THE LAST DITCH

Romantic folly—The impulse that comes from beyond our sight—I go to seek Mr. Carboner—An unpromising location for a banker—I receive advice and help—Dickie Pierson gets an order from me—What is Strauss's game?

The yellow paper lay in my hand, and, with a flash, my memory went back to that mysterious note which Jane Dround had sent on the eve of her departure for Europe. It lay undisturbed in a drawer of my office desk. I smiled impatiently at the woman's folly—of the letter, the telegram. And yet it warmed my heart that she should be thinking of me this day, that she should divine my troubles. And I seemed to see her dark eyebrows arched with scorn at my weakness, her thin lips curl disdainfully, as if to say: "Was this to be your finish? Have I helped you, believed in you, all these years, to have you fall now?" So she had spoken.

But still I was unconvinced, and in this state of mind I went back to bed, knowing that I should need on the morrow what sleep I could get. But sleep did not come: instead, my mind busied itself with Jane Dround's letter—with the woman herself. As the night grew toward morning I arose, dressed myself, and left the house. The letter in my office pulled me like a thread of fate; and I obeyed its call like a child. In the lightening dawn I hurried through the streets to the lofty building where the Products Company had its offices, and groped my way up the long flights of stairs. As I sat down at my desk and unlocked the drawers, the morning sun shot in from the lake over the smoky buildings beneath me. After some hunting I found the letter. Mrs. Dround wrote a peculiar hand—firm, clear, unchangeable, but with curious tiny flourishes about the r's and s's.

As I glanced at it, the woman herself rose before my eyes, and she sat across the desk from me, looking into my face. "Yes, I need you," I found myself muttering; "not any letter, but you, with your will and your courage, now, if ever. For this is the last ditch, sure enough!"

The letter shook in my hand and beat against the desk. It was a silly thing to leave my bed and come chasing down here at five in the morning to get hold of a romantic woman's letter! My nerves were wrong. Something in me revolted from going any further with this weakness, and I still hesitated to tear open the envelope. The other battles of my life I had won unaided.

At the bottom of our hearts there is a feeling which we do not understand, a respect for the unknown. Terror, fear,—call it what you will,—sometime in life every one is made to feel it. All my life has been given to practical facts, yet I know that at the end of all things there are no facts. In the silence and gray light of that morning I felt the strong presence of my friend, holding out to me a hand.... I tore open the letter. Inside was another little envelope, which contained a visiting-card. On it was written: "Mr. J. Carboner, 230 West Lake Street," and beneath, in fine script, this one sentence: "Mr. Carboner is a good adviser—see him!"

This was fit pay for my folly. Of all the sentimental nonsense, an adviser! What was wanted was better than a million dollars of ready cash—within three hours. It was now half-past six o'clock, and I had left until half-past nine to find an ordinary, practical way out of my present difficulties. Then the banks would be open; the great wheel of business would begin to revolve, with its sure, merciless motion. Nevertheless, in spite of my scepticism, my eyes wandered to a map of the city that hung on the wall, and I made out the location of the address given on the card. It was a bare half-mile across the roofs from where I sat, in a quarter of the city lying along the river, given up to brick warehouses, factories, and freight yards. Small likelihood that a man with a million to spare in his pocket was to be found over there!

In this mood of depression and disgust I left my office, to get shaved. "Street floor, sir," the elevator boy called out to wake me from my preoccupation. As I stood on the curb in the same will-less daze, a cab came prowling down the street, crossed to my side, and the disreputable-looking driver touched his dirty hat with his whip:—

"Cab, sir?"

"Two-thirty West Lake," I said to him mechanically, and plunged into his carriage.

The cab finally drew up beside a low, grimy brick building that looked as if it might have survived the fire. There was a flight of dirty stairs leading from the street to the office floor, and over the small, old-fashioned windows a faded sign read "Jules Carboner." In response to my knock an old man opened the locked door a crack and looked out at me. When I asked to see Mr. Carboner, he admitted me suspiciously to a little room, which was divided in two by a high iron screen. On the inner side of the screen there was a battered desk, a few chairs, and a row of leather-backed folios that might have been in use since the founding of the city. A small coal fire was burning dully in the grate. As I stood waiting for Mr. Carboner, a barge laden with lumber cast its shadow through the dirty windows....

"And what may you want of me?"

