The Pit Part 46

IX

"Well, that's about all then, I guess," said Gretry at last, as he pushed back his chair and rose from the table.

He and Jadwin were in a room on the third floor of the Grand Pacific Hotel, facing Jackson Street. It was three o'clock in the morning. Both men were in their s.h.i.+rt-sleeves; the table at which they had been sitting was scattered over with papers, telegraph blanks, and at Jadwin's elbow stood a lacquer tray filled with the stumps of cigars and burnt matches, together with one of the hotel pitchers of ice water.

"Yes," a.s.sented Jadwin, absently, running through a sheaf of telegrams, "that's all we can do--until we see what kind of a game Crookes means to play. I'll be at your office by eight."

"Well," said the broker, getting into his coat, "I guess I'll go to my room and try to get a little sleep. I wish I could see how we'll be to-morrow night at this time."

Jadwin made a sharp movement of impatience.

"d.a.m.nation, Sam, aren't you ever going to let up croaking? If you're afraid of this thing, get out of it. Haven't I got enough to bother me?"

"Oh, say! Say, hold on, hold on, old man," remonstrated the broker, in an injured voice. "You're terrible touchy sometimes, J., of late. I was only trying to look ahead a little. Don't think I want to back out. You ought to know me by this time, J."

"There, there, I'm sorry, Sam," Jadwin hastened to answer, getting up and shaking the other by the shoulder. "I am touchy these days. There's so many things to think of, and all at the same time. I do get nervous.

I never slept one little wink last night--and you know the night before I didn't turn in till two in the morning."

"Lord, you go swearing and d.a.m.ning 'round here like a pirate sometimes, J.," Gretry went on. "I haven't heard you cuss before in twenty years.

Look out, now, that I don't tell on you to your Sunday-school superintendents."

"I guess they'd cuss, too," observed Jadwin, "if they were long forty million wheat, and had to know just where every hatful of it was every second of the time. It was all very well for us to whoop about swinging a corner that afternoon in your office. But the real thing--well, you don't have any trouble keeping awake. Do you suppose we can keep the fact of our corner dark much longer?"

"I fancy not," answered the broker, putting on his hat and thrusting his papers into his breast pocket. "If we bust Crookes, it'll come out--and it won't matter then. I think we've got all the shorts there are."

"I'm laying particularly for Dave Scannel," remarked Jadwin. "I hope he's in up to his neck, and if he is, by the Great Horn Spoon, I'll bankrupt him, or my name is not Jadwin! I'll wring him bone-dry. If I once get a twist of that rat, I won't leave him hide nor hair to cover the wart he calls his heart."

"Why, what all has Scannel ever done to you?" demanded the other, amazed.

"Nothing, but I found out the other day that old Hargus--poor old, broken-backed, half-starved Hargus--I found out that it was Scannel that ruined him. Hargus and he had a big deal on, you know--oh, ages ago--and Scannel sold out on him. Great G.o.d, it was the dirtiest, d.a.m.nedest treachery I ever heard of! Scannel made his pile, and what's Hargus now? Why, he's a scarecrow. And he has a little niece that he supports, heaven only knows how. I've seen her, and she's pretty as a picture. Well, that's all right; I'm going to carry fifty thousand wheat for Hargus, and I've got another scheme for him, too. By G.o.d, the poor old boy won't go hungry again if I know it! But if I lay my hands on Scannel--if we catch him in the corner--holy, suffering Moses, but I'll make him squeal!"

Gretry nodded, to say he understood and approved.

"I guess you've got him," he remarked. "Well, I must get to bed. Good night, J."

"Good night, Sam. See you in the morning."

And before the door of the room was closed, Jadwin was back at the table again. Once more, painfully, toilfully, he went over his plans, retesting, altering, recombining, his hands full of lists, of despatches, and of endless columns of memoranda. Occasionally he murmured fragments of sentences to himself. "H'm ... I must look out for that.... They can't touch us there.... The annex of that Nickel Plate elevator will hold--let's see ... half a million.... If I buy the grain within five days after arrival I've got to pay storage, which is, let's see--three-quarters of a cent times eighty thousand...."

An hour pa.s.sed. At length Jadwin pushed back from the table, drank a gla.s.s of ice water, and rose, stretching.

"Lord, I must get some sleep," he muttered.

He threw off his clothes and went to bed, but even as he composed himself to sleep, the noises of the street in the awakening city invaded the room through the c.h.i.n.k of the window he had left open. The noises were vague. They blended easily into a far-off murmur; they came nearer; they developed into a cadence:

"Wheat-wheat-wheat, wheat-wheat-wheat."

