Frenzied Finance, Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated

by Thomas William Lawson

CHAPTER XX

AN AWKWARD ATTACK OF APPENDICITIS

In no walk of life is that head-light axiom, "Man proposes, God disposes," so often flashed plump in the eyes of enthusiastic travellers for their bewilderment or befuddlement as in finance. At this very moment of success I was, without knowing it, on the brink of ruin, owing to causes and conditions which were beyond human power to calculate or foresee. Here is what happened:

All the details of our bargain having at last been agreed upon verbally, it was proper the principals should get together and formally execute the documents which should bind the trade. We arranged to meet on a given Saturday at the beautiful stock-farm of Parker C. Chandler, Esq., the Bay State's general counsel, and as secrecy was important, a special train was to take the party the twenty-five miles out of Boston. By an unavoidable accident I missed the train, and in driving over the road in a bleak rain-storm, caught a violent cold. I was about three hours late, but when I arrived we went to work with a will and by seven o'clock, shortly before dinner, our contracts had been dictated to the stenographers and would be typed, ready to sign, by the time we came to our coffee.

That dinner was a thing to be remembered. No one in New England understands more admirably the art of dining than does Parker Chandler, and he gave us a feast worthy to celebrate the brilliant new combination which was to end all our troubles and lead us out of darkness into the light. As the cheese was being served I was seized suddenly with a terrible pain, which was followed by convulsions. They carried me to a bedroom; lawyers and capitalists went scurrying after doctors, and in the confusion the documents which were all ready awaiting execution were put aside. It was obvious that at that moment I could not O.K. them. At last specialists from Boston arrived and it was diagnosed that I was suffering from an aggravated attack of appendicitis. At two o'clock in the morning, after a prolonged consultation, the consensus of opinion was that my next field of operations would be in another world.

It must have been some time a little later that I, awaking to a brief interval of consciousness, witnessed a tableau, the memory of which invariably rises to my mind's eye whenever I try to mitigate or subdue my feelings of hatred and disgust for Addicks. The room was dimly lit; the two doctors were at the foot of the bed; Addicks, standing beside them, was looking fixedly at me. I caught his eye; doped as I was with opiates I saw the cold, calculating expression of his face, which told me as plainly as words that he felt it was all up with me, that my usefulness to him was at an end, and that without a thought for my interests or a scintilla of regret, he was calculating how to turn my death to his advantage. An amused conviction of the man's heartlessness crept over me, and then I passed out into the land of dreams.

From that night until one bright morning ten days later, I was visiting other worlds than those of finance and gas; but on the tenth day they told me I had eluded the grim ferryman and, barring accident, might get out into the world again in five weeks. A suspicion which owed its origin to that glimpse of Addicks on the first night of my illness awakened in my mind, and the following day I sent for my principal attorney and demanded an exact statement of what had happened in the interval of my illness. He had kept close track of all that had occurred, and the facts he revealed, calloused as I was to the thought of Addicks' baseness, horrified me by their cold-blooded villany. My associates had gone ahead with a vengeance, without waiting a minute to see whether I should live or die. My offer to the Legislature had been withdrawn; Addicks had substituted his name for mine in all the documents, and then he had traded with Rogers. It had been arranged between them that Whitney should go on and get the charter, which was to allow the company to sell gas at any price, for it was not to be under the supervision of the gas commissioners, who had pledged the public that the price of gas in Boston should not ever be more than $1 per one thousand feet. This obtained, a new corporation was to be organized, into which Rogers would merge his companies, and Addicks our Boston properties, in such a way as to leave Bay State stock and bondholders high and dry, while Addicks, Whitney, and Rogers reaped tremendous profits. These amiable plans were being hammered into shape at top speed, and unless I could get into harness at once, my friends and I would most certainly be ground up. Head-quarters had been opened at the Algonquin Club, and there Addicks, Whitney, Towle, and the lawyers and lobbyists were holding day and night sessions.

There was but one thing for me to do, and I lost not a moment. I sent for my doctors and said: "I will devote to-day, to-morrow, and next day to getting well; but on the fourth day I will be moved in a special car to Boston and then to the Algonquin Club." I explained the situation and showed them that regardless of all consequences this must be done.

I shall never forget the expression on the faces of these loyal associates of mine—Addicks, Whitney, and the others—when I dropped in upon their deliberations Saturday morning, four days later. My doctor, a nurse, and my lawyer accompanied me, and I was swathed in flannels and shawls. I got to a chair, dismissed my attendants, and launched in. What little I had to say would be brief, I told them, but "edgy." It was all that. I insisted that we should go right back to our old bargain exactly at the place we had left it the night I was taken ill. If they did not comply, I would make application for a receiver for the Bay State companies and give to the afternoon papers the inside facts of the affair from beginning to end. No one doubted either my ability or my determination to carry out my threat. We sent for the documents that had been prepared at Parker Chandler's, and inside of three hours these had been substituted and the several agreements entered into with Rogers formally renounced. I retired to bed that night with a chuckle of self-satisfaction, and a convincing appreciation of the truth of the axiom I have referred to.