Jack nodded. Somehow, entirely without justification, as he well knew, the check had given him a feeling of great stability; at once, on receiving it, he had felt that he had risen in his own self-esteem. “Yes,” he assented, “I’m glad myself; and you needn’t worry about my account, Jim. We’ll just leave it this way. Don’t treat mine as an ordinary account; don’t sell me out, whatever happens. I’ve friends that’ll see me through anything. If things should go lower, and you should need more margin, just let me know, and I’ll get it over to you right away. Will that be satisfactory?”
The broker nodded. “Why, yes, Jack,” he answered, “knowing the way you’re fixed, I guess that’ll be all right, though with nine men out of ten, of course I wouldn’t consider such a way of doing things. Business is business, and when it comes right down to the fine point, why, it’s the cold hard cash that counts, and nothing else; not friendship, or honor, or gratitude, or common decency, even—” both face and voice had hardened as he spoke; it was not his first panic—and then his look met Carleton’s fairly and squarely. “But with you, Jack,” he continued, “it’s different, as I say. Only let’s be perfectly sure that we understand each other. I don’t believe myself, you know, that things can go much lower; I think the chances are they’ve steadied for good; but for argument, let’s suppose they do. Then, as I understand it, you don’t want to have me sell you out at any price, no matter how far they break. You’ll make good any time I ask you to. You give me your word on that?”
Carleton readily enough assented. “Why, sure,” he answered lightly, “of course I do; you needn’t worry; I’ll make good,” and the broker nodded, well pleased.
“One thing less to bother over, then,” he said. “You’ll excuse me now, Jack, won’t you? This is going to be a horrible busy day, anyway, and the Lord send it’s nothing worse than that; it wouldn’t take much now to raise the very deuce.”
As he spoke the News Despatch boy entered, tossing down on the table a half dozen sheets fresh from the press. Turner glanced at them, and handed them over to Carleton, shaking his head as he did so. “London’s not feeling gay,” he observed, “I call that a pretty ragged opening myself. I don’t know what you think of it.”
Carleton read and nodded. It seemed as if everything in the half dozen pages made for discouragement. London had opened weak—lamentably weak. There were rumors of this—rumors of that—sickly, unhealthy mushroom growths of the night. There was talk of failures—suspensions—financial troubles of every kind—even the good name of a great bank was bandied carelessly to and fro. Silently Turner crossed the room, and took his seat at his desk; silently Carleton walked out into the customers’ room, and joined the other unfortunates who had come slowly straggling in, and who now stood around the ticker, waiting gloomily and apprehensively for the opening bell to ring.
The tension of the moment was plainly enough to be read in the attitudes and expressions of the members of the little group, not one of whom failed in some manner or other to betray the fact that he was far from possessing his usual poise and calm. Most of them, either consciously or unconsciously, showed their nervousness so plainly and even painfully that it was impossible to misinterpret the anxious glances cast first at the clock, then at the tape, as the moment of the opening drew near. One or two, indeed, essayed a nonchalance so obviously assumed as to render even more apparent the emotion it sought to conceal. One young fellow, with hat shoved far back on his head, hair in disorder, and a restless, frightened look in his eyes, glanced at Carleton as he approached.
“How you standing it, Jack?” he queried, with a faint attempt at jocularity. “Bad night to sleep last night, I called it; guess most likely ’twas something in the air.”
Another man, he of the toothpick, stout and coarse, held forth at some length for the benefit of the rest. “Oh, it was perfectly clear, the whole thing,” he was saying, with the air of one to whom all the mysteries and marvels of stock fluctuations are but as matters writ large in print the most plain. “You see Rockman and Sharp and Haverfeller got together on this thing, and then they had a conference with Horgan, and got him to say that he’d keep his hands off, and let things alone; then they had a clear chance, and you can see what they’ve done with it; oh, they’re clever all right; when those fellows get together, it’s time to look out; you can’t beat ’em.”
He spoke with a certain condescending finality, as if he had somehow once and for all fixed the status of the panic. After a moment or two a gray, scholarly looking little man, with gentle, puzzled eyes, addressed him, speaking with an air of timid respect for the stout man’s evident knowledge.