The Market-Place Part 20

"Never mind the cold," he replied, throwing a leg over the stool before the desk. "I can't stay more 'n a minute or two. What do you think we've done today?"

Louisa had never in her life seen her brother look so well as he did now, sprawling triumphantly upon the stool under the yellow gas-light.

His strong, heavily-featured face had somehow ceased to be commonplace.

It had acquired an individual distinction of its own. He looked up at her with a clear, bold eye, in which, despite its gloss of good-humour, she discerned a new authority.

The nervous and apprehensive lines had somehow vanished from the countenance, and with them, oddly enough, that lethargic, heavy expression which had been their complement. He was all vigour, readiness, confidence, now. She deemed him almost handsome, this curious, changeable brother of hers, as he beat with his fist in a measured way upon the desk-top to emphasize his words, and fastened his commanding gaze upon her.

"We took very nearly twenty thousand pounds to-day," he went on. "This is the twenty-eighth of February. A fortnight ago today was the first settlement. I wasn't here, but Semple was--and the working of it is all in his hands. He kept as still as a mouse that first day. They had to deliver to us 26,000 shares, and they hadn't got one, but we didn't make any fuss. The point was, you see, not to let them dream that they were caught in a trap. We didn't even put the price up to par. They had to come to Semple, and say there didn't seem to be any shares obtainable just at the moment, and what would he carry them over at? That means, to let them postpone delivery for another fortnight. He was as smooth as sweet-oil with them, and agreed to carry them over till today without any charge at all. But today it was a little different. The price was up ten shillings above par. That is to say, Semple arranged with a jobber, on the quiet, d'ye see? to offer thirty shillings for our one-pound shares. That offer fixed the making-up price. So then, when they were still without shares to-day, and had to be carried over again, they had to pay ten shillings' difference on each of twenty-six thousand shares, plus the difference between par and the prices they'd sold at. That makes within a few hundreds of 20,000 pounds in cash, for one day's haul. D'ye see?"

She nodded at him, expressively. Through previous talks she had really obtained an insight into the operation, and it interested her more than she would have cared to confess.

"Well, then, we put that 20,000 pounds in our pockets," he proceeded with a steady glow in his eyes. "A fortnight hence, that is March 14th, we ring the bell on them again, and they march up to the captain's office and settle a second time. Now what happens on the 14th? A jobber makes the price for Semple again, and that settles the new sum they have to pay us in differences. It is for us to say what that price shall be.

We'll decide on that when the time comes. We most probably will just put it up another ten shillings, and so take in just a simple 13,000 pounds.

It's best in the long run, I suppose, to go slow, with small rises like that, in order not to frighten anybody. So Semple says, at any rate."

"But why not frighten them?" Louisa asked. "I thought you wanted to frighten them. You were full of that idea a while ago."

He smiled genially. "I've learned some new wrinkles since then. We'll frighten 'em stiff enough, before we're through with them. But at the start we just go easy. If they got word that there was a 'corner,' there would be a dead scare among the jobbers. They'd be afraid to sell or name a price for Rubber Consols unless they had the shares in hand. And there are other ways in which that would be a nuisance. Presently, of course, we shall liberate some few shares, so that there may be some actual dealings. Probably a certain number of the 5,000 which went to the general public will come into the market too. But of course you see that all such shares will simply go through one operation before they come back to us. Some one of the fourteen men we are squeezing will snap them up and bring them straight to Semple, to get free from the fortnightly tax we are levying on them. In that way we shall eventually let out say half of these fourteen 'shorts,' or perhaps more than half."

"What do you want to do that for?" The sister's grey eyes had caught a metallic gleam, as if from the talk about gold. "Why let anybody out?

Why can't you go on taking their money for ever?"

Thorpe nodded complacently. "Yes--that's what I asked too. It seemed to me the most natural thing, when you'd got 'em in the vise, to keep them there. But when you come to reflect--you can't get more out of a man than there is in him. If you press him too hard, he can always go bankrupt--and then he's out of your reach altogether, and you lose everything that you counted on making out of him. So, after a certain point, each one of the fourteen men whom we're squeezing must be dealt with on a different footing. We shall have to watch them all, and study their resources, as tipsters watch horses in the paddock.

