CHAPTER XXVIII
THE BOGUS SUBSCRIPTION
Later, on his way downtown, Mr. Rogers came to my rooms.
"Are you ready for the finals, Lawson?" he said cordially. He, too, had dined, and doubtless philosophized; his whole air showed me he had satisfied himself that I would submit to the logic of conditions. No man knows the human animal from his heart's seed to its bloom better than Henry H. Rogers—and I was human.
I told him I would hold the reporters until I got the word from him, and that it must not be later than midnight. No questions were asked nor assurances given. He left in a moment for the National City Bank, and there in its solemn chambers he and James Stillman perpetrated the act which is the crime of Amalgamated, in itself a stark and palpable fraud, but aggravated by the standing of the men concerned in it, and the pledges that were slaughtered, into as arrant and damnable piece of financial villany as was ever committed.
About eleven o'clock my telephone rang. I heard Mr. Rogers' voice.
"Lawson, Stillman's tally is so far completed that we know about where we are. Give out to the press that the subscription runs between four hundred and four hundred and twenty-five millions, call it four hundred and twelve millions, after throwing out one hundred and seventy millions from speculators, and sixty-two millions as defective, and after shutting out fifty millions more which were received too late. Each subscriber will be allotted fifteen to twenty per cent. of his subscription—call it eighteen per cent."
The figures were paralyzing. I made no attempt to analyze them. They came so late that as soon as the newspaper-men with me got them they flew to their offices and thus I escaped a strenuous ordeal of interviewing. Our arrangements for distributing the facts throughout the country were made through the Boston Financial News, to which we had given the exclusive right to send out the details, and its special wires were soon clicking the news to all the world. The next morning the press contained the particulars. I reproduce from the papers of May 5th the tale.