Making Money Part 8

He next undertook a daring operation, the buying up of the control of a great industry in compet.i.tion with an eastern group. A friend whom he trusted betrayed the pool he had formed, and the loyalty of his a.s.sociates, which made him continue, completely bankrupted him. Before the public had even an inkling of the extent of his catastrophe he had mended his fortunes by the brilliant stroke, secured control of one of the subsidiary companies destined for the steel trust, and realized a couple of millions as his share. When he referred to this moment, which he often did, he used to say frankly:

"We went into the meeting bankrupt and came out seven millionaires."

He became the leader of a group of young financiers who acquired and developed with amazing success a chain of impoverished railroads. He played the game, scrupulous to his word, merciless in a fight, generous to a conquered enemy, for the love of the game itself. A big man with a curious atmosphere of amused calm in the midst of the flurry and turmoil he aroused, he enjoyed the turns and twists of fate with the zest of a boy gray-eyed, imperturbable, and magnetic, winning even those who saw in him an ethical and economical danger.

Such was the man who was bending over a great oaken table engrossed in the piecing together of an intricate picture puzzle, as Bojo came through the heavy tapestry portieres. Patsie, perched on a corner, was looking on with approving interest at the happy solving of a perplexing group. She sprang down, flung her arms about her father in an impulsive farewell, and came prancing over to Bojo with a laughing warning:

"Whatever you do, _never_ find a piece for him. It makes him madder than a wet hen. He wants to do it all himself. Now I'm running off. Don't worry! Go on, talk your old business."

She went off like the flash of a golden bird while Bojo, slightly intimidated, was wishing she might remain.

"Tom--glad to see you--come in--just a moment--help yourself to a cigar.

Confound that piece, I knew it fitted in there!" Drake left the board with a lingering regret, shook hands with a grip that seemed to envelop the young man, and went to the mantel for a match, where a large equestrian statue of Bartolommeo Colleoni rose threateningly from the shadows.

"Glad to see you, my boy--my orders are in from the General Manager, and when the General Manager gives orders I know it means hustle!" By this t.i.tle he designated Doris, whose practical ambitions and perseverance he satirized with an indulgent smile. "Far as I can make out, Doris has determined to make you a millionaire in a couple of years or so, so I suppose the best thing is to sit down and discuss it."

As he stood there gaunt and alert against the bronze background, there was something about him too of the old condottieri, a certain blunt and hardened quality of the grizzled head, as though he too had just hung back a steel helmet and emerged tense and victorious from a bruising scramble.

"Supposing he's figuring out that I'll cost him less than the Duke,"

thought Tom, conscious of a certain proprietary estimation below all the surface urbanity, and, squaring to the charge, he said: "I'm afraid, sir, you've a pretty poor opinion of me."

"What do you mean?" said Drake, with sudden interest.

"May I talk to you plainly, sir?" said Tom, a little fl.u.s.tered. "I don't know just how I feel about Doris or even just how she feels about me. I certainly have no intention of marrying her until I know what I am worth myself, and I certainly don't intend to come to you, her father, to make money for me."

He stopped with a little fear for his boldness, for this had not been his intention on entering the room. In fact, he had come rather in a state of indecision, after long discussions with Doris, and much serving up of sophistries to his conscience; but Drake's greeting had struck at his young independence, as perhaps it had been meant to do, and an impulsive wave of indignation overruled his calculations. He stood a little apprehensive, watching the older man, wondering how he would receive the defiance.

"That's talking," said Drake, with an approving smile. "Go on."

"Mr. Drake, I can't help feeling that we're going to look at things more and more from a different point of view. Doris cares for me--I suppose so--if she can have me without sacrificing anything. I don't express it very well, but I do feel at times that she's more interested in what she can make out of me than in me, and I don't know if I'll work out the way she wants; in fact, I'm not at all sure," he blurted out pugnaciously.

"But I want to work out that way, and if I don't there'll come a smashup pretty soon."

