“I see,” said Singlebury; “same old story—plenty of water for the road but no solid nourishment for the investors.”
“That’s a good line,” commended Mr. Foxman; “better save it up for your story and use it there. But it’s not the same old story over again. At least this time there’s a new twist to it.
“Up until now the crowd that have been manipulating the stock stayed inside the law, no matter what else they may have done that was shady. But I have cause to believe that a new gang has stepped in—a gang headed by John W. Blake of the Blake Bank. You’ve heard of him, I guess?”
Singlebury nodded.
“It’s been known for some time on the inside that the Blake outfit were figuring on a merger of some of the independent East Side surface lines—half a dozen scattered lines, more or less. There’ve been stories printed about this—we printed some of them ourselves. What hasn’t been known was that they had their hooks into the Pearl Street line too. Poor outcast as it is, the Pearl Street line, with the proposed [314] Pearl Street loop round Five Points—a charter was granted for that extension some time ago—will form the connecting link to the combination they’re figuring on. And then on top of that there’s the direct connection to be made with the new Brooklyn subway that’s being built now. If you’ll look at the map of the East Side lines you’ll see for yourself how important it is for the group that intends to take control of the trolley lines on this side of the river and hopes to control the subway to the other side of the river that they should have the Pearl Street loop in their grip. With it they win; without it there’s doubt of the success of their plan.
“Well, that part of it is legitimate enough, I suppose. The common stock of the Pearl Street line has been shoved down and down and down, until to-day it touched twenty. And Blake’s crowd on the quiet have been buying it in—freezing out the small stockholders as they went along, and knowing mighty good and well that the day they announced their merger the stock would go up with a jump—thirty or forty or fifty points maybe—and then they’d clean up. Well, I suppose that’s legitimate too—at least it’s recognised as regular on Wall Street, provided you can get away with it. But behind the scenes there’s been some outright, downright, grand larceny going on and, along with that, legislative corruption too.
“The stealing has been covered up so far, [315] under a blanket of legal embroidery and fancy phraseology. Trust a wise outfit of lawyers, like the outfit Blake has on his pay roll, to attend to those little details. But I have reason to believe, having got hold of the inside story from strictly private sources, that the gang now in control have laid themselves liable to prison sentences by a few of the tricks they’ve pulled off. For instance, they haven’t let a little thing like bribery stand in their way. They weren’t satisfied to stifle a competitive interest politely and quietly, according to the Wall Street standards. No; these thugs just naturally clubbed it to death. I guess they saw so much in it for themselves they took a long chance on being indicted if the facts ever came out. And I happen to know where we can get the facts if we go about it in the right way. Listen, carefully!”
For five minutes he talked on, expounding and explaining in straightaway, sharp sentences. And Singlebury, on the edge of his chair, listening, felt the lust of the big-game hunter quicken within him. Every real reporter is a big-game hunter at heart, and the weapon he uses frequently is a deadly one, even though it is nothing more than a lead pencil costing five cents at any stationery shop. The scent was in his nose now, dilating his nostrils; he wriggled to take the trail.
“Now, then, you’ve got the inside dope, as I get it myself,” said Mr. Foxman at the end of [316] those pregnant five minutes. “You can see for yourself, though, that a good deal of it—the vital part of it as it stands now—is mostly surmise and suspicion. Naturally, we can’t go to the bat against this gang with suspicions; we’d probably land in jail ourselves for criminal libel, instead of landing a few of them in jail, as we hope to do. But if we can prove up—if we can get hold of the rest of the evidence—it’ll make one of the sweetest beats that was ever pulled off in this town.
“Of course, as you can see, John W. Blake is the principal figure in the whole intrigue, just as the Pearl Street line is the key to the merger scheme. But you stay away from Blake. Don’t go near him—yet. If he gets wind of what we are figuring on doing here in this office he might have influence enough to make trouble for us before we’re ready for the big blow-off. Leave Blake out of it for the time being—leave him strictly alone! He can do his talking and his explaining after we’ve smoked the nigger out of the woodpile. But here are two other men”—he touched the remaining piles of sorted-out clippings—“who are willing, under cover, to indulge in a little conversation. I want you to read these morgue clippings, more to get an angle on their personalities than for any other reason. Bogardus—Samuel P. Bogardus—used to be Blake’s best little trained performing lobbyist. When it comes to handling the members of a general [317] assembly or a board of aldermen he’s fuller of cute tricks than a clown dog is. Old Pratt is a different kind of crook—a psalm-singing, pussyfooted old buccaneer, teaching a Bible class on Sundays and thimblerigging in Wall Street on week days. As a Pharisee who’s working at the trade he’d make any Pharisee you ever ran across out yonder on the Pacific Slope, where you came from, look like a piker.