“There’s a billion dollar steel trust on the way.”
What tidings!
The remark had gone around the world before daylight, and at the opening of the stock market in London people began to sell American securities. Those Yankees, they said, always a bit mad, now were drunk with the arithmetic of their wealth. Wall Street was vaguely uneasy, too. There was no such thing as a billion-dollar corporation.
Rumor for once in its life was below the truth. The great steel trust was to be capitalized at a billion and a half. There had to be room for everybody. Bullguard was to be its deity. There could be no other. The charter had been applied for. Famous lawyers had reconciled it with the law. All these facts came out gradually, mostly in the form of midnight rumors. In the highest circles of the steel court an extremely curious fact was already privately known. Sabath was to be the manipulator. If he could not perform the unimaginable feat of selling the shares of a billion-and-a-half dollar corporation to the public nobody could. Yet how strange that Bullguard and Sabath should sail a ship together.
At length all the salient probabilities had been established, and nothing happened. A week passed. Then another. Wall Street was strung with suspense and the nightly Waldorf swarm buzzed with adverse rumors. Time was priceless. The public was in a fever of excitement. If ever there was an opportunity it was then. Why did Bullguard wait? What unexpected difficulty had been encountered?
There was but one obstacle and that was John. The Breakspeare properties were too important to be left out. A trust of trusts without them simply could not be. Bullguard sent for all the other lords and barons first, and they were quick to come. Then one day John received a telephone call from the office of Bullguard & Company. Would he be pleased to come to their office for a conference? His response was to mention his business address. Next day one of Bullguard’s partners called in person.
“Mr. Bullguard wishes to see you,” he said.
“If I wished to see Mr. Bullguard, I’d look for him at his office, not mine,” said John.
“I beg your pardon?”
John repeated it. The partner went away, deeply offended in the name of Bullguard.