"There's something in what you say," said Drake, nodding, "and I like your coming straight out with it. Now look here, my boy, I'm not going to take hold of you because I expect you to marry Doris, but because I _want_ you to marry her! Get that down. I can control lots of things, but I can't control the women. They beat me every time. I'm pulp. I've given in once, though Lord knows I hope my little girl won't regret it.

I've got one decayed foreign t.i.tle dangling to the totem-pole, and that's enough; that's got to satisfy the missus. I don't want another and I don't want any high-stepping Fifth Avenue dude. I want a man, one of my own kind who can talk my language."

He arose, took a turn, and clapped him on the shoulder. "I want you. I settled that in my own mind long ago. Now I'm going to talk as plain to you. As you get on you'll look at people differently than you do. You'll see how much is due to accident, the parting of the ways, going to the left instead of to the right. Now I know Doris. I've watched her. She's got two sides to her; you appeal to the best. I know it. She knows it.

She wouldn't marry you if you were a beggar--women are that way--but she'll stick to you loyal, as a regular, if she marries you; and you're not going to be a beggar."

"Yes, if I consent to close my eyes and let you build--"

"Now don't get huffy. I'm not going to tuck you under my wing," said Drake, grinning. "Furthermore, I wouldn't want you in the family if I didn't know you had stuff in you. Don't you think I want some one I can trust in this cut-throat game? Don't worry, if you're the right sort I can use you. Now quit thinking too much--let things work out. Doris is the kind that belongs at the top; she's bound to be a leader, and we're going to put her there, you and I. Now what do you want to do?"

"I want to stand on my own feet," said Tom, with a last resistance. "I want to see what I'm worth by myself."

"Wall Street, of course," said Drake, grinning again. "Well, why not?

You'll learn quicker the things you've got to learn, even if it costs you more."

He flung down in a great armchair, and stared out at the raw recruit as though for an instant rolling back the years to his own beginnings.

"Tom, if you're going in," he said all at once, "go in with your eyes open and make up your mind soon what you want; but when you've made up your mind don't fool yourself. If you want to plod along safe and sane, you can do it just as well in Wall Street as anywhere else. But I reckon that's not what you're after." He chuckled at Bojo's confused acknowledgment of the patness of his surmise and continued:

"Well, then, recognize that what you're going into is war, nothing more nor less. You see, we're a curious people; we haven't had the chance to develop as others. And there's something instinctive about war; in a growing nation it lets off a lot of wild energy. Now there's a group of the big fellows here that ought to have had a chance at being field marshals or admirals, and because they haven't the chance they've developed a special little battlefield of their own to fight each other.

And, say, the big fellows don't fool themselves--they know what they're doing! They're under no illusions. But there're a lot of big little men down there who go around hugging delusions to their hearts, who'll sack a railroad or lay siege to a corporation with the idea they're ordained to grab the other fellow's property. Now I don't fool myself: that's my strong point. I'm grabbing as fast as the other fellow, but I know the time's coming when they won't let us grab any more. I do it because I want to, because I love it and because we're founding aristocracies here as the Old World did a couple of centuries ago. Well, to come back to you. I'll see you start in a good firm--"

"I'd rather do it myself."

"As you wish. Got any money?"

"Fifty thousand dollars," said Tom, who then related his father's prediction.

"Ordinarily he's a good guesser," said Drake, laughing. "But we may put one over on him. There's a scheme I've been brewing over for a big combine in the woolen industry that may give him a pleasant surprise.

Well, then, start in on your own feet, my boy. Learn all you can of men.

Study them--browse around in figures, if you want, but everlastingly keep your eyes on men! It's the man and not the proposition that's gilt-edged or empty. You've got to learn how the other fellow thinks, what he'll do in a given situation, if you're going to think ahead of him, and that's the quality that counts. That's where I've got them guessing, every minute of the day; there isn't one of them can figure out now if I'm twenty millions to the good or ten behind."

