“Wherein I spake of most disastrous chances.”
Shakespeare.
Jack Carleton stood in front of the ticker in Turner and Driver’s office, letting the narrow white ribbon run lightly through his fingers. For the moment he was alone. The big clock over on the post-office building had just boomed slowly the hour of twelve, and the little knot of customers, calmly or hurriedly, according to their several temperaments, had one by one gone out to lunch, for man must eat, though black care sit at his elbow. And indeed, though the little ticker still buzzed and whirred unceasingly, and the tape, with scarcely a halt or pause in its onward course, still ran as smoothly and persistently as ever, for the moment the worst of the drive seemed really to be over. So that presently Carleton lifted his eyes, red-rimmed and tired from the blur of black and white beneath them, letting the quotations run on unheeded, and stood with eyes fixed on the spot where, just visible through the very top of the tall window, framed in with line and bar of blackened roof and dingy chimney top, there smiled cheerfully down into the gloom of the darkened office a cloudless patch of bright blue sky.
Imperceptibly the sound of the ticker ceased, and the white ribbon began fantastically to curl and twist in his hand, for all unconsciously his fingers had closed upon it, checking the smoothness of its onward flow. The little patch of blue sky had sent his thoughts wandering far afield. A moment before he had been standing there in the office, wondering miserably whether to try to pull out, while there was yet time, with a good part of his little fortune gone, or whether, with anchors grappling desperately for holding ground, to strive somehow to ride out the storm. And now, so long had his mind run upon things trivial and unimportant, that despite the panic, despite the danger he was in, thanks to that casual upward glance, he stood already in imagination at the first tee at the Country Club, the green of the valley lying smooth and fair beneath him, the couple ahead just disappearing over the farther dip of the hill, and he himself, well-limbered up, driver in hand, in the act of placing the new white ball on the well-made tee, properly confident of smashing it out a hundred and eighty yards away, amid the close-cropped velvet of the rolling turf. Absolutely a perfect day, he reflected, for the medal round; no wind, a bright sun, greens quick, yet true—and above all, he felt that he could win. Barnes was entered, of course, and Henderson himself—he was paired with him—and Henderson had told Jake Rogers that since he had changed his grip he could “put it all over” Carleton, match or medal, any time they met. Rogers, with his little crooked smile, had taken pains, of course, to repeat the remark, and while Jack had laughed and said, “Oh, sure, he can lick me all right,” in his own heart of hearts, nevertheless, he knew that he could trim Henderson, and somewhat grimly had awaited his chance. About a hundred and sixty would do it, he figured; say a seventy-nine to-day and an eighty-one to-morrow—two such perfect days in succession could hardly be—yes, about a couple of eighties would do the trick.
His vision faded as swiftly as it had come. The green of the links had vanished, and in its stead the four square walls of the office, swinging smoothly into place, had closed tightly in again upon him and his troubled fortunes. With a start, and a half-guilty flush, he glanced hastily over the yard or two of tape which he still held, looped and bent, in his tense fingers. But to his relief, as he quickly scanned the quotations, there seemed to be no cause for further immediate alarm. On the contrary, the general tone of things was still improving. Akme Mining was seventeen now, up two and a quarter; Suburban Electric had rallied to sixty-three; Fuel was up four, at eighty. With a sigh, Carleton’s eyes were raised again to the patch of blue sky.
And now into the office bustled Jim Turner, hurried and preoccupied, showing plainly the nervous strain of the last three days, and especially of that grim and ghastly yesterday, when for five endless hours it had seemed that the bottom of the market, if not, indeed, of the earth itself, might be going to fall out for ever and a day; a troubled, anxious time alike for broker and customer, banker and depositor, a time when the emergency brakes had been put on so suddenly and so hard that the whole great financial stage-coach had come momentarily to a standstill, with a jar so tremendous that scores of passengers, especially those who occupied only precarious standing-room, had been hurled bodily to the ground, and some indeed, according to the stern panic-law of self-preservation, had even been quietly and with despatch pushed over the side, in order to make better the chances of those remaining for keeping in safety the threatened security of their seats.