"You see, some of them can stand a loss of a hundred thousand pounds better than others could lose ten thousand. All that we have to know. We can take it as a principle that none of them will go bankrupt and lose his place on the exchange unless he is pressed tight to the wall. Well, our business is to learn how far each fellow is from the wall to start with. Then we keep track of him, one turn of the screw after another, till we see he's got just enough left to buy himself out. Then we'll let him out. See?"

"It's cruel, isn't it?" she commented, calmly meditative, after a little pause.

"Everything in the City is cruel," he a.s.sured her with a light tone.

"All speculative business is cruel. Take our case, for example. I estimate in a rough way that these fourteen men will have to pay over to us, in differences and in final sales, say seven hundred thousand pounds--maybe eight hundred. Well, now, not one of those fellows ever earned a single sovereign of that money. They've taken the whole of it from others, and these others took it from others still, and so on almost indefinitely. There isn't a sovereign of it that hasn't been through twenty hands, or fifty for that matter, since the last man who had done some honest work for it parted company with it. Well--money like that belongs to those who are in possession of it, only so long as they are strong enough to hold on to it. When someone stronger still comes along, he takes it away from them. They don't complain: they don't cry and say it's cruel. They know it's the rule of the game. They accept it--and begin at once looking out for a new set of fools and weaklings to recoup themselves on. That's the way the City goes."

Thorpe had concluded his philosophical remarks with ruminative slowness.

As he lapsed into silence now, he fell to studying his own hands on the desk-top before him. He stretched out the fingers, curved them in different degrees, then closed them tight and turned the bulky hard-looking fists round for inspection in varying aspects.

"That's the kind of hand," he began again, thoughtfully, "that breaks the Jew in the long run, if there's only grit enough behind it. I used to watch those Jews' hands, a year ago, when I was dining and wining them. They're all thin and wiry and full of veins. Their fingers are never still; they twist round and keep stirring like a lobster's feelers. But there aint any real strength in 'em. They get hold of most of the things that are going, because they're eternally on the move.

It's their h.e.l.lish industry and activity that gives them such a pull, and makes most people afraid of them. But when a hand like that takes them by the throat"--he held up his right hand as he spoke, with the thick uncouth fingers and ma.s.sive thumb arched menacingly in a powerful muscular tension--"when THAT tightens round their neck, and they feel that the grip means business--my G.o.d! what good are they?"

He laughed contemptuously, and slapped the relaxed palm on the desk with a noise which made his sister start. Apparently the diversion recalled something to her mind.

"There was a man in here asking about you today," she remarked, in a casual fashion. "Said he was an old friend of yours."

"Oh, yes, everybody's my 'old friend' now," he observed with beaming indifference. "I'm already getting heaps of invitations to dinners and dances and all that. One fellow insisted on booking me for Easter for some salmon fishing he's got way down in c.u.mberland. I told him I couldn't come, but he put my name down all the same. Says his wife will write to remind me. d.a.m.n his wife! Semple tells me that when our squeeze really begins and they realize the desperate kind of trap they're in, they'll simply shower attentions of that sort on me. He says the social pressure they can command, for a game of this kind, is something tremendous. But I'm not to be taken in by it for a single pennyworth, d'ye see? I dine with n.o.body! I fish and shoot and go yachting with n.o.body! Julia and Alfred and our own home in Ovington Square--that'll be good enough for me. By the way--you haven't been out to see us yet.

We're all settled now. You must come at once--why not with me, now?"

Louisa paid no heed to this suggestion. She had been rummaging among some loose papers on the top of the desk, and she stepped round now to lift the lid and search about for something inside.

"He left a card for you," she said, as she groped among the desk's contents. "I don't know what I did with it. He wrote something on it."

