I was busy in the Salt Lake Herald office next day when affable Peter Grant, a partner of Mr. Sullivan, with whom Mr. Sullivan had at the outset divided his interest in the Sullivan Trust Company, walked in. I asked Mr. Grant, who had remained at the helm with Mr. Sullivan while I was away from Goldfield, about business. He assured me that the loan from the State Bank & Trust Company would not only be forthcoming, as needed, but that Cashier Lindsey had informed him that we could have $500,000 instead of $300,000 additional, if we actually had to have it, and that the bank would back us to the extent of a million in all, if necessary.
On calling next morning at the office of James A. Pollock & Company, our Salt Lake correspondents, I was astounded to learn that rumors had been telegraphed to them from San Francisco that our paper was being held up in Goldfield.
"That's nonsense!" said Mr. Grant. "Why, Lindsey has given me his word, and there can't be a question about it."
"Maybe he has 'laid down' on us," I said, "and that would be ——!"
"Nonsense!" said Mr. Grant. "I'll telegraph him that in addition to honoring our Goldfield paper with the money we have borrowed from him, he must wire $150,000 to our credit in San Francisco, and you and I can jump on the train to-day and go to San Francisco and support the market right on the ground. If those rumors have spread around San Francisco a lot of short-selling will take place and the market will need support."
I agreed.
So confident were Mr. Grant, James A. Pollock & Company, and I that everything was right with us that we gave and they accepted a big supporting order to be used on the San Francisco Stock Exchange during the succeeding day while Mr. Grant and I should be on the train to the Coast city.
We arrived in San Francisco late at night. A number of brokers met us and conveyed the news that the State Bank & Trust Company had "laid down" on us. In the meantime despatches to us from the cashier of the Sullivan Trust Company had piled up at the hotel. He explained the situation, which was this:
All the trains carrying drafts in the mail to Goldfield had been stalled by snowstorms two days before New Year's. The next day was Sunday. Monday was New Year's Day, a legal holiday. Thus five days' mail had accumulated, and on Tuesday the delayed drafts were presented, all in a bunch.
L. M. Sullivan, president of the trust company, who was supposed to be on deck at Goldfield, was in Tonopah, where he was reported to be in imminent danger of arrest on the charge that during a New Year's brawl he had nearly brained a chauffeur with a butt-end of a revolver.