第75章

About a week later, two days after New Year's day, when Landry came down from Chicago on the afternoon train, he was full of the tales of a great day on the Board of Trade.Laura, descending to the sitting-room, just before dinner, found a group in front of the fireplace, where the huge logs were hissing and crackling.Her husband and Cressler were there, and Gretry, who had come down on an earlier train.Page sat near at hand, her chin on her palm, listening intently to Landry, who held the centre of the stage for the moment.In a far corner of the room Sheldon Corthell, in a dinner coat and patent-leather pumps, a cigarette between his fingers, read a volume of Italian verse.

"It was the confirmation of the failure of the Argentine crop that did it," Landry was saying; "that and the tremendous foreign demand.She opened steady enough at eighty-three, but just as soon as the gong tapped we began to get it.Buy, buy, buy.Everybody is in it now.The public are speculating.For one fellow who wants to sell there are a dozen buyers.We had one of the hottest times I ever remember in the Pit this morning"Laura saw Jadwin's eyes snap.

"I told you we'd get this, Sam," he said, nodding to the broker.

"Oh, there's plenty of wheat," answered Gretry, easily.

"Wait till we get dollar wheat--if we do--and see it come out.The farmers haven't sold it all yet.

There's always an army of ancient hayseeds who have the stuff tucked away--in old stockings, I guess--and who'll dump it on you all right if you pay enough.

There's plenty of wheat.I've seen it happen before.

Work the price high enough, and, Lord, how they'll scrape the bins to throw it at you! You'd never guess from what out-of-the-way places it would come.""I tell you, Sam," retorted Jadwin, "the surplus of wheat is going out of the country--and it's going fast.

And some of these shorts will have to hustle lively for it pretty soon.""The Crookes gang, though," observed Landry, "seem pretty confident the market will break.I'm sure they were selling short this morning.""The idea," exclaimed Jadwin, incredulously, "the idea of selling short in face of this Argentine collapse, and all this Bull news from Europe!""Oh, there are plenty of shorts," urged Gretry.

"Plenty of them."

Try as he would, the echoes of the rumbling of the Pit reached Jadwin at every hour of the day and night.The maelstrom there at the foot of La Salle Street was swirling now with a mightier rush than for years past.

Thundering, its vortex smoking, it sent its whirling far out over the country, from ocean to ocean, sweeping the wheat into its currents, sucking it in, and spewing it out again in the gigantic pulses of its ebb and flow.

And he, Jadwin, who knew its every eddy, who could foretell its every ripple, was out of it, out of it.

Inactive, he sat there idle while the clamour of the Pit swelled daily louder, and while other men, men of little minds, of narrow imaginations, perversely, blindly shut their eyes to the swelling of its waters, neglecting the chances which he would have known how to use with such large, such vast results.That mysterious event which long ago he felt was preparing, was not yet consummated.The great Fact, the great Result which was at last to issue forth from all this turmoil was not yet achieved.Would it refuse to come until a master hand, all powerful, all daring, gripped the levers of the sluice gates that controlled the crashing waters of the Pit? He did not know.Was it the moment for a chief?

Was this upheaval a revolution that called aloud for its Napoleon? Would another, not himself, at last, seeing where so many shut their eyes, step into the place of high command?

Jadwin chafed and fretted in his inaction.As the time when the house party should break up drew to its close, his impatience harried him like a gadfly.He took long drives over the lonely country roads, or tramped the hills or the frozen lake, thoughtful, preoccupied.He still held his seat upon the Board of Trade.He still retained his agents in Europe.Each morning brought him fresh despatches, each evening's paper confirmed his forecasts.

"Oh, I'm out of it for good and all," he assured his wife."But I know the man who could take up the whole jing-bang of that Crookes crowd in one hand and"--his large fist swiftly knotted as he spoke the words--"scrunch it up like an eggshell, by George."Landry Court often entertained Page with accounts of the doings on the Board of Trade, and about a fortnight after the Jadwins had returned to their city home he called on her one evening and brought two or three of the morning's papers.

"Have you seen this?" he asked.She shook her head.

"Well," he said, compressing his lips, and narrowing his eyes, "let me tell you, we are having pretty--lively--times--down there on the Board these days.The whole country is talking about it."He read her certain extracts from the newspapers he had brought.The first article stated that recently a new factor had appeared in the Chicago wheat market.A"Bull" clique had evidently been formed, presumably of New York capitalists, who were ousting the Crookes crowd and were rapidly coming into control of the market.In consequence of this the price of wheat was again mounting.

Another paper spoke of a combine of St.Louis firms who were advancing prices, bulling the market.Still a third said, at the beginning of a half-column article: