"Listen to me," he said swiftly to the breathless clerk. "The crisis has come—go outside as fast as you can and tell somebody that the Arkansas legislature has doubled the freight rates on the T. & S. There'll be a dozen people doing the same. And then wait five minutes—not a second more, do you hear? and let it out that I am breaking T. & S., and that the Governor's with me, and Shrike, and the rest of them."
The man nodded and disappeared, and van Rensselaer turned once more to the ticker. There was a moment's pause, and he went to the window and stared out. Then it began again—T. & S. still holding. Van Rensselaer knew that the ticker was some minutes behind the market, and he cursed with impatience. Then he took a pencil and began figuring, as well as he could, with his trembling hands.
He had put twenty-seven million dollars into this thing; he had bought the margins of something like a million and three-quarters shares. That was more shares than were in existence, actually; but under Wall Street's systems of speculating that is a common enough state of affairs. The fact that impressed him was that every point that T. & S. went down he stood to win a million and three-quarters of dollars from the men he had been fighting. And if instead it went up, and stayed up the time limit, he owed the same sum instead. And then suddenly the ticker clicked again; it was five minutes of eleven, and T. & S. still holding,—1575⁄8—1573⁄8—1571⁄2. He could bear the thing no more; he drained the bottle and sprang out of the door. In a few moments more he was on the street.
XXXII
There were thousands of men flying this way and that, wild-eyed and shrieking. Van Rensselaer caught a phrase here and there,—"freight rates—ruin them—the van Rensselaers—Shrike." And meanwhile he was hurrying on his way to the board-room. He was a member and was admitted to the bedlam, to the edge of that writhing, hysterical mass of men who were crushing each other, breathless in their efforts to reach the trading-post. Van Rensselaer gazed at the figure of the stock—it was 157! He heard the same exclamations here that he had heard outside,—"freight rates—the van Rensselaers,"—and all the rest; and then suddenly he saw near him a huge ox of a man, waving a paper in one hand and bellowing in a voice that rang above the whole uproar. It was one of van Rensselaer's own brokers, the best of them; and as van Rensselaer heard him his heart stood still. The moment had come!
"I offer twenty thousand three-day sellers! T. & S. twenty thousand!—one fifty-seven! one fifty-seven! Twenty thousand three-day sellers—one fifty-six and seven-eighths! one fifty-six and three-quarters!"
And then again the roar swelled up and drowned him. Men were screaming from a hundred places: "One thousand at one fifty-six and a half! Thirty-five hundred at one fifty-six! one fifty-six! one fifty-five and a half!"
And van Rensselaer, mad, drunk, and blind with passion, shook his hands in the air and screamed in frenzy, "Down! down with them! Down! Jump on them! Pound them! Go on! go on!" He knew now that it was victory; he could feel it in the air—the panic, the wild, raging, mad tornado that uproots all things on its way. It had begun—it had begun! There were no more takers—the enemy was retreating—the rout was on! And so he yelled and laughed in delirium; and the crowd, crushed tightly about the post, went mad likewise, with terror or joy, as the case might be. There were men there who were losing a million with every point—the millions that van Rensselaer was winning. And they saw defeat and ruin glaring at them with fiery eyes. So they raged and screamed for some one to buy T. & S.—to buy it at one fifty-six! to buy it at one fifty-five! to buy it at one fifty-three! And there was no longer any one to buy it at any price.