The Deluge Part 37

Third, I had offers from all but three of "The Seven" to "peach" on the others in return for immunity. There may be honor among some thieves, but not among "respectable" thieves. Hypocrisy and honor will be found in the same character when the sun shines at night--not before.

It was the sardonic humor of fate that Langdon, for all his desire to keep out of my way, should have compelled me to center my fire upon him; that I, who wished to spare him, if possible, should have been compelled to make of him my first "awful example."

I had decided to concentrate upon Roebuck, because he was the richest and most powerful of "The Seven." For, in my pictures of the three main phases of "finance"--the industrial, the life-insurance and the banking--he, as arch plotter in every kind of respectable skulduggery, was necessarily in the foreground. My original intention was to demolish the Power Trust--or, at least, to compel him to buy back all of its stock which he had worked off on the public. I had collected many interesting facts about it, facts typical of the conditions that "finance" has established in so many of our industries.

For instance, I was prepared to show that the actual earnings of the Power Trust were two and a half times what its reports to stock-holders alleged; that the concealed profits were diverted into the pockets of Roebuck, his sons, eleven other relatives and four of "The Seven," the lion's share going, of course, to the lion. Like almost all the great industrial enterprises, too strong for the law and too remote for the supervision of their stock-holders, it gathered in enormous revenues to disburse them chiefly in salaries and commissions and rake-offs on contracts to favorites. I had proof that in one year it had "written off" twelve millions of profit and loss, ten millions of which had found its way to Roebuck's pocket. That pocket! That "treasury of the Lord"!

Dishonest? Roebuck and most of the other leaders of the various gangs, comprising, with all their ramifications, the princ.i.p.al figures in religious, philanthropic, fashionable society, did not for an instant think their doings dishonest. They had no sense of trusteeship for this money intrusted to them as captains of industry bankers, life-insurance directors. They felt that it was theirs to do with as they pleased.

And they felt that their superiority in rank and in brains ent.i.tled them to whatever remuneration they could a.s.sign to themselves without rousing the wrath of a public too envious to admit the just claims of the "upper cla.s.ses." They convinced themselves that without them crops would cease to grow, sellers and buyers would be unable to find their way to market, barbarism would spread its rank and choking weeds over the whole garden of civilization. And, so brainless is the parrot public, they have succeeded in creating a very widespread conviction that their own high opinion of their services is not too high, and that some dire calamity would come if they were swept from between producer and consumer! True, thieves are found only where there is property; but who but a chucklebrain would think the thieves made the property?

Roebuck was the keystone of the arch that sustained the structure of chicane. To dislodge him was the direct way to collapse it. I was about to set to work when Langdon, feeling that he ought to have a large supply of cash in the troublous times I was creating, increased the capital stock of his already enormously overcapitalized Textile Trust and offered the new issue to the public. As the Textile Trust was even better bulwarked, politically, than the Power Trust, it was easily able to declare tempting dividends out of its lootings. So the new stock could not be attacked in the one way that would make the public instantly shun it--I could not truthfully charge that it would not pay the promised dividends. Yet attack I must--for that issue was, in effect, a bold challenge of my charges against "The Seven." From all parts of the country inquiries poured in upon me: "What do you think of the new Textile issue? Shall we invest? Is the Textile Company sound?"

I had no choice. I must turn aside from Roebuck; I must first show that, while Textile was, in a sense, sound just at that time, it had been unsound, and would be unsound again as soon as Langdon had gathered in a sufficient number of lambs to make a battue worth the while of a man dealing in nothing less than seven figures. I proceeded to do so.

The market yielded slowly. Under my first day's attack Textile preferred fell six points, Textile common three. While I was in the midst of dictating my letter for the second day's attack, I suddenly came to a full stop. I found across my way this thought: "Isn't it strange that Langdon, after humbling himself to you, should make this bold challenge? It's a trap!"

"No more at present," said I, to my stenographer. "And don't write out what I've already dictated."

I shut myself in and busied myself at the telephone. Half an hour after I set my secret machinery in motion, a messenger brought me an envelop, the address type-written. It contained a sheet of paper on which appeared, in type-writing; these words, and nothing more:

"He is heavily short of Textiles."

It was indeed a trap. The new issue was a blind. He had challenged me to attack his stock, and as soon as I did, he had begun secretly to sell it for a fall. I worked at this new situation until midnight, trying to get together the proofs. At that hour--for I could delay no longer, and my proofs were not quite complete--I sent my newspapers two sentences:

"To-morrow I shall make a disclosure that will send Textiles up. Do not sell Textiles!"

x.x.xIII. MRS. LANGDON MAKES A CALL.

Next day Langdon's stocks wavered, going up a little, going down a little, closing at practically the same figures at which they had opened. Then I sprang my sensation--that Langdon and his particular clique, though they controlled the Textile Trust, did not own so much as one-fiftieth of its voting stock. True "captains of industry" that they were, they made their profits not out of dividends, but out of side schemes that absorbed about two-thirds of the earnings of the Trust, and out of gambling in its bonds and stocks. I said in conclusion:

"The largest owner of the stock is Walter G. Edmunds, of Chicago--an honest man. Send your voting proxies to him, and he can take the Textile Company away from those now plundering it."

