Montague went on ahead, and found his brother, with only about a score of people ahead of him. Apparently not many of the depositors of the Trust Company read their newspapers before eight o’clock in the morning.
“Do you want a chair, too?” asked Montague. “I just got one for the Major.”
“Is he here, too?” exclaimed Oliver. “Good Heavens! No, I don’t want a chair,” he added, “I’ll get through early. But, Allan, tell me– what in the world is the matter? Do you really mean that your money is still in here?”
“It’s here,” the other answered. “There’s no use arguing about it–come over to the office when you get your money.”
“I got the train just by half a minute,” said Oliver. “Poor Bertie Stuyvesant didn’t get up in time, and he’s coming on a special–he’s got about three hundred thousand in here. It was to pay for his new yacht.”
“I guess some of the yacht-makers won’t be quite so busy from now on,” remarked the other, as he moved away.
That afternoon he heard the story of how General Prentice, as a director of the Gotham Trust, had voted that the institution should not close its doors, and then, as president of the Trust Company of the Republic, had sent over and cashed a check for a million dollars. None of the newspapers printed that story, but it ran from mouth to mouth, and was soon the jest of the whole city. Men said that it was this act of treachery which had taken the heart out of the Gotham Trust Company directors, and led to the closing of its doors.
Such was the beginning of the panic as Montague saw it. It had all worked out beautifully, according to the schedule. The stock market was falling to pieces–some of the leading stocks were falling several points between transactions, and Wyman and Hegan and the Oil and Steel people were hammering the market and getting ready for the killing. And at the same time, representatives of Waterman in Washington were interviewing the President, and setting before him the desperate plight of the Mississippi Steel Company. Already the structure of the country’s finances was tottering; and here was one more big failure threatening. Realising the desperate situation, the Steel Trust was willing to do its part to save the country–it would take over the Mississippi Steel Company, provided only that the Government would not interfere. The desired promise was given; and so that last of Waterman’s purposes was accomplished.
But there was one factor in the problem upon which few had reckoned, and that was the vast public which furnished all the money for the game–the people to whom dollars were not simply gamblers’ chips, but to whom they stood for the necessities of life; business men who must have them to pay their clerks on Saturday afternoon; working-men who needed them for rent and food; helpless widows and orphans to whom they meant safety from starvation. These unhappy people had no means of knowing that financial institutions, which were perfectly sound and able to pay their depositors, might be wrecked deliberately in a gamblers’ game. When they heard that banks were tottering, and were being besieged for money, they concluded that there must be real danger–that the long-predicted crash must be at hand. They descended upon Wall Street in hordes–the whole financial district was packed with terrified crowds, and squads of policemen rode through upon horseback in order to keep open the streets.
“Somebody asked for a dollar,” was the way one banker phrased it. Wall Street had been doing business with pieces of paper; and now someone asked for a dollar, and it was discovered that the dollar had been mislaid.
It was an experience for which the captains of finance were not entirely prepared; they had forgotten the public. It was like some great convulsion of nature, which made mockery of all the powers of men, and left the beholder dazed and terrified. In Wall Street men stood as if in a valley, and saw far up above them the starting of an avalanche; they stood fascinated with horror, and watched it gathering headway; saw the clouds of dust rising up, and heard the roar of it swelling, and realised that it was a matter of only a second or two before it would be upon them and sweep them to destruction.
The lines of people before the Gotham Trust and the Trust Company of the Republic were now blocks in length; and every hour one heard of runs upon new institutions. There were women wringing their hands and crying in nervous excitement; there were old people, scarcely able to totter; there were people who had risen from sick-beds, and who stood all through the day and night, shivering in the keen October winds.
Runs had begun on the savings banks also; over on the East Side the alarm had reached the ignorant foreign population. It had spread with the speed of lightning all over the country; already there were reports of runs in other cities, and from thousands and tens of thousands of banks in East and South and West came demands upon the Metropolis for money. And there was no money anywhere.
