Blindfolded Part 12

There was already a confused murmur of voices about the rival exchanges that were the battlegrounds of millionaires. The "curbstone boards"

were in session. The buyers who traded face to face, and the brokers who carried their offices under their hats, were noisily bargaining, raising as much clamor over buying and selling a few shares as the most important dealer in the big boards could raise over the transfer of as many thousands.

It was easy to find Bockstein and Eppner, and there could be no mistaking the prosperity of the firm. The indifference of the clerks to my presence, and the evident contempt with which an order for a hundred shares of something was being taken from an apologetic old gentleman were enough to a.s.sure me of that.

Bockstein and Eppner were together, evidently consulting over the business to be done. Bockstein was tall and gray-haired, with a stubby gray beard. Eppner was short and a little stooped, with a blue-black mustache, snapping blue-black eyes, and strong blue-black dots over his face where his beard struggled vainly against the devastating razor.

Both were strongly marked with the shrewd, money-getting visage. I set forth my business.

"You wand to gif a larch order?" said Bockstein, looking over my memoranda. "Do you haf references?"

"Yes," echoed Eppner. "References are customary, you know." He spoke in a high-keyed voice that had irritating suggestions in it.

"Is there any reference better than cash?" I asked.

The partners looked at each other. "None," they replied.

"How much will secure you on the order?"

They named a heavy margin, and the sum total took my heart into my mouth. How large a balance I could draw against I had not the faintest idea. Possibly this was a trap to throw me into jail as a common swindler attempting to pa.s.s worthless checks. But there was no time to hesitate. I drew a check for the amount, signed Henry Wilton's name, and tossed it over to Bockstein.

"All ridt," said the senior partner. "Zhust talk it ofer vit Misder Eppner. He goes on der floor."

I knew well enough what was wanted. My financial standing was to be tested by the head of the firm, while the junior partner kept me amused.

Eppner was quick to take my ideas. A few words of explanation, and he understood perfectly what I wanted.

"You have not bought before?" It was an interrogation, not an a.s.sertion.

"Oh, yes," I said carelessly, "but not through you, I believe."

"No, no, I think not. I should have remembered you."

I thought this might be a favorable opportunity to glean a little information of what was going on in the market.

"Are there any good deals in prospect?" I ventured.

I could see in the blue-black depths of his eyes that an unfavorable opinion he had conceived of my judgment was deepened by this question.

There was doubtless in it the flavor of the amateur.

"We never advise our customers," was the high-keyed reply.

"Certainly not," I replied. "I don't want advice--merely to know what is going on."

"Excuse me, but I never gossip. It is a rule I make."

"It might interfere with your opportunities to pick up a good bargain now and then," I suggested, as the blue-black man seemed at a loss for words.

"We never invest in stocks," was the curt reply.

"Excellent idea," said I, "for those who know too much or too little."

Eppner failed to smile, and could think of nothing to say. I was a little abashed, notwithstanding the tone of haughty indifference I took.

I began to feel very young before this machine-like impersonation of the market.

Bockstein relieved the embarra.s.sment of the situation by coming in out of breath, with a brave pretense of having been merely consulting a customer in the next room.

"You haf exblained to Misder Eppner?" he inquired. "Den all is done.

Here is a card to der Board Room. If orders you haf to gif, Eppner vill dake dem on der floor. Zhust gif him der check for margin, and all is vell."

At the end of this harangue I found myself outside the office, with Bockstein's back waddling toward the private room where the partners were to have their last consultation before going to the Board.

My check had been honored, then, and Bockstein had a.s.sured himself of my solvency. In the rebound from anxiety, I swelled with the pride of a capitalist--on Doddridge Knapp's money.

In the Board Room of the big Exchange the uproar was something astonis.h.i.+ng. The confusion outside had given me a suggestion that the business of buying and selling stocks was carried on in a somewhat less conventional manner than the trade in groceries. But it had not quite prepared me for the scene in the Exchange.

The floor was filled with a crowd of lunatics, howling, shaking fists, and pus.h.i.+ng and scrambling from one place to another with the frenzy of a band of red men practising the scalp dance by the bright glow of the white man's fire-water. A confused roar rose from the mob, and whenever it showed signs of flagging a louder cry from some quarter would renew its strength, and a blast of shouts and screams, a rush of struggling men toward the one who had uttered the cry, and a waving of fists, arms, and hats, suggested visions of lynching and sudden death.

After a little I was able to discover a method in the outbreaks of apparent lunacy, and found that the shouts and yells and screams, the shaking of fists, and the waving of arms were merely a more or less energetic method of bidding for stocks; that the ringing of gongs and the bellow of the big man who smiled on the bear-garden from the high desk were merely the audible signs that another stock was being called; and that the brazen-voiced reading of a roll was merely the official announcement of the record of bargains and sales that had been going on before me.

It was my good fortune to make out so much before the purchase of the stocks on my order list was completed. The crisis was at hand in which I must have my wits about me, and be ready to act for myself. Eppner rushed up and reported the bargains made, handing me a slip with the figures he had paid for the stocks. He was no longer the impa.s.sive engine of business that he had appeared in the back room of his office. He was now the embodiment of the riot I had been observing. His blue-black hair was rumpled and on end. His blue-black eyes flashed with animation. The blue-black dots that showed where his beard would be if he had let it were almost overwhelmed by the glow that excitement threw into his sallow cheeks.

"Any more orders?" he gasped. He was trembling with excitement and suppressed eagerness for the fray.

"Yes," I shouted above the roar about me. "I want to buy Omega."

He gave a look that might have been a warning, if I could have read it; but it was gone with a shrug as though he would say, "Well, it's no business of mine."

"How much?" he asked. "Wait!"

He started away at a scream from the front, but returned in a moment. He had bought or sold something, but I had not the least idea what it was, or which he had done.

"It's coming!" he yelled in my ear.

The gong rang. There was a confused cry from the man at the big desk.

And pandemonium let loose.

I had thought the riot that had gone before as near the climax of noise as it was possible to get. I was mistaken. The roar that followed the call was to the noise that had gone before as is the hurricane to the zephyr. There was a succession of yells, hoots, cries and bellows; men rushed wildly at each other, swung in a mad dance, jumped up and down; and the floor became a frantic sea of fists, arms, hats, heads, and all things movable.

"Omega opens at sixty-five," shouted Eppner.

"Bid sixty," I shouted in reply, "but get all you can, even if you have to pay sixty-five."

Eppner gave a bellow, and skated into a group of fat men, gesticulating violently. The roar increased, if such a thing were possible.

In a minute Eppner was back, perspiring, and I fancied a trifle worried.

"They're dropping it on me," he gasped in my ear. "Five hundred at sixty-two and one thousand at sixty. Small lots coming fast and big ones on the way."

"Good! Bid fifty-five, and then fifty, but get them."