CHAPTER XI
AT BRONTE'S BANK
It was two days later, when Consols touched 80, that T. B. Smith gathered in Cord Van Ingen and marched him into the City.
The agitated Committee-man of the Stock Exchange met them in his office and led them to his private room.
"I must tell you the whole story," he said, after he had carefully shut and locked the door. "Last Wednesday, the market still rising and a genuine boom in sight, Mogseys—they're the biggest firm of brokers in the city—got a wire from their Paris agents which was to this effect, 'Sell Consols down to 80.' They were standing then at 90, and were on the up-grade. Immediately following the wire, and before it could be confirmed, came another instruction, in which they were told to sell some gilt-edged stocks—this was on a rising market, too—down to prices specified. I have seen the list, and taking the prices as they stood on Wednesday morning and the price they stand at to-day, the difference is enormous—something like three millions."
"Which means——?"
"Which means that the unknown bears have pocketed that amount. Well, Mogseys were paralysed at the magnitude of the order, and cabled away to their agent, asking for particulars, and were equally dumfounded to learn that they were acting on behalf of the Credit Bourbonnais, one of the biggest banks in the South of France. There was nothing else to do but to carry out the order, and on Thursday morning they had hammered stocks down ten points—stocks that have never fluctuated five points each way in mortal memory!"
The Committee-man, speaking in tones of reverence of these imperturbable securities, mopped his forehead with a tumultuous bandanna.
"Now," he resumed, "we know all the bears throughout all the world. The biggest of 'em is dead. That was George T. Baggin, one of the most daring and unscrupulous operators we have ever had in London. We know every man or woman or corporation likely to jump onto the market with both feet and set it sagging—but there isn't a single known bear who has a hand in this. We've tried to discover his identity, but we've always come up against a blank wall—the bank. The bank can't give away its client, and, even if it did, I doubt very much whether we should be any the wiser, for he's pretty sure to have hidden himself too deep. We'd probably find the bank was instructed by a broker and the broker by another bank, and we'd be as far off a solution as ever."
"Is there any cause for the present break?"