Turner headed straight for the ticker, as he neared it striving, with an obviousness scarcely reassuring, to appear cheerful and unconcerned. “Hullo, Jack,” he said, “how they coming now?” and without waiting for a reply, gathered up a dozen yards of the tape and let it pass quickly under his practised eye. “H’m,” he said, almost immediately, in a tone that plainly enough showed his relief, “not so bad, are they? Quite a lot better than they were an hour ago. Oh, I guess we’ll come through it somehow, after all.”
His tone gave Carleton measureless comfort. He found himself nodding with assurance. “Oh, yes,” he answered, “they’re really a lot better. I guess things are all right now. Do you suppose, Jim—” he hesitated, stopped, and then, with a flush of color, and his eyes averted from Turner’s face, “do you suppose, Jim, you’ll be able to see me through?”
Turner non-committally shrugged his shoulders. “Why,” he answered, not unkindly, “I guess so. Yes, if things don’t go all to the devil again, I guess we can. But you’re in too deep, Jack, for a man that hasn’t unlimited resources. It isn’t right, really. I’ll stand by you as long as I can—and when I can’t, I’ll let you know—and then, if you can’t do anything, and it gets too bad, why, business is business, Jack, and we’ll have to chuck you. That’s all we can do.”Carleton gazed at him a little helplessly; then asked, “But you think the worst’s over, don’t you?” He spoke so trustfully, and with such confidence in the other’s judgment, that Turner gave a half-contemptuous, half-embarrassed laugh. “Why, yes,” he answered slowly, “I think it is, but good Lord, Jack, at a time like this I’m not on the inside. I’m only one of the small fry. If I could tell you what you wanted to know, instead of just guessing at it, I wouldn’t be here, working for a living; I can tell you that; I’d be over touring the continent in a big French six-cylinder. That’s where I’d be.” He paused a moment; then, laying a hand on Carleton’s arm, continued, “But to the best of my knowledge, I really think the worst is over, and that things are going to right themselves. Gradually, of course; it’s going to take time; but they’ll right themselves, for all that. And I wouldn’t worry too much, Jack, if I were you. I’ll give you warning anyway, and if worst should come to worst, why, I suppose your old man would see you through, wouldn’t he, if it was a case of that or bust?”
Carleton shook his head. “No, I guess not,” he answered, “he would if he could, but there’s something queer about the property now. I didn’t know about it till a little while ago, and I don’t understand all the details yet; but the idea is that my father’s made Henry trustee of everything. Henry’s the whole shooting-match at home now, you know. So I guess it wouldn’t do to try the old gentleman. No, I’ve got in too deep, like a fool, and I’ve got to get out by myself or else drown; one of the two. But if I can only get by, this time, you can bet I’ll never be such an ass again. You see, Jim,” he added, ruefully enough, “I wanted to show people—”
Turner laughed, though without amusement. “Yes, I know,” he said dryly, “you wanted to come the young Napoleon racket. There’ve been others. You needn’t kick yourself for being the only one. But there must be some one that would help you out, Jack. Why couldn’t you go to your uncle himself?”
He made the suggestion casually enough, yet with a shrewd eye on the younger man’s expression. Carleton frowned. “Well,” he answered doubtfully, “I’d hate to do that. You know what Henry and I think of each other. I suppose I could, though, if I was dead up against it. But I’m not going to worry yet.” He glanced once more at the tape; then added, “Things really have steadied, haven’t they, Jim? I guess we’re all safe for to-day.”
Turner did not at once reply. The events of the last three days had to a large extent discouraged him from hazarding further prophecies. “Can’t tell,” he answered guardedly, at length, “can’t tell these days, but they’ve certainly steadied quite a bit; that’s sure; perhaps they’ll begin to pick up now.”
