"'I'm sorry. I came to you because you're the only man down here I'm willing to look up to,' I said, for I knew there was no use going on, but as I went out I plumped in a last shot: 'In a year from now I'm going to put the same offer to you, and when I do I'll carry a few more guns.'
"I went out and I got to work. As a matter of fact, I had already begun. I went in with Majendie of the Atlantic Trust, Ryerson of the Columbian, and Dryser of the Seaboard Trust. I bought my way in. I'd got a say in institutions able to lend millions on good collateral without having to duck at a bell pressed downtown. Then I started with a group of Middle-Westerners to make myself felt. There was only one big field left and it was a question how long that would be left alone. They had organized their steel industries and their railroads, they'd knocked out or digested competitors, controlled the field of production and had things sailing along gloriously, but they'd forgotten, or almost forgotten, one thing which they ought to have controlled the first, the iron to pour into their furnaces and the coke to keep them going. When they woke up, they found me in control of the Eastern Coke and Iron Company, holding about eighty million dollars worth of land in West Virginia and Virginia which they had to have sooner or later. Then they woke up with a vengeance. The first thing they did was to send word to me through Haggerdy to get out of the Seaboard Trust and be a good little boy and they'd let me come around and play. I laughed at that, though I knew it meant war to the knife. About ten weeks ago I got a taste of what they could do. Of course, to carry what I was carrying, I had need of big sums, and I had large blocks of Eastern Coke and Iron hypothecated not only among my Trust Company connections, but in banks around town, where it was upon good strong margins. Ten weeks ago, when I dropped in at a certain bank to renew my loan, I was told that they had decided on account of the business outlook, the downward trend of prices and what not, to call in their loans and proceed on a very conservative basis. Of course, under that rigamarole I knew what was doing—orders from headquarters—and more to follow. I placed the loan with the Atlantic Trust and waited. Last week another refusal. This time the warning was a little more pointed. The president himself looked with grave concern—that's always the expression—on the amount of Eastern C. and I. stock hypothecated at present. A collapse in the stock, which had been declining steadily, might seriously upset financial conditions all over the country, etc. Well, I weathered that and a couple others until I've got where I'm stumped. A bank has got the right to decide for itself what it wants to lend money on; it can decline a loan on any security or all securities offered, and what are you going to do about it? The trust companies are carrying all they can and besides they're being squeezed themselves. As a matter of fact, with solid properties worth to-day in the market from fifty-five to fifty-seven millions, of which we own sixty per cent., there isn't a bank in town will lend us a hundred thousand dollars. The word has been passed around and those who are independent don't dare. I need two million cash by day after to-morrow, absolutely must have it, and they know it and Haggerdy's coming here to look me over, examine my pocketbook and say, 'What have you got that we want!'"
At this moment the butler came with a card.
"Did you say any one was here?" said Drake, studying the card.
"No, sir."
"Show Mr. Haggerdy in when I ring," said Drake, with a nod of dismissal. He rose and beckoning Bojo placed him in the embrosine of the window, where a slight recess hid him completely from the rest of the room.
"No need of a record; take it in just for your own curiosity," he said, returning to his desk.
Mr. James H. Haggerdy came in like a bulky animal emerging from a cage and blinking at the sun. He was not the man to beat about the bush, and in his own long and varied experience in Wall Street he had been called many names, but he had never been branded with anything petty, a fact which made a certain bond of sympathy between the two men.
"Hello, Dan!"
"Hello, Jim!"