And so the masters of the Banking Trust realised to their annoyance that the monster which they had turned loose might get beyond their control. Runs were beginning upon institutions in which they themselves were concerned. In the face of madness such as this, even the twenty-five per cent reserves of the national banks would not be sufficient. The moving of the cotton and grain crops had taken hundreds of millions from New York; and there was no money to be got by any chance from abroad. Everywhere they turned, they faced this appalling scarcity of money; nothing could be sold, no money could be borrowed. The few who had succeeded in getting their cash were renting safe-deposit boxes and hiding the actual coin.
And so, all their purposes having been accomplished, the bankers set to work to stem the tide. Frantic telegrams were sent to Washington, and the Secretary of the Treasury deposited six million dollars in the national banks of the Metropolis, and then came on himself to consult.
Men turned to Dan Waterman, who was everywhere recognised as the master of the banking world. The rivalry of the different factions ceased in the presence of this peril; and Waterman became suddenly a king, with practically absolute control of the resources of every bank in the city. Even the Government placed itself in his hands; the Secretary of the Treasury became one of his clerks, and bank presidents and financiers came crowding into his office like panic-stricken children. Even the proudest and most defiant men, like Wyman and Hegan, took his orders and listened humbly to his tirades.
All these events were public history, and one might follow them day by day in the newspapers. Waterman’s earlier acts had been planned and carried out in darkness. No one knew, no one had the faintest suspicion. But now newspaper reporters attended the conferences and trailed Waterman about wherever he went, and the public was invited to the wonderful spectacle of this battle-worn veteran, rousing himself for one last desperate campaign and saving the honour and credit of the country.
The public hung upon his lightest word, praying for his success. The Secretary of the Treasury sat in the Sub-Treasury building near his office, and poured out the funds of the Government under his direction. Thirty-two million dollars in all were thus placed with the national banks; and from all these institutions Waterman drew the funds which he poured into the vaults of the imperilled banks and trust companies. It was a time when one man’s peril was every man’s, and none might stand alone. And Waterman was a despot, imperious and terrible. “I have taken care of my bank,” said one president; “and I intend to shut myself up in it and wait until the storm is over.” “If you do,” Waterman retorted, “I will build a wall around you, and you will never get out of it again!” And so the banker contributed the necessary number of millions.
The fight centred around the imperilled Trust Company of the Republic. It was recognised by everyone that if Prentice’s institution went down, it would mean defeat. Longer and longer grew the line of waiting depositors; the vaults were nearly empty. The cashiers adopted the expedient of paying very slowly–they would take half an hour or more to investigate a single check; and thus they kept going until more money arrived. The savings banks of the city agreed unanimously to close their doors, availing themselves of their legal right to demand sixty days before paying. The national banks resorted to the expedient of paying with clearing-house certificates. The newspapers preached confidence and cheered the public–even the newsboys were silenced, so that their shrill cries might no longer increase the public excitement. Groups of mounted policemen swept up and down the streets, keeping the crowds upon the move.
And so at last came the fateful Thursday, the climax of the panic. A pall seemed to have fallen upon Wall Street. Men ran here and there, bareheaded and pale with fright. Upon the floor of the Stock Exchange men held their breath. The market was falling to pieces. All sales had stopped; one might quote any price one chose, for it was impossible to borrow a dollar. Interest rates had gone to one hundred and fifty per cent to two hundred per cent; a man might have offered a thousand per cent for a large sum and not obtained it. The brokers stood about, gazing at each other in utter despair. Such an hour had never before been known.
All this time the funds of the Government had been withheld from the Exchange. The Government must not help the gamblers, everyone insisted. But now had come the moment when it seemed that the Exchange must be closed. Thousands of firms would be ruined, the business of the country would be paralysed. There came word that the Pittsburg Exchange had closed. So once more the terrified magnates crowded into Waterman’s office. Once more the funds of the Government were poured into the banks; and from the banks they came to Waterman; and within a few minutes after the crisis had developed, the announcement was made that Dan Waterman would lend twenty-five million dollars at ten per cent.
