John was shocked, and said so.
"You are easy," said his comrade. "Don't you know that the trust companies do it themselves all the time? The presidents of the railroads use the holdings of their companies as collateral. Even the banks use their deposits for trading. Didn't old —— dump a lot of rotten stuff on you? Why don't you get even? Let me tell you something. Fully one-half of the men who are now successful financiers got their start by putting up as margin securities deposited with them. No one ever knew the difference, and now they are on their feet. If you took two bonds overnight you might put them back in the morning. Every one does it. It's part of the game."
"But suppose we lost?" asked John.
"You can't," said Prescott. "Cotton is sure to go up. It's throwing away the chance of your life."
John said he couldn't do such a thing, but when he returned to the office the cashier told him that a merger had been planned between their company and another—a larger one. John knew what that meant well enough—half the clerks would lose their positions. He was getting thirty-five dollars a week, had married a young wife, and, as he had told the magnate, he "needed it all." That night as he put the securities from the "loan cage" back in the vault the bonds burned his fingers. They were lying around loose, no good to anybody, and only two of them, overnight maybe, would make him independent of salaries and mergers—a free man and his own master.
The vault was in the basement just below the loan cage. It was some twenty feet long and ten wide. There were three tiers of boxes with double combination doors. In the extreme left-hand corner was the "loan box." Near it were two other boxes in which the securities of certain customers on deposit were kept. John had individual access to the loan box and the two others—one of which contained the collateral which secured loans that were practically permanent. He thus had within his control negotiable bonds of over a million dollars in value. The securities were in piles, strapped with rubber bands, and bore slips on which were written the names of the owners. Every morning John carried up all these piles to the loan cage—except the securities on deposit. At the end of the day he carried all back himself and tossed them into the boxes. When the interest coupons on the deposited bonds had to be cut he carried these, also, upstairs. At night the vault was secured by two doors, one with a combination lock and the other with a time lock. It was as safe as human ingenuity could make it. By day it had only a steel-wire gate which could be opened with a key. No attendant was stationed at the door. If John wanted to get in, all he had to do was to ask the person who had the key to open it. The reason John had the combination to these different boxes was in order to save the loan clerk the trouble of going downstairs to get the collateral himself.
Next day when John went out to lunch he put two bonds belonging to a customer in his pocket. He did not intend to steal them or even to borrow them. It was done almost automatically. His will seemed subjugated to the idea that they were to all intents and purposes his bonds to do as he liked with. He wanted the feeling of bonds-in-his-pocket. As he walked along the street to the restaurant, it seemed quite natural that they should be there. They were nearly as safe with him as lying around loose in the cage or chucked into a box in the vault. Prescott joined him, full of his new idea that cotton was going to jump overnight.
"If you only had a couple of bonds," he sighed.
Then somehow John's legs and arms grew weak. He seemed to disintegrate internally. He tried to pull himself together, but he had lost control of his muscles. He became a dual personality. His own John heard Prescott's John say quite naturally:
"I can let you have two bonds, but mind we get them back to-morrow, or anyhow the day after."