About ten days before the raid on National Woolens there had drifted in to Dumont through one of his many subterranean sources of information a rumor that the Fanning-Smiths had stealthily reduced their holdings of Great Lakes to twenty-one thousand shares and that the property was not so good as it had once been. He never permitted any Wall Street development to pass unexplained—he thought it simple prudence for a man with the care of a great financial and commercial enterprise to look into every dark corner of the Street and see what was hatching there. Accordingly, he sent an inquiry back along his secret avenue. Soon he learned that Great Lakes was sound, but the Fanning-Smiths had gone rotten; that they were gambling in the stock of the road they controlled and were supposed in large part to own; that they were secretly selling its stock "short"—that is, were betting it would go down—when there was nothing in the condition of the property to justify a fall. He reflected on this situation and reached these conclusions: "James Fanning-Smith purposes to pass the autumn dividend, which will cause the stock to drop. Then he will take his profits from the shares he has sold short and will buy back control at the low price. He is a fool and a knave. Only an imbecile would thus trifle with an established property. A chance for some one to make a fortune and win a railroad by smashing the Fanning-Smiths." Having recorded in his indelible memory these facts and conclusions as to James Fanning-Smith's plunge from business into gambling, Dumont returned to his own exacting affairs.
He had himself begun the race for multi-millions as a gambler and had only recently become ALMOST altogether a business man. But he thought there was a radical difference between his case and Fanning-Smith's. To use courageous gambling as means to a foothold in business—he regarded that as wise audacity. To use a firm-established foothold in business as a means to gambling—he regarded that as the acme of reckless folly. Besides, when he marked the cards or loaded the dice for a great Wall Street game of "high finance," he did it with skill and intelligence; and Fanning-Smith had neither.
When the banking-house of Fanning-Smith and Company undertook to finance the raid on National Woolens it was already deep in the Great Lakes gamble. James was new to Wall Street's green table; and he liked the sensations and felt that his swindle on other gamblers and the public—he did not call it by that homely name, though he knew others would if they found him out—was moving smoothly. Still very, very deep down his self-confidence was underlaid with quicksand. But Herron was adroit and convincing to the degree attainable only by those who deceive themselves before trying to deceive others; and James' cupidity and conceit were enormous. He ended by persuading himself that his house, directed and protected by his invincible self, could carry with ease the burden of both loads. Indeed, the Great Lakes gamble now seemed to him a negligible trifle in the comparison—what were its profits of a few hundred thousands beside the millions that would surely be his when the great Woolens Monopoly, bought in for a small fraction of its value, should be controlled by a group of which he would be the dominant personality?
He ventured; he won. He was now secure—was not Dumont dispossessed, despoiled, dying?
At eleven o'clock on that Monday morning he was seated upon his embossed leather throne, under his grandfather's portrait, immersed in an atmosphere of self-adoration. At intervals he straightened himself, distended his chest, elevated his chin and glanced round with an air of haughty dignity, though there was none to witness and to be impressed. In Wall Street there is a fatuity which, always epidemic among the small fry, infects wise and foolish, great and small, whenever a paretic dream of an enormous haul at a single cast of the net happens to come true. This paretic fatuity now had possession of James; in imagination he was crowning and draping himself with multi-millions, power and fame. At intervals he had been calling up on the telephone at his elbow Zabriskie, the firm's representative on 'Change, and had been spurring him on to larger and more frequent "sales" of Great Lakes.
His telephone bell rang. He took down the receiver—"Yes, it's Mr. Fanning-Smith—oh—Mr. Fanshaw——" He listened, in his face for the first few seconds all the pitying amusement a small, vain man can put into an expression of superiority. "Thank you, Mr. Fanshaw," he said. "But really, it's impossible. WE are perfectly secure. No one would venture to disturb US." And he pursed his lips and swelled his fat cheeks in the look for which his father was noted. But, after listening a few seconds longer, his eyes had in them the beginnings of timidity.
He turned his head so that he could see the ticker-tape as it reeled off. His heavy cheeks slowly relaxed. "Yes, yes," he said hurriedly.
"I'll just speak to our Mr. Zabriskie. Good-by." And he rang off and had his telephone connected with the telephone Zabriskie was using at the Stock Exchange. All the while his eyes were on the ticker-tape. Suddenly he saw upon it where it was bending from under the turning wheel a figure that made him drop the receiver and seize it in both his trembling hands. "Great heavens!" he gasped. "Fanshaw may be right. Great Lakes one hundred and twelve—and only a moment ago it was one hundred and three."
His visions of wealth and power and fame were whisking off in a gale of terror. A new quotation was coming from under the wheel—Great Lakes one hundred and fifteen. In his eyes stared the awful thought that was raging in his brain—"This may mean——" And his vanity instantly thrust out Herron and Gertrude and pointed at them as the criminals who would be responsible if—he did not dare formulate the possibilities of that bounding price.
The telephone boy at the other end, going in search of Zabriskie, left the receiver off the hook and the door of the booth open. Into Fanning-Smith's ear came the tumult from the floor of the Exchange—shrieks and yells riding a roar like the breakers of an infernal sea. And on the ticker-tape James was reading the story of the cause, was reading how his Great Lakes venture was caught in those breakers, was rushing upon the rocks amid the despairing wails of its crew, the triumphant jeers of the wreckers on shore. Great Lakes one hundred and eighteen—tick—tick—tick—Great Lakes one hundred and twenty-three—tick—tick—tick—Great Lakes one hundred and thirty—tick—tick—tick—Great Lakes one hundred and thirty-five—