“Yes,” admitted Stirling, “it would do all that. However, I want to suggest that that isn’t quite enough. Anyway, that’s my view of it.”
They looked at each other steadily for a moment or two, and then Stirling made a little forceful gesture.
“Now,” he said, “I’m going to take hold of this thing; and in the first place I’ll give you an order on my bank for all the money that seems necessary. You will take up some of that stock for me; and, as the Hogarth men will offer more freely as soon as they strike an actual buyer, in case prices stiffen you’ll follow their lead and pitch the stock you bought on to the market.”
“Some men would consider that was playing the other people’s game,” commented Wannop, with a chuckle.
“It would be, in the meanwhile,” said Stirling. “Well, you won’t let your sales—if you make any—get out of hand. You’ll have to put on one or two smart men, and cover or sell at a lower price through different ones when it appears advisable. I shall naturally lose a little on every deal of that kind, but the only real trouble will be when you quietly gather in as much as possible of the stock the other people are offering. It will have to be done without raising suspicions, and before their broker can report and ask for instructions.”
Wannop struck the table. “There’s some hazard in it—but it’s a great idea,” he said. “They’ll club the Grenfell Consols down quite flat.”
“Until settling day. Then, when the other people have to deliver, they can’t get the stock. We’ll shove the prices up on them to anything we like.”
Wannop gazed at him in exultation, but presently he asked a disconnected question.
“Why are you doing all this?”
“For money, for one thing,” said Stirling, with a little flush in his face. “For another, because I’ve been sweated and bluffed and bullied by people of the kind you’re up against, and now I feel it’s ’most a duty to strike back.” He clenched a big, hard hand. “I’ve watched my wife scrubbing and baking and patching my clothes in the old black days when I lived in a three-roomed shack because I was bluffed out of half my earnings by people who sent their daughters to Europe every year. I’ve nothing to say against legitimate dealing, but it’s another thing when these soft-handed, over-fed-men suck the blood out of every minor industry and make their pile by the grinding down of a host of struggling toilers. By next settling day one or two of them are going to feel my hand.”