“In other words,” said Balcomb, “you wish me to find purchasers for the lots and sell them out so as to bring you the money in a lump. How much do you want for them?”
“I think for the corner lots I should get twelve hundred and fifty dollars each; the inside lots I hold to be worth a thousand. But we’ll say fifty thousand for all.”
There was an inquiry in his words and his eyes questioned Balcomb in a way that made the young man wonder. It is not the part of what is known as a good trader to show anxiety, and the old man’s tone and look were not wasted on Balcomb. The young fellow knew a great many things about human nature, and ever since he had seen Ezra Dameron enter the broker’s office he had set the old man down as a fraud. The reason Dameron gave for turning the lots over to him to sell was hardly convincing. Balcomb was nothing if not suspicious, and it occurred to him at once that Dameron was in straits; and at the same moment he began to devise means for turning the old man’s necessities to his own advantage.
“Here is a plat of the property. Suppose you study the matter over and let me know whether you care to attempt the sale.”
“As you wish, Mr. Dameron. I’ll come in, say, to-morrow at this hour.”
“Very well,” said Dameron, coldly. “I don’t want you to undertake the matter unless you can handle it in bulk.”
The Dameron addition of fifty lots was an inheritance from old Roger Merriam, Zelda Dameron’s grandfather. It had been a part of Margaret Dameron’s share of her father’s estate, and was held by Ezra Dameron in trust for Zelda. Manufacturing interests had lately carried improvements that way, but Dameron’s efforts to sell lots had not been successful, as his prices were high and the menace of expensive improvements gave pause to the working people who were the natural buyers. Then Dameron had become interested in larger matters than the peddling of lots, and he had given no serious thought to selling until he felt the need of obtaining more ready money for use in his speculations.
As Balcomb turned to go a boy came in with a telegram. It was from the brokers in Chicago through whom Dameron was trading in grain. The market had opened wildly on news that the drought had done little actual damage to the corn crop. An hour later he was advised that his margins had been wiped out; he made them good from funds he was now carrying in Chicago and ordered the sale of unimpeachable securities to replenish his account.
Dameron, whose mind was singularly prosaic, had of late been reading into his speculations a certain poetic quality, though he did not suspect it. He had never been a farmer and had only the most superficial knowledge of farming. Yet he had studied all summer long the growth of the corn in his own fields at The Beeches. He had reckoned the rainfall of the region and compared it with the figures given in books of statistics for other years. He covered hundreds of sheets of paper during the long summer days with computations, and played with them as a boy with the knack of rhyming plays at tagging rhymes. He cherished first the idea that the year would be marked by excessive rainfalls which would be detrimental to the corn crop, and when the government bulletins failed to bear him out in this he assured himself that the year would be marked by late frosts that would destroy the crop over a wide area. He proved to his own satisfaction, by means of the tables he had compiled, that dollar corn was inevitable.
This idea took a strong hold upon his imagination. It was fascinating, the thought of playing a great game in which the sun and winds and clouds of heaven were such potent factors. There was a keen satisfaction in the fact that he could study the whole matter from the secure vantage ground of his own office, and that when he went home at night, there it was across the road from his own gate, under his eye, the beloved corn, tall and rustling, beautiful and calm, but waiting for the hand of the destroyer. Even this, his own, should perish, and yet he was accumulating scraps of paper that called for thousands of bushels of corn at a time when it would grieve many short-sighted men sorely to deliver it to him.