As he spoke, a clerk entered with a bundle of papers in his hand. “For you to sign, Mr. Turner,” he said, and Turner, taking them, departed into his private office. One or two quick lunchers, the vanguard of the returning stream of regular patrons, came in at the outer door; the first, thin, pale and dyspeptic looking, making hastily for the ticker, with no attempt to conceal his anxiety; the other, stout, red-faced, and philosophic, following more calmly, his hat on the back of his head, making leisurely exploration with a toothpick the while, evidently with a certain not unpraiseworthy desire to show that even in the throes of a panic a man could still be game. As they approached, Carleton glanced first at the tape, then at his watch, then at the patch of blue sky. The tape said that Akme Mining was seventeen and a quarter, and that Suburban Electric was sixty-four and a half; the watch said that it was twelve-fifteen, and that the twelve-thirty train would get him to the Country Club in time for lunch; the patch of blue sky said “Come.” With a rather guilty haste he walked quickly toward the door, for a moment paused on the threshold, still listening to the whirring of the ticker; and then passed hurriedly out into the street.
It was Championship Cup day at the Country Club, and the locker room, when Carleton entered it two hours later, was crowded with excited men in various stages of dress and undress; men who had entered the Club five minutes before as respectable doctors, lawyers, bankers and business men, and who, five minutes later, were to emerge in a common indecorous garb of faded flannel shirts, dingy gray trousers and shapeless felt hats, making their way toward the first tee with an eagerness which in fulfilling their professional engagements, they were seldom, if ever, seen to display.
Carleton, entering, with the mechanical dexterity of long habit, almost with one motion stripped off coat and vest, collar and tie, and opening his locker, began pulling out his clubs and his battered golfing clothes. He affected not to see Henderson, thin and spare and brown, seated on a bench with knees drawn up under his chin and clasped by bare, sinewy arms.
Presently his rival rose and sauntered over to him across the room. He stood near Carleton in silence, and the two eyed each other with grins, hostile, yet friendly. Finally Henderson spoke. “Well,” he observed, without enthusiasm, “how’s the boy? Looking a little bit fine, what? A little bit pale for him, hey?” Carleton laughed, with elaborate disdain. “Oh, no, Tommy,” he returned, “can’t catch me that way. That’s too old a gag. Never felt better in my life, thanks. How are they scoring? Barnes finished yet?”
Henderson nodded. “Played this morning,” he said, “was going fine till the eighteenth, and then drove into the quarry, and dropped his nerve. Cost him nine for the hole, and did an eighty-five at that. Said his caddie moved just as he was swinging back for his drive; too bad, wasn’t it?”
His tone belied the grief expressed by his last words, and at his humorous wink Carleton openly smiled. Both could exult in the common enjoyment of seeing a dangerous rival put out of the running. “Yes, too bad,” he rejoined, “his eighty-five the best?”
Henderson shook his head. “No,” he answered, “fellow from Brooklawn did an eighty-three. Nothing much else under ninety, though; one or two eighty-nines, I believe, and an eighty-eight; better get limbered up a bit, Jack; it’s getting near our turn. See you outside.”
Carleton nodded, tightened his belt another hole, and reached for his clubs. Then, for a moment turning his back on the crowded room, he held out his hand, scanning the fingers critically. His ideas of conditioning himself were his own. He frowned slightly, shaking his head in displeasure. “That’s the first time that’s happened again so soon,” he muttered, “I thought I looked out for that this morning. Well, I know the answer, anyway,” and a couple of minutes later, wiping his lips with his handkerchief, he joined Henderson outside the club-house, and began leisurely to limber up.
