was that of Hugh McLaughlin, then the big "boss" of Brooklyn, who, like all the other big bosses of New York State, was a trusted lieutenant of "Standard Oil." I put my finger on the amount and said:
"You have taken care of your friend across the river, I see. No wonder all the politicians were so anxious to get in, for they know you would not put this old gentleman into anything that is not pretty sure."
Mr. Rogers nodded wisely:
"Yes, I told the old stalwart he had better have about half a million, but he went $100,000 better, I see. I sent the word around to the others, too, but have not had a chance to go over the list carefully. Have they all gone in under their own names?"
I ran over page after page, looking for names as he called them off, but most of them had disguised their ventures through dummies. We had no trouble in putting our fingers on their allotments, however; Mr. Rogers commenting in his sage and caustic way on men and politics. It was growing late, and at a natural stopping-place in our talk I sent for paper and string, with my own hands tied up the book, and—with all the airs of extreme leisureliness—literally bolted.
No school-boy with a three-pound trout caught in a deep hole under a big willow bearing the sign, "Any one fishing here will be prosecuted," no burglar with an unexpected fat swag, was ever in such a fever to lug his booty to a concealed place as I to get that infinitely precious bundle to the Waldorf. At last I landed it in my room and began to scan the interesting pages. My first thought was to look for our own big dummy subscription. As I supposed, it was not there. Roughly I added the totals of the different sheets and compared them, with the 412 millions we had given the public, which was now indelibly, the world over, a matter of record. Again I stopped to congratulate myself on my good fortune in securing this first-hand evidence of the fraud that had been practised on the people.
I leaned over the thick pages with their various inscriptions. The names and addresses carried me into every corner of the United States and into the great cities of Europe as well. Set down there were towns and villages I had never heard of, and my mind made pictures for me of fathers, mothers, and children, beguiled by my pledges and promises, embracing the opportunity to add to their scanty hordes. But it was not a moment to indulge in scares, so I slipped over the people's mites and fixed my mind on the millions.
The Lewisohns were down for eleven millions, and Mr. Rogers' old cronies, John Moore's firm, were represented by a subscription of between six and seven millions. As I ran over the names I found million after million down to Mr. Rogers' friends, which told me that he had spared no one. All the lieutenants and the queer people who do the confidential business of the "System," and invariably turn up at melon-cutting time, were down for round amounts. Conspicuous among the rest was the name of that rising votary of the "System" who won notoriety, while Comptroller of the Currency under President Cleveland, as manipulator of the slick bond deal which has gone into American history as among the queerest performances of its period. Loaded up with Government banking secrets, this young man subsequently became a prize for whom the various organizations of the "System" competed valorously. There he was, in three places—James H. Eckels, President of the Commercial Bank of Chicago, 6,000, 2,000, and 2,000 shares—or a million dollars altogether.
Another name caught my eye: "Bay State Gas Co., J. Edward Addicks, 20,000 shares"—two millions of dollars. I leaned back and laughed as I thought of this wary old fox, with the bruises and scars of the "System's" hopper thick all over his body, dutifully bringing his contribution to his old enemy, Rogers. And Rogers, disdainful and contemptuous of the man, found his $400,000 good. This, I said to myself, is a case of spider eat spider with a vengeance; and I wondered if experience is really as good a teacher as the text-book says.
Hour after hour I pondered over that list, "sizing up" each subscriber and questioning what his financial condition might be. At last I dropped it, swearing to myself to use every effort to protect these thousands of people who had ventured so much money on the strength of my pledges.
Two days later the allotments were officially announced; in a few days more the receipts were issued and Amalgamated was fairly out in the world on its own feet. It was not listed on any of the exchanges yet, but it was very much in the mouths of people, and in the papers. And every day grew the ominous feeling that something was wrong. It was a contradictory situation and no one could put a finger on the trouble. Rumors one heard, but no definite derogatory statements. The truth was that those who knew what was wrong had good reasons for saying nothing, while all who had to do with stock affairs and surmised the evil, were themselves loaded up with the stock and hoping against hope that our promises of great profits would yet be fulfilled.
It was my part to keep up these anticipations and by hook or crook prevent Rogers and Rockefeller from unloading. I bought and bought to steady the market when no one else apparently would buy; and when I found others whom I could induce to venture, I had them relieve those who were faltering and who must sell. When Mr. Rogers took me to task, I invented all manner of excuses to account for my tardiness in creating a market on which he could unload his holdings. He listened impatiently and incredulously, and I felt that sooner or later he would take the bit in his teeth.
In spite of my efforts the price of Amalgamated dropped and dropped and it was all I could do to prevent a quick crash. My profits—the immense sum of money I had obtained at the settlement—had been used up, together with the great sums I had borrowed on my own allotment of shares. At intervals I stopped long enough to make brief excursions into sugar or other stocks, out of which I captured additional hundreds of thousands, but every cent of such gains went toward staying the avalanche. These indeed were days of desperation and black despair, all the more trying because I had to look happy and talk hopefully; all the more difficult because my enemies came out of their holes and did their share to balk my efforts; all the more painful because the public were beginning to doubt whether the second section was coming—and whether it had best come—and our Boston "Coppers" had begun to drop in value.
During all this time I had troubled myself but little about the Flower pool, which had been set going soon after the conversation in which Mr. Rogers had told me that he and Mr. Rockefeller intended to unload their stock. I concluded that the pool would surely get a share of what they had to sell, and showed no inclination to join in with it. But at last Mr. Rogers said to me:
"As every one is going into the pool, Lawson, it will seem strange if you are missing, so you had better send Flower your check and I will see you get it back later."
"For how much?" I asked him.
"A hundred thousand will be about right," he answered, and I sent it, and that was all I had heard of the subject until one day after the stock had been weaker than usual I received by mail a brusk notice from Flower & Co. to mail them another hundred thousand dollars. Immediately I called up the banking-house, and learned to my horror and astonishment that the pool had accumulated over 225,000 shares. I went at once to Mr. Rogers with Flower's call and said:
"I know nothing whatever of this affair, Mr. Rogers, and as I have not been unloading any of my stock and have all I can do to keep up my end anyway, you will look after it, of course."
He took the notice and said: "I will attend to it." Remembering his intentions to unload, after what I had heard of the pool's accumulations I was not surprised at Mr. Rogers' willingness to take care of this matter of mine. It is of interest now, in looking back over our affairs, to recall that though there were several periods later when the sledding was hard, and I needed all the money I could lay hands on, he never offered to return me that hundred thousand, not even after the pool had liquidated, as will be shown later. In spite of this fact, in his readiness to hurl any charge or insult at me, he had his hireling, Denis Donohoe, recently make the accusation that I alone of all its members refused to keep up my payments to the Flower pool.