So the peril was averted. Brokers upon the floor wept for joy, and cheers rang through all the Street. A mob of men gathered in front of Waterman’s office, singing a chorus of adulation.
All these events Montague followed day by day. He was passing through Wall Street that Thursday afternoon, and he heard the crowds singing. He turned away, bitter and sick at heart. Could a more tragic piece of irony have been imagined than this–that the man, who of all men had been responsible for this terrible calamity, should be heralded before the whole country as the one who averted it! Could there have been a more appalling illustration of the way in which the masters of the Metropolis were wont to hoodwink its blind and helpless population?
There was only one man to whom Montague could vent his feelings; only one man besides himself who knew the real truth. Montague got the habit, when he left his work, of stopping at the Express building, and listening for a few minutes to the grumbling of Bates.
Bates would have each day’s news fresh from the inside; not only the things which would be printed on the morrow, but the things which would never be printed anywhere. And he and Montague would feed the fires of each other’s rage. One day it would be one of the Express’s own editorials, in which it was pointed out that the intemperate speeches and reckless policies of the President were now bearing their natural fruit; another day it would be a letter from a prominent clergyman, naming Waterman as the President’s successor.
Men were beside themselves with wonder at the generosity of Waterman in lending twenty-five millions at ten per cent. But it was not his own money–it was the money of the national banks which he was lending; and this was money which the national banks had got from the Government, and for which they paid the Government no interest at all. There was never any graft in the world so easy as the national bank graft, declared Bates. These smooth gentlemen got the people’s money to build their institutions. They got the Government to deposit money with them, and they paid the Government nothing, and charged the people interest for it. They had the privilege of issuing a few hundred millions of bank-notes, and they charged interest for these and paid the Government nothing. And then, to cap the climax, they used their profits to buy up the Government! They filled the Treasury Department with their people, and when they got into trouble, the Sub-Treasury was emptied into their vaults. And in the face of all this, the people agitated for postal savings banks, and couldn’t get them. In other countries the people had banks where they could put their money with absolute certainty; for no one had ever known such a thing as a run upon a postal bank.
“Sometimes,” said Bates, “it seems almost as if our people were hypnotised. You saw all this life insurance scandal, Mr. Montague; and there’s one simple and obvious remedy for all the evils–if we had Government life insurance, it could never fail, and there’d be no surplus for Wall Street gamblers. It sounds almost incredible– but do you know, I followed that agitation as I don’t believe any other man in this country followed it–and from first to last I don’t believe that one single suggestion of that remedy was ever made in print!”
A startled look had come upon Montague’s face as he listened. “I don’t believe I ever thought of it myself!” he exclaimed.
And Bates shrugged his shoulders. “You see!” he said. “So it goes.”
CHAPTER XXIII
Montague had taken a couple of days to think over Lucy’s last request. It was a difficult commission; but he made up his mind at last that he would make the attempt. He went up to Ryder’s home and presented his card.
“Mr. Ryder is very much occupied, sir–” began the butler, apologetically.
“This is important,” said Montague. “Take him the card, please.” He waited in the palatial entrance-hall, decorated with ceilings which had been imported intact from old Italian palaces.
At last the butler returned. “Mr. Ryder says will you please see him upstairs, sir?”
Montague entered the elevator, and was taken to Ryder’s private apartments. In the midst of the drawing-room was a great library table, covered with a mass of papers; and in a chair in front of it sat Ryder.
Montague had never seen such dreadful suffering upon a human countenance. The exquisite man of fashion had grown old in a week.
“Mr. Ryder,” he began, when they were alone, “I received a letter from Mrs. Taylor, asking me to come to see you.”
“I know,” said Ryder. “It was like her; and it is very good of you.”
“If there is any way that I can be of assistance,” the other began.
But Ryder shook his head. “No,” he said; “there is nothing.”