It was a quarter of an hour later when, in answer to their names, they stepped forward to the first tee. Henderson, having the honor, surveyed his footing with care, and then, absolutely cool and phlegmatic, teed his ball, eyed the direction flag waving on the cop bunker some seventy yards away, and with his provokingly easy swing drove a ball without much “ginger” behind it, a trifle high yet superlatively safe, unerring in direction and with some distance to it as well, for the road was a full hundred and fifty yards from the tee, and the little white sphere stood out plainly against the green of the turf some twenty yards beyond. Still with the utmost deliberation he stepped back off the tee, and Carleton took his place. His style was almost the antithesis of Henderson’s. His tee was scarcely more than a pinch of the damp sand, just enough to insure a good lie for his ball; almost negligently, it seemed, he fell at once into his stance, swinging back with an astonishing freedom, yet with complete mastery of a somewhat dashing style, and coming through into a finish absolutely superb. Low and straight sped his ball, hardly more than twenty feet over the top of the bunker; then, beginning slowly to rise, soaring magnificently onward, finally to come to a stop some fifty or sixty yards beyond the road. Henderson whistled as they walked down the path. “Some one’s feeling fine,” he said. “Glad you got in one good one, anyway, Jack.”
Carleton smiled grimly. “Oh, a few more at home like that I guess,” he retorted, “you’ve got to crack an eighty to-day, Tommy, if you want to be in the game.”
His second shot, indeed, seemed to bear out his words. Henderson had taken an iron, cleared the bunker that guarded the green, and was safely on its farther edge in two, but Carleton, playing a high, clean mashie, with plenty of back-spin, managed to lay his ball up within a dozen feet of the flag. On the green Henderson putted true and straight, his ball stopping so near the hole as to make a four a certainty. Carleton, with a little more deliberation than he had yet shown, eyed the line of his put. “Easy,” he muttered to himself, half-aloud, “nothing to it; easiest thing you know; just get the line, follow her through, and she—goes—down.”
With the final word the ball ticked against the farther edge of the cup, and dropped gently in for a three. Henderson, holing out, whistled again. “Somebody’s got their good eye with ’em,” he observed, and Carleton, picking up his ball, drew a long breath of content. “Oh, the devil,” he answered good-naturedly, “this is one of my days; I can do anything I want to to ’em to-day;” and in silence they strode away for the second tee.
Outward for the first nine holes they played, into a world, green under foot and blue and white above, the sunshine just pleasantly warm, the cool westerly breeze barely stirring the green leaves in the tree-tops, and faintly rousing the drooping direction flags below. A world of good-fellowship, a world of youth and joy, and withal, the rigor of the game to make them at times wholly unconscious, at times all the more conscious, of the glory above, around, beneath them. Henderson, the safe and sane, was on his game, making the first nine holes in an even forty, but Carleton played beyond himself. Twice only on the outward journey did he make mistakes, and for both he atoned by pulling off two shots well-nigh marvelous—one a clean, slashing brassie that put him on the edge of the green on the long fifth—four hundred and fifty yards—in two; one a straight, deadly put of twenty-five feet at the eighth; no wonder that Henderson unwillingly totaled a thirty-six for his rival, puckered his lips, but this time without the whistle, and mournfully shook his head. Coming in, indeed, Carleton’s pace slackened a bit, and his playing became, in Henderson’s phrase, “considerably more like a human being’s.” Mistakes, one or two of them costly, were not lacking; his putting fell off a bit; his confidence seemed a little to diminish; yet, spite of all, he still played brilliantly, and when on the eighteenth, he drove a long, straight ball, far over the quarry, with no danger between him and the home hole, Henderson was forced to admit defeat. He himself finished as steadily as ever, coming in without any serious error, without anything especially brilliant, with a card all fours and fives, in forty-two, and thus handed it an eighty-two for the round. Carleton’s card in was more irregular; it was marred by two sixes, but these were balanced by two threes and an occasional four, altogether forty-one for the second nine, and a total of seventy-seven. Surely, the gold medal lay all but in his grasp, and Henderson, indeed, had the grace to acknowledge it. “You’re all right, Jack,” he said, as they parted, “see you to-morrow afternoon, but I guess you’ve got things cinched; this is your lucky day;” and Carleton, though perforce he shrugged his shoulders and said that no one could ever tell, felt in his heart that the prize was as good as won.At the club-house he dressed, and then, finding that he had plenty of time, walked leisurely down to the train, and started back for town. For a while, just comfortably tired with the afternoon’s round, he was content to sit back in his seat with passive enjoyment, with eyes half closed, playing over again each stroke of the round in pleasant retrospect, again smashing straight low balls from the tee, again laying up his approach shots, again successfully holing long, difficult puts. It made pleasant enough dreaming, and he sat thus until Hillside was reached.
