The Cost Part 32

Dumont peered through the bronze fretwork. A closely packed ma.s.s of people was choking the sidewalk and street--his brougham was like an island in a troubled lake. He saw several policemen--they were trying to move the crowd on, but not trying sincerely. He saw three huge cameras, their operators under the black cloths, their lenses pointed at the door--waiting for him to appear. For the first time in his life he completely lost his nerve. Not only publicity, the paper--a lifeless sheet of print; but also publicity, the public--with living eyes to peer and living voices to jeer. He looked helplessly, appealingly at the "cur" he had itched to kick the moment before.

"What the devil shall I do?" he asked in a voice without a trace of courage.

"I don't know, sir," replied the servant. "The bas.e.m.e.nt door wouldn't help very much, would it?"

The bas.e.m.e.nt door was in front also. "Idiot! Is there no way out at the rear?" he asked.

"Only over the fences, sir," said the servant, perfectly matter-of-fact. Having no imagination, his mind made no picture of the great captain of industry scrambling over back fences like a stray cat flying from a brick.

Dumont turned back and into his first-floor sitting-room. He unlocked his stand of brandy bottles, poured out an enormous drink and gulped it down. His stomach reeled, then his head. He went to the window and looked out--there must have been five hundred people in the street, and vehicles were making their way slowly and with difficulty, drivers gaping at the house and joking with the crowd; newsboys, bent sidewise to balance their huge bundles of papers, were darting in and out, and even through the thick plate gla.s.s he could hear: "All about Millionaire Dumont's disgrace!"

He went through to a rear window. No, there was a continuous wall, a high brick wall. A servant came and told him he was wanted at the telephone. It was Giddings, who said in a voice that was striving in vain to be calm against the pressure of some intense excitement: "You are coming down to-day, Mr. Dumont?"

"Why?" asked Dumont, snapping the word out as short and savage as the crack of a lash.

"There are disquieting rumors of a raid on us."

"Who's to do the raiding?"

"They say it's Patterson and Fanning-Smith and Ca.s.sell and Herron.

It's a raid for control."

Dumont snorted scornfully. "Don't fret. We're all right. I'll be down soon." And he hung up the receiver, muttering: "The a.s.s! I must kick him out! He's an old woman the instant I turn my back."

He had intended not to go down, but to shut himself in with the brandy bottle until nightfall. This news made his presence in the Street imperative. "They couldn't have sprung at me at a worse time," he muttered. "But I can take care of 'em!"

He returned to the library, took another drink, larger than the first.

His blood began to pound through his veins and to rush along under the surface of his skin like a sheet of fire. Waves of fury surged into his brain, making him dizzy, confusing his sight--he could scarcely refrain from grinding his teeth. He descended to the bas.e.m.e.nt, his step unsteady.

"A ladder," he ordered in a thick voice.

He led the way to the rear wall. A dozen men-servants swarming about, tried to a.s.sist him. He ordered them aside and began to climb. As the upper part of his body rose above the wall-line he heard a triumphant shout, many voices crying: "There he is! There he is!"

The lot round the corner from his place was not built upon; and there, in the side street, was a rapidly swelling crowd, the camera-bearers hastily putting their instruments in position, the black cloths fluttering like palls or pirate flags. With a roaring howl he released his hold upon the ladder and shook both fists, his swollen face blazing between them. He tottered, fell backward, crashed upon the stone flooring of the area. His head struck with a crack that made the women-servants scream. The men lifted him and carried him into the house. He was not stunned; he tried to stand. But he staggered back into the arms of his valet and his butler.

"Brandy!" he gasped.

He took a third drink--and became unconscious. When the doctor arrived he was raving in a high fever. For years he had drunk to excess--but theretofore only when HE chose, never when his appet.i.te chose, never when his affairs needed a clear brain. Now appet.i.te, long lying in wait for him, had found him helpless in the clutches of rage and fear, and had stolen away his mind.

The news was telephoned to the office at half-past eleven o'clock. "It doesn't matter," said Giddings. "He'd only make things worse if he were to come now."

Giddings was apparently right. From a tower of strength, supporting alone, yet with ease, National Woolens, and the vast structure based upon it, Dumont had crumbled into an obstruction and a weakness. There is an abysmal difference between everybody knowing a thing privately and everybody knowing precisely the same thing publicly. In that newspaper exposure there was no fact of importance that was not known to the entire Street, to his chief supporters in his great syndicate of ranches, railroads, factories, steamship lines and selling agencies.

But the tremendous blare of publicity acted like Joshua's horns at Jericho. The solid walls of his public reputation tottered, toppled, fell flat.

There had been a tight money-market for two weeks. Though there had been uneasiness as to all the small and many of the large "industrials," belief in National Woolens and in the stability of John Dumont had remained strong. But of all the cowards that stand sentinel for capital, the most craven is Confidence. At the deafening crash of the fall of Dumont's private character, Confidence girded its loins and tightened its vocal cords to be in readiness for a shrieking flight.

Dumont ruled, through a parent and central corporation, the National Woolens Company, which held a majority of the stock in each of the seventeen corporations const.i.tuting the trust. His control was in part through ownership of Woolens stock but chiefly through proxies sent him by thousands of small stock-holders because they had confidence in his abilities. To wrest control from him it was necessary for the raiders both to make him "unload" his own holdings of stock and to impair his reputation so that his supporters would desert him or stand aloof.

On the previous day National Woolens closed at eighty-two for the preferred and thirty-nine for the common. In the first hour of the day of the raid Giddings and the other members of Dumont's supporting group of financiers were able to keep it fairly steady at about five points below the closing price of the previous day, by buying all that was offered--the early offerings were large, but not overwhelming. The supporters of other industrials saw that the a.s.sault on Woolens was a menace to their stocks--if a strong industrial weakened, the weaker ones would inevitably suffer disaster in the frightened market that would surely result. They showed a disposition to rally to the support of the Dumont stocks.