"Oh, d.a.m.n him, and his card too," Thorpe protested easily. "I don't want to see either of them."

"He said he knew you in Mexico. He said you'd had dealings together. He seemed to act as if you'd want to see him--but I didn't know. I didn't tell him your address."

Thorpe had listened to these apathetic sentences without much interest, but the sum of their message appeared suddenly to catch his attention.

He sat upright, and after a moment's frowning brown study, looked sharply up at his sister.

"What was his name?" he asked with abruptness.

"I don't in the least remember," she made answer, holding the desk-top up, but temporarily suspending her search. "He was a little man, five-and-fifty, I should think. He had long grey hair--a kind of Quaker-looking man. He said he saw the name over the door, and he remembered your telling him your people were booksellers. He only got back here in England yesterday or the day before. He said he didn't know what you'd been doing since you left Mexico. He didn't even know whether you were in England or not!"

Thorpe had been looking with abstracted intentness at a set of green-bound cheap British poets just at one side of his sister's head.

"You must find that card!" he told her now, with a vague severity in his voice. "I know the name well enough, but I want to see what he's written. Was it his address, do you remember? The name itself was Tavender, wasn't it? Good G.o.d! Why is it a woman never knows where she's put anything? Even Julia spends hours looking for b.u.t.ton-hooks or corkscrews or something of that sort, every day of her life! They've got nothing in the world to do except know where things are, right under their nose, and yet that's just what they don't know at all!"

"Oh, I have a good few other things to do," she reminded him, as she fumbled again inside the obscurity of the desk. "I can put my hand on any one of four thousand books in stock," she mildly boasted over her shoulder, "and that's something you never learned to do. And I can tell if a single book is missing--and I wouldn't trust any shopman I ever knew to do that."

"Oh of course, you're an exception," he admitted, under a sense of justice. "But I wish you'd find the card."

"I know where it is," she suddenly announced, and forthwith closed the desk. Moving off into the remoter recesses of the crowded interior, she returned to the light with the bit of pasteboard in her hand. "I'd stuck it in the little mirror over the washstand," she explained.

He almost s.n.a.t.c.hed it from her, and stood up the better to examine it under the gas-light. "Where is Montague Street?" he asked, with rough directness.

"In Bloomsbury--alongside the Museum. That's one Montague Street--I don't know how many others there may be."

Thorpe had already taken up his umbrella and was b.u.t.toning his coat.

"Yes--Bloomsbury," he said hurriedly. "That would be his form. And you say he knew nothing about my movements or whereabouts--nothing about the Company, eh?" He looked at his watch as he spoke. Evidently the presence of this stranger had excited him a good deal.

"No," she a.s.sured him, reflectively; "no, I'm sure he didn't. From what he said, he doesn't know his way about London very well, or anywhere else, for that matter, I should say."

Thorpe nodded, and put his finger to his forehead with a meaning look.

"No--he's a shade off in the upper story," he told her in a confidential tone. "Still, it's important that I should see him,"--and with only a hasty hand-shake he bustled out of the shop.

By the light of the street lamp opposite, she could see him on the pavement, in the pelting rain, vehemently signalling with his umbrella for a cab.

CHAPTER XV

"We've got a spare room here, haven't we?" Thorpe asked his niece, when she came out to greet him in the hall of their new home in Ovington Square. He spoke with palpable eagerness before even unb.u.t.toning his damp great-coat, or putting off his hat. "I mean it's all in working order ready for use?"

"Why yes, uncle," Julia answered, after a moment's thought. "Is someone coming?"

"I think so," he replied, with a grunt of relief. He seemed increasingly pleased with the project he had in mind, as she helped him off with his things. The smile he gave her, when she playfully took his arm to lead him into the adjoining library, was clearly but a part of the satisfied grin with which he was considering some development in his own affairs.

He got into his slippers and into the easy-chair before the bright fire and lit a cigar with a contented air.

"Well, my little girl?" he said, with genial inconsequence, and smiled again at her, where she stood beside the mantel.