Then suddenly, two men, entering hurriedly, took the vacant seat behind him, evidently resuming their conversation where it had been broken off as they had boarded the train. Their first words drove golf a million miles from his brain. “So it busted clean to hell, did it?” asked the stout man, panting with haste and excitement.
“Did it?” echoed his companion, with a certain dismal pride, the sense of proprietorship that one gains in the communication of bad news, “well, I should say it did. Didn’t begin till two o’clock, and then, say, you never saw such a time in your life. Smash—Bang—Smash! Everything thrown over, right and left; why, down at Wellman’s—”
The train roared into the long tunnel, and the rest of the sentence was lost. It was enough, and Carleton, sitting motionless, felt a sudden sickening reaction creep over him. A game of golf—a gold medal—and the market again in the grip of a panic beside which the first break of three days ago must have been as nothing. And then, insistently, he began to wonder—how bad—how bad? His margin had been slender enough before—hardly sufficient, really, to pass muster unless tinctured with the dangerous kindness of friendship—he clenched his hands; his mouth had gone suddenly dry—
Inside the smoky station the train came to a halt. Alighting, he paused to buy the evening papers from a clamorous newsboy; then without stopping even to glance at them, hastened straight to his office. It was long after the hour of closing. The office boy was gone, the door made fast. Unlocking it, he entered, sat down at his desk, and began hastily to examine the letters and memoranda reposing there. “Ring up Mr. Turner,” was penciled half a dozen times in the office boy’s round, sprawling hand, with various additions, “Important,” “Urgent,” “At once,” “Ring 698, Lincoln;” that was Harris and Wheeler’s; “Ring Main, 422;” that was Claxton Brothers. He turned to the papers. Lord above, what headlines! Panic—market crash—houses suspended—banks in danger—half dazed, he gazed for a moment around him, as if doubting that it could all be real; then, with a grim feeling that nothing could much matter now, he read steadily the long rows of stock quotations; and ever, as he read down a column, values dropped downward with him, and never, as he turned to the top of the next, did they rise again. Once more he had to stop, unable to grasp the truth; Akme Mining, nine and a half; Suburban Electric, forty-seven; Fuel, sixty-three; it was all impossible.
Through the slide in the office door a letter fluttered gently to the floor. He rose and picked it up. It had Turner’s name in the corner. Inside was a hasty scrawl, “Things very bad; must have ten thousand additional margin at opening to-morrow, sure.” As he laid it down, the telephone rang; “Yes,” he answered, “Mr. Harris; oh, yes, I know; five thousand; yes; thanks; you’ve got to have it at the opening; all right; good-by.” He hung up the receiver, and turned to confront a telegraph boy at his elbow. He hastily signed, and ripped open the envelope. This time the laconic message was from Claxton Brothers. “Good,” he muttered, “only five thousand more. This is fine,” and he threw himself back in his office chair, and for a moment or two thought hard. Then he smiled ironically. “Oh, yes,” he muttered, “Henderson got it right, as usual; this is certainly my lucky day;” then after a moment, he added, “Well, I suppose it’s a case of must now. It’s all I can do.” He rose, shrugging his shoulders, and thrusting the papers into his pocket, he hurriedly left the office.
