第26章

I'll sell short for you at the best figures we can get, and you can cover on the slump any time between now and the end of May."Jadwin hesitated.In spite of himself he felt a Chance had come.Again that strange sixth sense of his, the inexplicable instinct, that only the born speculator knows, warned him.Every now and then during the course of his business career, this intuition came to him, this _flair,_ this intangible, vague premonition, this presentiment that he must seize Opportunity or else Fortune, that so long had stayed at his elbow, would desert him.In the air about him he seemed to feel an influence, a sudden new element, the presence of a new force.It was Luck, the great power, the great goddess, and all at once it had stooped from out the invisible, and just over his head passed swiftly in a rush of glittering wings.

"The thing would have to be handled like glass,"observed the broker thoughtfully, his eyes narrowing "Atip like this is public property in twenty-four hours, and it don't give us any too much time.I don't want to break the price by unloading a million or more bushels on 'em all of a sudden.I'll scatter the orders pretty evenly.You see," he added, "here's a big point in our favor.We'll be able to sell on a strong market.The Pit traders have got some crazy war rumour going, and they're as flighty over it as a young ladies' seminary over a great big rat.And even without that, the market is top-heavy.Porteous makes me weary.He and his gang have been bucking it up till we've got an abnormal price.Ninety-four for May wheat! Why, it's ridiculous.Ought to be selling way down in the eighties.The least little jolt would tip her over.Well," he said abruptly, squaring himself at Jadwin, "do we come in? If that same luck of yours is still in working order, here's your chance, J., to make a killing.There's just that gilt-edged, full-morocco chance that a report of big 'visible' would give us."Jadwin laughed."Sam," he said, "I'll flip a coin for it.""Oh, get out," protested the broker; then suddenly--the gambling instinct that a lifetime passed in that place had cultivated in him--exclaimed:

"All right.Flip a coin.But give me your word you'll stay by it.Heads you come in; tails you don't.Will you give me your word?""Oh, I don't know about that," replied Jadwin, amused at the foolishness of the whole proceeding.But as he balanced the half-dollar on his thumb-nail, he was all at once absolutely assured that it would fall heads.

He flipped it in the air, and even as he watched it spin, said to himself, "It will come heads.It could not possibly be anything else.I _know_ it will be heads."And as a matter of course the coin fell heads.

"All right," he said, "I'll come in."

"For a million bushels?"

"Yes--for a million.How much in margins will you want?"Gretry figured a moment on the back of an envelope.

"Fifty thousand dollars," he announced at length.

Jadwin wrote the check on a corner of the broker's desk, and held it a moment before him.

"Good-bye," he said, apostrophising the bit of paper.

"Good-bye.I ne'er shall look upon your like again."Gretry did not laugh.

"Huh!" he grunted."You'll look upon a hatful of them before the month is out."That same morning Landry Court found himself in the corridor on the ground floor of the Board of Trade about nine o'clock.He had just come out of the office of Gretry, Converse & Co., where he and the other Pit traders for the house had been receiving their orders for the day.

As he was buying a couple of apples at the news stand at the end of the corridor, Semple and a young Jew named Hirsch, Pit traders for small firms in La Salle Street, joined him.

"Hello, Court, what do you know?"

"Hello, Barry Semple! Hello, Hirsch!" Landry offered the halves of his second apple, and the three stood there a moment, near the foot of the stairs, talking and eating their apples from the points of their penknives.

"I feel sort of seedy this morning," Semple observed between mouthfuls."Was up late last night at a stag.

A friend of mine just got back from Europe, and some of the boys were giving him a little dinner.He was all over the shop, this friend of mine; spent most of his time in Constantinople; had some kind of newspaper business there.It seems that it's a pretty crazy proposition, Turkey and the Sultan and all that.He said that there was nearly a row over the 'Higgins-Pasha' incident, and that the British agent put it pretty straight to the Sultan's secretary.My friend said Constantinople put him in mind of a lot of opera bouffe scenery that had got spilled out in the mud.

Say, Court, he said the streets were dirtier than the Chicago streets.""Oh, come now," said Hirsch.

"Fact! And the dogs! He told us he knows now where all the yellow dogs go to when they die.""But say," remarked Hirsch, "what is that about the Higgins-Pasha business? I thought that was over long ago.""Oh, it is," answered Semple easily.He looked at his watch."I guess it's about time to go up, pretty near half-past nine."The three mounted the stairs, mingling with the groups of floor traders who, in steadily increasing numbers, had begun to move in the same direction.But on the way Hirsch was stopped by his brother.

"Hey, I got that box of cigars for you."

Hirsch paused."Oh! All right," he said, then he added: " Say, how about that Higgins-Pasha affair? You remember that row between England and Turkey.They tell me the British agent in Constantinople put it pretty straight to the Sultan the other day."The other was interested."He did, hey?" he said.

"The market hasn't felt it, though.Guess there's nothing to it.But there's Kelly yonder.He'd know.

He's pretty thick with Porteous' men.Might ask him.""You ask him and let me know.I got to go on the floor.It's nearly time for the gong."Hirsch's brother found Kelly in the centre of a group of settlement clerks.