CHAPTER XXV
MR. FOX SOLVES HIS GREAT PROBLEM, AND MR. WALLINGFORD FALLS WITH A THUD
They arrived in Chicago late and they arose late. At breakfast, with languid interest, Wallingford picked up the paper that lay beside his plate, and the first item upon which his eyes rested was a sensational article headed: "BROKER SUICIDES." Even then he was scarcely interested until his eye caught the name of Edwin H. Fox.
"What is the matter?" asked his wife anxiously, as, with a startled exclamation, he hastily pushed back his chair and arose. It was the first time that she had ever in any emergency seen his florid face turn ghastly pale. Dilemmas, reverses and even absolute defeats he had always accepted with a gambler's coolness, but now, since his vanity had let him dignify his pursuit of other people's money by the name of financiering, the blow came with crushing force; for it maimed not only his pocketbook but his pride as it swept away the glittering air castles that he had been building for the past year.
"Matter!" he spluttered, half choking. "We are broke!" And leaving his breakfast untasted he hastily ordered a cab and drove to the office of Fox & Fleecer, devouring the details of the tragedy as he went. The philanthropic Mr. Fox, he of the glistening bald pate and the air of cold probity, the man who had been for thirty years in business at the old stand, who had seemed as firm as a rock and as unsusceptible as a quart of clams, had been leading not only a double but a sextuple life, for half a dozen pseudo-widows mourned his demise and the loss of a generous banker. To support all these expensive establishments, which, once set up, firmly declined to ever go out of existence, Mr. Fox had been juggling with the money of his customers; robbing Peter to pay Paul, until the time had come when Paul could be no longer paid and there was only one debt left that he could by any possibility wipe out—the debt he owed to Nature. That he had paid with a forty-four caliber bullet through the temple. At last he had solved that perplexing problem which had bothered him all these years.
Wallingford had expected to find the office of Fox & Fleecer closed, but the door stood wide open and the dingy apartment was filled with a crowd of men, all equally nervous but violently contrasted as to complexion, some of them being extremely pale and some extremely flushed, according to their temperaments. Mr. Fleecer, one of those strangest of all anomalies, a nervous fat man, stood behind Mr. Fox's desk, his collar wilted with perspiration and the flabby pouches under his eyes black from his vigil of the night. He was almost as large as Wallingford himself, but a careless dresser, and a pitiable object as he started back on hearing Wallingford's name, tossing up his right hand with a curious involuntary motion as if to ward off a blow. His crisp, quick voice, however, did not fit at all with his appearance of crushed indecision.
"I might as well tell you the blunt truth at first, Mr. Wallingford," he said. "You haven't a cent, so far as Fox & Fleecer is concerned. Nobody has. I haven't a dollar in the world and Fox was head over heels in debt, I find. How that sanctimonious old hypocrite ever got away with it all these years is the limit. I looked after the buying and selling orders as he gave them to me, and never had anything to do with the books. I never knew when a deal was in the office until I received market orders. I have spent all night on Fox's private accounts, however, and since yours was the largest item, I naturally went into it as deeply as I could. If they had telephones in Hell I could give you more accurate information, but the way I figure it is this: when he got hold of your four hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars with instructions to buy and not to close until it reached a dollar and a quarter, he evidently classed your proposition as absurd. There was absolutely nothing to make wheat go to that price, and, with the big margin you had put up, he figured that the account would drag along at least until September, without being touched; so he used what he had to have of the money to cover up his other steals, expecting to juggle the market with the rest of it on his own judgment, and expecting, in the end, to have it back to hand to you when you got tired. When he understood this upward movement, however, and saw the big thing you had done, he jumped into the market with what was left, something less than three hundred thousand dollars. The only way to make that up to the amount you should have by the time it reached a dollar and a quarter was to pyramid it, and this he did. He bought on short margin, closed when he had a good profit, and spread the total amount over other short margin purchases. He did this three times. On the last deal he had upward of five million bushels bought to your account, and it was this strong buying, coupled with the other buying orders which came in at about the dollar-and-a-quarter mark, that sent the market up to a dollar thirty-four. If the market could have held half an hour he would have gotten out all right and turned over to you a million dollars, after using two hundred and fifty thousand for his own purposes, but when he attempted to unload the market broke; and by —— we're all broke!"
Mr. Wallingford laughed, quite mechanically, and from his pocket drew two huge black cigars with gold bands around them.
"Have a smoke," he said to Mr. Fleecer.
Lighting his own Havana he turned and elbowed his way out of the room. One of the men who had stood near him exchanged a wondering stare with his neighbor.