“Why, people will think there’s something queer about the disappearance,” Moddridge explained. “Take the P. & Y. Railroad, for instance. Its capital is eighty million dollars. Delavan owns fifteen million of that himself. He’s the president, biggest stockholder, and the virtual czar of that railroad. If Frank can’t be found, what will folks be apt to think? Why, simply that he has been guilty of criminally mismanaging the railroad, for his own profit, and that now he has fled to some foreign country to hide away from the American law. P. & Y. stock will take a fearful drop.”
“That won’t happen, all in a day, will it?” questioned Captain Tom.
“It might. It will be sure to happen within a very few days, if Frank doesn’t show up again. Wall Street is the most sensitive place in the world. Let a breath of suspicion blow against a certain stock, and that stock drops and drops, until perhaps it goes down out of sight. Everyone who has his whole fortune invested in that stock may be ruined by the smash. If the P. & Y. stock goes down, it will knock Frank’s deals and mine into a cocked hat.”
“Why?” asked Tom, wonderingly.
“Why?” repeated Eben Moddridge, shiveringly. “Why, I’ve told you that Frank holds fifteen millions of P. & Y. stock. I hold five millions myself. Frank told you, yesterday, that we were plunging in Steel and other allied stocks that Mr. Gordon influences heavily. Steel and those other stocks are going to work up and down, like a see-saw, for the next few days. To raise the funds for our operations Frank and I have been pledging our P. & Y. stock, which stands at 102. But suppose Delavan can’t be found, and P. & Y. drops to forty—or even thirty?” gasped Eben Moddridge. “What would happen then?”
“Well, what would happen?” questioned Tom Halstead, to whom the whole vast Wall Street game was a great puzzle.
“Why, if P. & Y. tumbles like that,” continued Eben Moddridge, “the great banking houses that have been advancing us money on P. & Y. stock to play with Steel and allied stocks will be forced to call in their loans in order to protect themselves. Frank Delavan and I are pledged as heavily as we possibly can be. We couldn’t raise five million dollars more between us. So, if the bottom drops out of the P. & Y. stock Delavan and myself stand to be wiped off the board in all our deals—ruined!”
The last word came from Moddridge in a sobbing gasp. He was clutching at the rail as the “Rocket” moved in nearer to her pier.
“Halstead,” he continued soon, “as quickly as we land, I want you to get a carriage and rush to the telephone office with me. I’m so excited I feel as though I’d fall over in a faint. You must go with me—remain with me until this fearful ordeal is over.”