At eleven o'clock Giddings began to hope that the raid was a failure, if indeed it had been a real raid. At eleven-twenty Herron played his trump card.

The National Industrial Bank is the huge barometer to which both speculative and investing Wall Street looks for guidance. Whom that bank protects is as safe as was the medieval fugitive who laid hold of the altar in the sanctuary; whom that bank frowns upon in the hour of stress is lost indeed if he have so much as a pin's-point area of heel that is vulnerable. Melville, president of the National Industrial, was a fanatically religious man, with as keen a nose for heretics as for rotten spots in collateral. He was peculiarly savage in his hatred of all matrimonial deviations. He was a brother of Fanshaw's mother; and she and Herron had been working upon him. But so long as Dumont's share in the scandal was not publicly attributed he remained obdurate--he never permitted his up-town creed or code to interfere with his down-town doings unless it became necessary--that is, unless it could be done without money loss. For up-town or down-town, to make money was always and in all circ.u.mstances the highest morality, to lose money the profoundest immorality.

At twenty minutes past eleven Melville and the president of the other banks of his chain called loans to Dumont and the Dumont supporting group to the amount of three millions and a quarter. Ten minutes later other banks and trust companies whose loans to Dumont and his allies either were on call or contained provisions permitting a demand for increased collateral, followed Melville's example and aimed and sped their knives for Dumont's vitals.

Giddings found himself face to face with unexpected and peremptory demands for eleven millions in cash and thirteen millions in additional collateral securities. If he did not meet these demands forthwith the banks and trust companies, to protect themselves, would throw upon the market at whatever price they could get the thirty-odd millions of Woolens stocks which they held as collateral for the loans.

"What does this mean, Eaversole?" he exclaimed, with white, wrinkled lips, heavy circles suddenly appearing under his eyes. "Is Melville trying to ruin everything?"

"No," answered Eaversole, third vice-president of the company. "He's supporting the market, all except us. He says Dumont must be driven out of the Street. He says his presence here is a pollution and a source of constant danger."

The National Woolens supporting group was alone; it could get no help from any quarter, as every possible ally was frightened into his own breastworks for the defense of his own interests. Dumont, the brain and the will of the group, had made no false moves in business, had been bold only where his matchless judgment showed him a clear way; but he had not foreseen the instantaneous annihilation of his chief a.s.set--his reputation.

Giddings sustained the unequal battle superbly. He was cool, and watchful, and effective. It is doubtful if Dumont himself could have done so well, handicapped as he would have been on that day by the Fanshaw scandal. Giddings cajoled and threatened, retreated slowly here, advanced intrepidly there. On the one side, he held back wavering banks and trust companies, persuading some that all was well, warning others that if they pressed him they would lose all. On the other side, he faced his powerful foes and made them quake as they saw their battalions of millions roll upon his unbroken line of battle only to break and disappear. At noon National Woolens preferred was at fifty-eight, the common at twenty-nine. Giddings was beginning to hope.

At three minutes past noon the tickers clicked out: "It is reported that John Dumont is dying."

As that last word jerked letter by letter from under the printing wheel the floor of the Stock Exchange became the rapids of a human Niagara.

By messenger, by telegraph, by telephone, holders of National Woolens and other industrials, in the financial district, in all parts of the country, across the sea, poured in their selling orders upon the frenzied brokers. And all these forces of hysteria and panic, projected into that narrow, roofed-in s.p.a.ce, made of it a chaos of contending demons. All stocks were caught in the upheaval; Melville's plans to limit the explosion were blown skyward, feeble as straws in a cyclone. Amid shrieks and howls and frantic tossings of arms and mad rushes and maniac contortions of faces, National Woolens and all the Dumont stocks bent, broke, went smashing down, down, down, every one struggling to unload.

Dumont's fortune was the stateliest of the many galleons that day driven on the rocks and wrecked. Dumont's crew was for the most part engulfed. Giddings and a few selected friends reached the sh.o.r.e half-drowned and humbly applied at the wreckers' camp; they were hospitably received and were made as comfortable as their exhausted condition permitted.

John Dumont was at the mercy of Hubert Herron in his own company. If he lived he would be president only until the next annual meeting--less than two months away; and the Herron crowd had won over enough of his board of directors to make him meanwhile powerless where he had been autocrat.

XXV.

THE FALLEN KING.

Toward noon the next day Dumont emerged from the stupor into which Doctor Sackett's opiate had plunged him. At once his mind began to grope about for the broken clues of his business. His valet appeared.

"The morning papers," said Dumont.

"Yes, sir," replied the valet, and disappeared.

After a few seconds Culver came and halted just within the doorway.

"I'm sorry, sir, but Doctor Sackett left strict orders that you were to be quiet. Your life depends on it."

Dumont scowled and his lower lip projected--the crowning touch in his most imperious expression. "The papers, all of 'em,--quick!" he commanded.

Culver took a last look at the blue-white face and bloodshot eyes to give him courage to stand firm. "The doctor'll be here in a few minutes," he said, bowed and went out.

Choking with impotent rage, Dumont rang for his valet and forced him to help him dress. He was so weak when he finished that only his will kept him from fainting. He took a stiff drink of the brandy--the odor was sickening to him and he could hardly force it down. But once down, it strengthened him.

"No, nothing to eat," he said thickly, and with slow but fairly steady step left his room and descended to the library. Culver was there--sat agape at sight of his master. "But you--you must not--" he began.