第167章 Chapter XLVIII Panic(3)

Mr. Hand was thinking that Messrs. Hull and Stackpole might be forced to part with all their remaining holdings at fifty cents on the dollar or less. Then if it could possibly be taken and carried by the united banks for them (Schryhart, himself, Arneel) and sold at a profit later, he and his associates might recoup some of their losses. The local banks at the behest of the big quadrumvirate might be coerced into straining their resources still further. But how was this to be done? How, indeed?

It was Schryhart who, in pumping and digging at Stackpole when he finally arrived there, managed to extract from him the truth in regard to his visit to Cowperwood. As a matter of fact, Schryhart himself had been guilty this very day of having thrown two thousand shares of American Match on the market unknown to his confreres.

Naturally, he was eager to learn whether Stackpole or any one else had the least suspicion that he was involved. As a consequence he questioned Stackpole closely, and the latter, being anxious as to the outcome of his own interests, was not unwilling to make a clean breast. He had the justification in his own mind that the quadrumvirate had been ready to desert him anyhow.

"Why did you go to him?" exclaimed Schryhart, professing to be greatly astonished and annoyed, as, indeed, in one sense he was.

"I thought we had a distinct understanding in the beginning that under no circumstances was he to be included in any portion of this. You might as well go to the devil himself for assistance as go there." At the same time he was thinking "How fortunate!"

Here was not only a loophole for himself in connection with his own subtle side-plays, but also, if the quadrumvirate desired, an excuse for deserting the troublesome fortunes of Hull & Stackpole.

"Well, the truth is," replied Stackpole, somewhat sheepishly and yet defiantly, "last Thursday I had fifteen thousand shares on which I had to raise money. Neither you nor any of the others wanted any more. The banks wouldn't take them. I called up Rambaud on a chance, and he suggested Cowperwood."

As has been related, Stackpole had really gone to Cowperwood direct, but a lie under the circumstances seemed rather essential.

"Rambaud!" sneered Schryhart. "Cowperwood's man--he and all the others. You couldn't have gone to a worse crowd if you had tried.

So that's where this stock is coming from, beyond a doubt. That fellow or his friends are selling us out. You might have known he'd do it. He hates us. So you're through, are you?--not another single trick to turn?"

"Not one," replied Stackpole, solemnly.

"Well, that's too bad. You have acted most unwisely in going to Cowperwood; but we shall have to see what can be done."

Schryhart's idea, like that of Hand, was to cause Hull & Stackpole to relinquish all their holdings for nothing to the banks in order that, under pressure, the latter might carry the stocks he and the others had hypothecated with them until such a time as the company might be organized at a profit. At the same time he was intensely resentful against Cowperwood for having by any fluke of circumstance reaped so large a profit as he must have done. Plainly, the present crisis had something to do with him. Schryhart was quick to call up Hand and Arneel, after Stackpole had gone, suggesting a conference, and together, an hour later, at Arneel's office, they foregathered along with Merrill to discuss this new and very interesting development. As a matter of fact, during the course of the afternoon all of these gentlemen had been growing more and more uneasy. Not that between them they were not eminently capable of taking care of their own losses, but the sympathetic effect of such a failure as this (twenty million dollars), to say nothing of its reaction upon the honor of themselves and the city as a financial center, was a most unsatisfactory if not disastrous thing to contemplate, and now this matter of Cowperwood's having gained handsomely by it all was added to their misery. Both Hand and Arneel growled in opposition when they heard, and Merrill meditated, as he usually did, on the wonder of Cowperwood's subtlety. He could not help liking him.

There is a sort of municipal pride latent in the bosoms of most members of a really thriving community which often comes to the surface under the most trying circumstances. These four men were by no means an exception to this rule. Messrs. Schryhart, Hand, Arneel, and Merrill were concerned as to the good name of Chicago and their united standing in the eyes of Eastern financiers. It was a sad blow to them to think that the one great enterprise they had recently engineered--a foil to some of the immense affairs which had recently had their geneses in New York and elsewhere --should have come to so untimely an end. Chicago finance really should not be put to shame in this fashion if it could be avoided.

So that when Mr. Schryhart arrived, quite warm and disturbed, and related in detail what he had just learned, his friends listened to him with eager and wary ears.

It was now between five and six o'clock in the afternoon and still blazing outside, though the walls of the buildings on the opposite side of the street were a cool gray, picked out with pools of black shadow. A newsboy's strident voice was heard here and there calling an extra, mingled with the sound of homing feet and street-cars --Cowperwood's street-cars.

"I'll tell you what it is," said Scbryhart, finally. "It seems to me we have stood just about enough of this man's beggarly interference. I'll admit that neither Hull nor Stackpole had any right to go to him. They laid themselves and us open to just such a trick as has been worked in this case." Mr. Schryhart was righteously incisive, cold, immaculate, waspish. "At the same time," he continued, "any other moneyed man of equal standing with ourselves would have had the courtesy to confer with us and give us, or at least our banks, an opportunity for taking over these securities. He would have come to our aid for Chicago's sake.