“If I could give you my help in straightening out your own affairs–“
“They are beyond all help,” said Ryder. “I have nothing to begin on–I have not a dollar in the world.”
“That is hardly possible,” objected Montague.
“It is literally true!” he exclaimed. “I have tried every plan–I have been over the thing and over it, until I am almost out of my mind.” And he glanced about him at the confusion of papers, and leaned his forehead in his hands in despair.
“Perhaps if a fresh mind were to take it up,” suggested Montague. “It is difficult to see how a man of your resources could be left without anything–“
“Everything I have is mortgaged,” said the other. “I have been borrowing money right and left. I was counting on profits–I was counting on increases in value. And now see–everything is wiped out! There is not value enough left in anything to cover the loans.”
“But surely, Mr. Ryder, this slump is merely temporary. Values must be restored–“
“It will be years, it will be years! And in the meantime I shall be forced to sell. They have wiped me out–they have destroyed me! I have not even money to live on.”
Montague sat for a few moments in thought. “Mrs. Taylor wrote me that Waterman–” he began.
“I know, I know!” cried the other. “He had to tell her something, to get what he wanted.”
Montague said nothing.
“And suppose he does what he promised?” continued the other. “He has done it before–but am I to be one of Dan Waterman’s lackeys?”
There was a silence. “Like John Lawrence,” continued Ryder, in a low voice. “Have you heard of Lawrence? He was a banker–one of the oldest in the city. And Waterman gave him an order, and he defied him. Then he broke him; took away every dollar he owned. And the man came to him on his knees. ‘I’ve taught you who is your master,’ said Waterman. ‘Now here’s your money.’ And now Lawrence fawns on him, and he’s got rich and fat. But all his bank exists for is to lend money when Waterman is floating a merger, and call it in when he is buying.”
Montague could think of nothing to reply to that.
“Mr. Ryder,” he began at last, “I cannot be of much use to you now, because I haven’t the facts. All I can tell you is that I am at your disposal. I will give you my best efforts, if you will let me. That is all I can say.”
And Ryder looked up, the light shining on his white, wan face. “Thank you, Mr. Montague, he said. “It is very good of you. It is a help, at least, to hear a word of sympathy. I–I will let you know–“
“All right,” said Montague, rising. He put out his hand, and Ryder took it tremblingly. “Thank you,” he said again.
And the other turned and went out. He went down the great staircase by himself. At the foot he passed the butler, carrying a tray with some coffee.
He stopped the man. “Mr. Ryder ought not to be left alone,” he said. “He should have his physician.”
“Yes, sir,” began the other, and then stopped short. From the floor above a pistol shot rang out and echoed through the house.
“Oh, my God!” gasped the butler, staggering backward.
He half dropped and half set the tray upon a chair, and ran wildly up the steps. Montague stood for a moment or two as if turned to stone. He saw another servant run out of the dining-room and up the stairs. Then, with a sudden impulse, he turned and went to the door.
“I can be of no use,” he thought to himself; “I should only drag Lucy’s name into it.” And he opened the door, and went quietly down the steps.
In the newspapers the next morning he read that Stanley Ryder had shot himself in the body, and was dying.
And that same morning the newspapers in Denver, Colorado, told of the suicide of a mysterious woman, a stranger, who had gone to a room in one of the hotels and taken poison. She was very beautiful; it was surmised that she must be an actress. But she had left not a scrap of paper or a clew of any sort by which she could be identified. The newspapers printed her photograph; but Montague did not see the Denver newspapers, and so to the day of his death he never knew what had been the fate of Lucy Dupree.
The panic was stopped, but the business of the country lay in ruins. For a week its financial heart had ceased to beat, and through all the arteries of commerce, and every smallest capillary, there was stagnation. Hundreds of firms had failed, and the mills and factories by the thousands were closing down. There were millions of men out of work. Throughout the summer the railroads had been congested with traffic, and now there were a quarter of a million freight cars laid by. Everywhere were poverty and suffering; it was as if a gigantic tidal wave of distress had started from the Metropolis and rolled over the continent. Even the oceans had not stopped it; it had gone on to England and Germany–it had been felt even in South America and Japan.
