“If we could be perfectly sure he’s not going to—”
Mellen’s doubts and convictions came and went like irregular pulse-beats—he had been disturbed to his very depths, and his mind did not work with its normal precision. He became calm again, and he spoke with quiet decision: “This young man means well. That is what makes him dangerous. He will flood the world with gold, and think he is doing good. Yes. Sell the bonds.”
“Very well,” Dawson sighed. It came easier to him to believe the worst; he had seen more of Grinnell. But he knew the bonds would have to be sold at grievous sacrifices.
“It’s the only thing we can do,” the richest man said, almost consolingly; he knew Dawson’s thoughts. “But,” he added, “you must keep on trying to find out where he gets the gold. Send Costello to me. And you must buy stocks.”
Bonds are payable, principal and interest, in gold coin of the present standard of weight and fineness. If Grinnel’s operations made gold as cheap as pig-iron, each $1,000-bond would be worth fifty ounces of iron, and no more. If some other metal took the place of gold, the corporations would take pains to be paid in the new coin, whatever that might be, and they would pay dividends on their stocks in the same. But the interest on bonds they must pay in gold. Bondholders would be ruined, and stockholders would profit by the others’ losses. All this Dawson and Mel-len had realized on their first interview; it was perfectly obvious. The president of the Metropolitan National Bank merely had wished the richest man in the world to be as certain of the existence of the Grinnell gold-factory as he himself had become, before selling bonds and buying stocks.
“Which stocks?” asked Dawson.
The richest man in the world did not answer. He was looking at Dawson, meditatively. At length, he said, musingly: “If he dies? And if his sister dies? ‘After us, the deluge.’ he said. The danger lies in that man’s secret becoming known. Yes. We have no time to lose.”
In winning his fabulous fortune, the richest man in the world had gambled stupendously. His stakes had been hundreds of fortunes, thousands of lives. But after the first hundred millions he always had gambled calmly—he had grown to think he was doing his duty, and that Providence, whose confidential servant he was, had dealt cards marked for his benefit. What had unnerved him was the sudden realization that his financial life hung by a thread. The armour in which thirty years of success had encased him had been broken. It had fallen from him. He had acted as he might have acted at the time when he was not the richest man in the world.
He went to the president’s desk and wrote out a long list—all stocks of steam and street railroads, gas companies, and industrial concerns. His writing was very even, and the letters were small, but the figures were very plain.
“It’s only a question of time,” he told Dawson, as he finished, “when Grinnell’s gold process will be known to the world.” He rose, and seeing the president’s serious look, he said, with an air of conscious jocularity (for he did not jest often, and when he did he had to announce it beforehand, with his face, that there might be no misunderstanding): “Cheer up, Richard. The worst is still to come!”