The Way of the Strong

by Ridgwell Cullum

But there was another Austin Leyburn when the claims of his business released him for infrequent week-ends. He was an affluent sort of country squire. A man who reveled in the possession of an ample estate and splendid mansion, hidden away in the remotenesses of a natural beauty spot some twenty-five miles outside Toronto. Here he enjoyed the luxuries and comforts which in others were anathema to him. His cellar was well stocked with wines of the choicest vintages. His cigars were the best money could buy. He possessed a modest collection of works of art, and his house was furnished with all those things valued for their age and associations.

To this place he would adjourn at long intervals. And at such times even his name would be left behind him in the city, in company of his ready-made clothing, his scarcely immaculate collar, and the memory of fly-ridden restaurants, lest there should be a jarring note to his enjoyment as he lounged back in his powerful automobile, which was never permitted to cross the city limits.

All these things were bought and paid for by a method of making money almost devilish in its inception. Leyburn was a gambler on the stock market. He gambled in Labor strikes.

This was the great final coup he now contemplated. He cared not one jot for the injustices meted out to labor. He cared nothing for the sufferings, the privations it had to endure. Long ago he and many others of his associates had learned the fact that all strikes more or less affected the financial market. Nor were they slow to take advantage of it.

A general transport strike would send shares crashing to bed-rock prices; would send them tumbling as they had never fallen before, as even international war would not affect them. And when they had fallen sufficiently, when, in his own phraseology, the bottom had dropped out of the market, then he and his fellow-vultures would plunge their greedy beaks into the flesh of the carcass and gorge themselves. Then, and not till then, the starving worker might return to his work.

Just now he was in Calford and hard at work. While his subordinates lived in a whirl of organization, his it was to contrive that the news of the labor troubles reached the world at large in a sufficiently alarming type. And his gauge of the alarm achieved would be the state of the financial markets.

He had only that morning returned from Deep Willows, and it was not until long after his mid-day meal that he found leisure to turn his thoughts definitely to the fresh plans he had decided upon, on his journey back to Calford.

Now, as he sat before his desk, he picked up the receiver of the telephone and spoke sharply.

"Is Frank Smith in the office?" he demanded. "Yes. I said Smith. Oh! Then tell him to come to me at once."

He replaced the instrument and leaned back in his chair. He felt that Fate had played an extraordinarily pleasant trick upon him. In his cynical way he admitted grudgingly that for once she had been more than kind. The chance of it. A loose end. Yes, he had actually found himself with a loose end, and had promptly decided to fill up the time with a visit to the greatest wheat grower in the country in the interests of his new toy, the Agricultural Labor Society. It had led him—whither?