One day, while Montague was still trembling with the pain of his experience, he was walking up the Avenue, and he met Laura Hegan coming from a shop to her carriage.
“Mr. Montague,” she exclaimed, and stopped with a frank smile of greeting. “How are you?”
“I am well,” he answered.
“I suppose,” she added, “you have been very busy these terrible days.”
“I have been more busy observing than doing,” he replied.
“And how is Alice?”
“She is well. I suppose you have heard that she is engaged.”
“Yes,” said Miss Hegan. “Harry told me the first thing. I was perfectly delighted.”
“Are you going up town?” she added. “Get in and drive with me.”
He entered the carriage, and they joined the procession up the Avenue. They talked for a few minutes, then suddenly Miss Hegan said, “Won’t you and Alice come to dinner with us some evening this week?”
Montague did not answer for a moment.
“Father is home now,” Miss Hegan continued. “We should like so much to have you.”
He sat staring in front of him. “No,” he said at last, in a low voice. “I would rather not come.”
His manner, even more than his words, struck his companion. She glanced at him in surprise.
“Why?” she began, and stopped. There was a silence.
“Miss Hegan,” he said at last, “I might make conventional excuses. I might say that I have engagements; that I am very busy. Ordinarily one does not find it worth while to tell the truth in this social world of ours. But somehow I feel impelled to deal frankly with you.”
He did not look at her. Her eyes were fixed upon him in wonder. “What is it?” she asked.
And he replied, “I would rather not meet your father again.”
“Why! Has anything happened between you and father?” she exclaimed in dismay.
“No,” he answered; “I have not seen your father since I had lunch with you in Newport.”
“Then what is it?”
He paused a moment. “Miss Hegan,” he began, “I have had a painful experience in this panic. I have lived through it in a very dreadful way. I cannot get over it–I cannot get the images of suffering out of my mind. It is a very real and a very awful thing to me–this wrecking of the lives of tens of thousands of people. And so I am hardly fitted for the amenities of social life just at present.”
“But my father!” gasped she. “What has he to do with it?”
“Your father,” he answered, “is one of the men who were responsible for that panic. He helped to make it; and he profited by it.”
She started forward, clenching her hands and staring at him wildly. “Mr. Montague!” she exclaimed.
He did not reply.
There was a long pause. He could hear her breath coming quickly.
“Are you sure?” she whispered.
“Quite sure,” said he.
Again there was silence.
“I do not know very much about my father’s affairs,” she began, at last. “I cannot reply to what you say. It is very dreadful.”
“Please understand me, Miss Hegan,” said he. “I have no right to force such thoughts upon you; and perhaps I have made a mistake–“
“I should have preferred that you should tell me the truth,” she said quickly.
“I believed that you would,” he answered. “That was why I spoke.”
“Was what he did so very dreadful?” asked the girl, in a low voice.
“I would prefer not to answer,” said he. “I cannot judge your father. I am simply trying to protect myself. I’m afraid of the grip of this world upon me. I have followed the careers of so many men, one after another. They come into it, and it lays hold of them, and before they know it, they become corrupt. What I have seen here in the Metropolis has filled me with dismay, almost with terror. Every fibre of me cries out against it; and I mean to fight it–to fight it all my life. And so I do not care to make terms with it socially. When I have seen a man doing what I believe to be a dreadful wrong, I cannot go to his home, and shake his hand, and smile, and exchange the commonplaces of life with him.”
It was a long time before Miss Hegan replied. Her voice was trembling.
“Mr. Montague,” she said, “you must not think that I have not been troubled by these things. But what can one do? What is the remedy?”
“I do not know,” he answered. “I wish that I did know. I can only tell you this, that I do not intend to rest until I have found out.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked.
He replied: “I am going into politics. I am going to try to teach the people.”