Jadwin roused up. He had just been dropping off to sleep. He rose and shut the window, and again threw himself down. He was weary to death; not a nerve of his body that did not droop and flag. His eyes closed slowly. Then, all at once, his whole body twitched sharply in a sudden spasm, a simultaneous recoil of every muscle. His heart began to beat rapidly, his breath failed him. Broad awake, he sat up in bed.

"H'm!" he muttered. "That was a start--must have been dreaming, surely."

Then he paused, frowning, his eyes narrowing; he looked to and fro about the room, lit by the subdued glow that came in through the transom from a globe in the hall outside. Slowly his hand went to his forehead.

With almost the abruptness of a blow, that strange, indescribable sensation had returned to his head. It was as though he were struggling with a fog in the interior of his brain; or again it was a numbness, a weight, or sometimes it had more of the feeling of a heavy, tight-drawn band across his temples.

"Smoking too much, I guess," murmured Jadwin. But he knew this was not the reason, and as he spoke, there smote across his face the first indefinite sensation of an unnamed fear.

He gave a quick, short breath, and straightened himself, pa.s.sing his hands over his face.

"What the deuce," he muttered, "does this mean?"

For a long moment he remained sitting upright in bed, looking from wall to wall of the room. He felt a little calmer. He shrugged his shoulders impatiently.

"Look here," he said to the opposite wall, "I guess I'm not a schoolgirl, to have nerves at this late date. High time to get to sleep, if I'm to mix things with Crookes to-morrow."

But he could not sleep. While the city woke to its mult.i.tudinous life below his windows, while the grey light of morning drowned the yellow haze from the gas jet that came through the transom, while the "early call" alarms rang in neighbouring rooms, Curtis Jadwin lay awake, staring at the ceiling, now concentrating his thoughts upon the vast operation in which he found himself engaged, following out again all its complexities, its inconceivable ramifications, or now puzzling over the inexplicable numbness, the queer, dull weight that descended upon his brain so soon as he allowed its activity to relax.

By five o'clock he found it intolerable to remain longer in bed; he rose, bathed, dressed, ordered his breakfast, and, descending to the office of the hotel, read the earliest editions of the morning papers for half an hour.

Then, at last, as he sat in the corner of the office deep in an armchair, the tired shoulders began to droop, the wearied head to nod.

The paper slipped from his fingers, his chin sank upon his collar.

To his ears the early clamour of the street, the cries of newsboys, the rattle of drays came in a dull murmur. It seemed to him that very far off a great throng was forming. It was menacing, shouting. It stirred, it moved, it was advancing. It came galloping down the street, shouting with insensate fury; now it was at the corner, now it burst into the entrance of the hotel. Its clamour was deafening, but intelligible. For a thousand, a million, forty million voices were shouting in cadence:

"Wheat-wheat-wheat, wheat-wheat-wheat."

Jadwin woke abruptly, half starting from his chair. The morning sun was coming in through the windows; the clock above the hotel desk was striking seven, and a waiter stood at his elbow, saying:

"Your breakfast is served, Mr. Jadwin."

He had no appet.i.te. He could eat nothing but a few mouthfuls of toast, and long before the appointed hour he sat in Gretry's office, waiting for the broker to appear, drumming on the arm of his chair, plucking at the b.u.t.tons of his coat, and wondering why it was that every now and then all the objects in his range of vision seemed to move slowly back and stand upon the same plane.

By degrees he lapsed into a sort of lethargy, a wretched counterfeit of sleep, his eyes half closed, his breath irregular. But, such as it was, it was infinitely grateful. The little, over-driven cogs and wheels of the mind, at least, moved more slowly. Perhaps by and by this might actually develop into genuine, blessed oblivion.

But there was a quick step outside the door. Gretry came in.

"Oh, J.! Here already, are you? Well, Crookes will begin to sell at the very tap of the bell."

"He will, hey?" Jadwin was on his feet. Instantly the jaded nerves braced taut again; instantly the tiny machinery of the brain spun again at its fullest limit. "He's going to try to sell us out, is he? All right. We'll sell, too. We'll see who can sell the most--Crookes or Jadwin."

"Sell! You mean buy, of course."

"No, I don't. I've been thinking it over since you left last night.

Wheat is worth exactly what it is selling for this blessed day. I've not inflated it up one single eighth yet; Crookes thinks I have. Good Lord, I can read him like a book! He thinks I've boosted the stuff above what it's worth, and that a little shove will send it down. He can send it down to ten cents if he likes, but it'll jump back like a rubber ball. I'll sell bushel for bushel with him as long as he wants to keep it up."

"Heavens and earth, J.," exclaimed Gretry, with a long breath, "the risk is about as big as holding up the Bank of England. You are depreciating the value of about forty million dollars' worth of your property with every cent she breaks."

"You do as I tell you--you'll see I'm right," answered Jadwin. "Get your boys in here, and we'll give 'em the day's orders."