As the annual election of the Trust was only six weeks away, Langdon and his clique were in a panic. They rushed into the market and bought frantically, the public bidding against them. Langdon himself went to Chicago to reason with Edmunds--that is, to try to find out at what figure he could be bought. And so on, day after day, I faithfully reporting to the public the main occurrences behind the scenes. The Langdon attempt to regain control by purchases of stock failed. He and his allies made what must have been to them appalling sacrifices; but even at the high prices they offered, comparatively little of the stock appeared.

"I've caught them," said I to Joe--the first time, and the last, during that campaign that I indulged in a boast.

"If Edmunds sticks to you," replied cautious Joe.

But Edmunds did not. I do not know at what price he sold himself. Probably it was pitifully small; cupidity usually s.n.a.t.c.hes the instant bait tickles its nose. But I do know that my faith in human nature got its severest shock.

"You are down this morning," said Thornley, when I looked in on him at his bank. "I don't think I ever before saw you show that you were in low spirits."

"I've found out a man with whom I'd have trusted my life," said I.

"Sometimes I think all men are dishonest. I've tried to be an optimist like you, and have told myself that most men must be honest or ninety-five per cent. of the business couldn't be done on credit as it is."

Thornley smiled, like an old man at the enthusiasm of a youngster. "That proves nothing as to honesty," said he. "It simply shows that men can be counted on to do what it is to their plain interest to do. The truth is--and a fine truth, too--most men wish and try to be honest. Give 'em a chance to resist their own weaknesses. Don't trust them. Trust--that's the making of false friends and the filling of jails."

"And palaces," I added.

"And palaces," a.s.sented he. "Every vast fortune is a monument to the credulity of man. Instead of getting after these heavy-laden rascals, Matthew, you'd better have turned your attention to the public that has made rascals of them by leaving its property unguarded."

Fortunately, Edmunds had held out, or, rather, Langdon had delayed approaching him, long enough for me to gain my main point. The uproar over the Textile Trust had become so great that the national Department of Commerce dared not refuse an investigation; and I straightway began to spread out in my daily letters the facts of the Trust's enormous earnings and of the shameful sources of those earnings. Thanks to Langdon's political pull, the president appointed as investigator one of those rascals who carefully build themselves good reputations to enable them to charge higher prices for dirty work. But, with my facts before the people, whitewash was impossible.

I was expecting emissaries from Langdon, for I knew he must now be actually in straits. Even the Universal Life didn't dare lend him money; and was trying to call in the millions it had loaned him. But I was astounded when my private door opened and Mrs. Langdon ushered herself in.

"Don't blame your boy, Mr. Blacklock," cried she gaily, exasperatingly confident that I was as delighted with her as she was with herself. "I told him you were expecting me and didn't give him a chance to stop me."

I a.s.sumed she had come to give me wholly undeserved thanks for revenging her upon her recreant husband. I tried to look civil and courteous, but I felt that my face was darkening--her very presence forced forward things I had been keeping in the far background of my mind, "How can I be of service to you, Madam?" said I.

"I bring you good news," she replied--and I noted that she no longer looked haggard and wretched, that her beauty was once more smiling with a certain girlishness, like a young widow's when she finds her consolation. "Mowbray and I have made it up," she explained.

I simply listened, probably looking as grim as I felt.

"I knew you would be interested," she went on. "Indeed, it means almost as much to you as to me. It brings peace to _two_ families."

Still I did not relax.

"And so," she continued, a little uneasy, "I came to you immediately."

I continued to listen, as if I were waiting for her to finish and depart.

"If you want, I'll go to Anita." Natural feminine tact would have saved her from this rawness; but, convinced that she was a "great lady" by the flattery of servants and shopkeepers and sensational newspapers and social climbers, she had discarded tact as worthy only of the lowly and of the aspiring before they "arrive."

"You are too kind," said I. "Mrs. Blacklock and I feel competent to take care of our own affairs."

"Please, Mr. Blacklock," she said, realizing that she had blundered, "don't take my directness the wrong way. Life is too short for pose and pretense about the few things that really matter. Why shouldn't we be frank with each other?"

"I trust you will excuse me," said I, moving toward the door--I had not seated myself when she did. "I think I have made it clear that we have nothing to discuss."

"You have the reputation of being generous and too big for hatred. That is why I have come to you," said she, her expression confirming my suspicion of the real and only reason for her visit. "Mowbray and I are completely reconciled--_completely_, you understand. And I want you to be generous, and not keep on with this attack. I am involved even more than he. He has used up his fortune in defending mine. Now, you are simply trying to ruin me--not him, but _me_. The president is a friend of Mowbray's, and he'll call off this horrid investigation, and everything'll be all right, if you'll only stop."

"Who sent you here?" I asked.

"I came of my own accord," she protested. Then, realizing from the sound of her voice that she could not have convinced me with a tone so unconvincing, she hedged with: "It was my own suggestion, really it was."

"Your husband permitted _you_ to come--and to _me_?"

She flushed.

"And you have accepted his overtures when you knew he made them only because he needed your money?"

She hung her head. "I love him," she said simply. Then she looked straight at me and I liked her expression. "A woman has no false pride when love is at stake," she said. "We leave that to you men."