"Why, Tom, there was a time when I was stone broke--by golly, even my creditors were broke, which is an awful thing; and everything depended on my getting the right backing on the proposition that saved me. Do you think any one of those sleuth-hounds were on? Not on your life. I was living at the biggest hotel, in the biggest suite, spilling money all over the city--on tick, of course. And, say, in the critical week, when I was dodging my own tailor, I sent the missus (she didn't know anything, either) up to Fifth Avenue to buy a $100,000 necklace. That settled it. The other fellows, the fellows whose brains wind up like clocks, couldn't figure it out. I got my backing."

"But supposing you hadn't," said Bojo involuntarily. He had been listening to this recital open-eyed like a child at a circus. "What would have happened?"

Drake laughed contentedly. "There you are. That's all the other fellow could figure on. Now don't imagine you can do what I did--you can't. I suppose there's no use telling you not to speculate, because you're going to, no matter what you think now. You will; because the young fellow who goes into Wall Street and doesn't think he's a genius in the first three months hasn't been born yet! But the first time it comes over you, throw only a third of your capital out of the window. Do you get me?"

"I won't do that," said Bojo resolutely.

"Go on. Do. You ought. It's cheap at that! I paid seven hundred thousand for the same information," said Drake, giving him his hand. He caught his shoulder in his powerful grip and added: "If you get in too much trouble, come to me! Remember that and good luck!"

CHAPTER VI

BOJO OBEYS HIS GENERAL MANAGER

Three months after his entry into Wall Street, Bojo emerged from his bedroom into the communal sitting-room in a state of tense excitement.

The day before he had taken his first plunge into the world of speculation and bought a thousand shares of Indiana Smelter on a twenty per cent. margin. This transaction, which represented to his mind the inevitable challenge at the gates of fortune, had left him in a turmoil through all the restless night. He had taken the decision which was to decide his future only after a long wrestling with his conscience.

At first he had imposed a limit, promising himself that he would not touch a penny of his $50,000 capital until he should know of his own knowledge. Gradually this time limit had contracted. Speculation was in the air, triumphant and insidious. The whole market was sweeping up irresistibly. The times were dramatic. Golden opportunity seemed within every one's grasp. Expansion, development, amalgamation were on every tongue. Roscoe Marsh had made a hundred thousand on paper. Even Fred DeLancy had won several turns which had netted him handsome profits.

Bojo had resisted stubbornly at first, turning heedless ears to the excited arguments of his friends, but the fever of speculation had entered his veins, he dreamed of nothing else, and gradually the thought of his $50,000, so modestly invested in four per cent. bonds obsessed him. What was worse was that each time he had refused to follow a tip of Marsh or DeLancy or a dozen new-found friends, he secretly noted down the speculation; and the thought of these dollars he had refused, which could have been his for the asking, rose up before him in a constant reproach. In the end it was Doris who decided him.

That indefatigable schemer, whom even he now called the General Manager, had a dozen times summoned him for an excited consultation on some rumor which she had caught in pa.s.sage. At first he had laughed her down, then he had stubbornly refused such an alliance. But Doris, undaunted, returned to the charge, amazing him at times with the pertinency of her information, which she picked up from the wives and daughters, from those who came as suitors, or as mere friends of the family, while just as industriously and cleverly she commandeered her acquaintance and sent Bojo a string of customers which had remarkably affected his progress in the brokerage offices of Hauk, Flaspoller and Forshay.

Finally he had yielded, because for weeks he had been longing to yield as a spectator tires of watching inactive the spectacle of the shifting golden combinations on the green cloth of the gambling table. She had information of the most explicit sort. A great combination of Middle Western Smelters had been held up for several weeks by the refusal of two great companies to enter at the price offered--Indiana Smelter and Rockland Foundry. She knew positively that the matter would be adjusted in the next fortnight.

"Did your father say so?" he asked, really impressed, for Drake was reported as directly interested.

"Not in the first place."

"But where did you get your information?"