The words were uttered like a cough. The one who spoke them had entered the inner office so noiselessly that I had not heard him. He had a white head of hair, and jet-black eyes. I handed him my card with Mrs. Dround's note.

"I was expecting you," the old gentleman remarked, glancing indifferently at my card. He unlocked the door of the iron grating and held it open, pointing to a chair in front of the fire. Mr. Carboner was short and round, with swarthy, full-blooded cheeks. Evidently he was some sort of foreigner, but I could not place him among the types of men I knew.

"What do you want of me?" he demanded briskly.

"Oh, just a lot of money, first and last!" I laughed.

This announcement didn't seem to trouble him; he waited for my explanation. And remembering that I was to look to him for advice as well as cash, I proceeded to explain briefly the situation that I found myself in. He listened without comment.

"Finally," I said rather wearily, "just now, when I am in deep water with this railroad and all the rest, and the banks calling my loans, some fellows are selling their Meat Products stock. It will all go to my enemies—to Strauss and his crowd, and I shall find myself presently kicked out of the company. I suppose it's Mr. Dround's stock that's coming on the market. It's like him to sell when prices are going down."

The little old fellow shook his head.

"It is not Mr. Dround's stock," he said. "Most of that is over there." He nodded his head in the direction of a small safe which stood in one corner of the room.

"How did you get it?" I exclaimed in my astonishment, jumping to my feet.

"Never mind how—we have had it three months," he replied with a smile. "You need not fear that it will come on the market just now."

My heart gave a great bound upward: with this block of stock locked up I could do what I would with Meat Products. Strauss could never put his hands on it. Jane Dround must have worked this stroke; but how she did it was a mystery. I walked back and forth in my excitement, and when I sat down once more Mr. Carboner began a neat little summary of my situation:—

"You are engaged in many ventures. Some are strong." He named all the good ones as if he were quoting from a carefully drawn report. "Some are weak." He named the others. "Now, you are trying to hold the weak with the strong. It is like carrying a basket of eggs on your head. All goes well until some one runs against you. Then bum, biff!—you have the beginning of an omelet."

His way of putting it made me laugh.

"And the omelet is about ready to cook in an hour or two!" I added.

"We shall see presently. You want to sell out this packing business, some day, eh? To Strauss? You take big chances. You are a new man. They suspect you. They call your loans. They think that you are thin in the waist? You have to borrow a great deal of money and pay high for it?"

"You have sized me up, Mr. Carboner."

"And after you have sold to Strauss there will be railroads—ah, that is more difficult! And then many other things—always ventures, risks, schemes, plans, great plans! For you are very bold."

"Well, what will you do for me?" I asked bluntly.

"I think we can carry you over this river, Mr. Harrington," he replied, looking at me with a very amiable air, as if he were my schoolmaster and had decided to give me a holiday and some spending money. Who made up the "we" in this firm of Rip Van Winkle bankers? Carboner seemed to divine my doubts; for he smiled as he reached for a pad of paper and began to write in a close, crabbed hand.

"Take that to Mr. Bates," he directed. "You know him, eh?"

Did I know Orlando Bates! If I had been to him once at the Tenth National, of which he was president, I had been to him fifty times, with varying results. I knew every wrinkle in his parchment-covered face.

"He will give you what you want," the old man added.

I still hesitated, holding Carboner's scrawl in my hand.

"You think it no good?" He motioned to the sheet of coarse paper. "Try it!"

"Don't you want a receipt?" I stammered.

"What for? Do you think I am a pawnbroker?"

The mystery grew. Suppose I should take this old fellow's scrawl over to Orlando Bates, and the president of the Tenth National should ask me what it meant?

"It is good," Carboner said impressively.

"Whose is it?" The words escaped me unconsciously. "I want to know whose money I am taking."

"I hope it will be no one's," he answered imperturbably, "except the bank's. You come to me wanting money, credit. I give it to you. I ask no questions. Why should you?"

Was it a woman's money I was taking to play out my game. I recalled the story Sarah had told me years ago about Jane Dround's father and his fortune. He was a rich old half-breed trader, and it was gossiped that he had left behind him a pile of gold. Perhaps this Mr. Carboner was some French-Canadian, friend or business partner of Jane's father, who had charge of her affairs. As Sarah had said, Jane Dround was always secret and uncommunicative about herself. My faith in the piece of paper was growing, but I still waited.

"If you lay these matters down now," Carboner observed coldly, poking the fire with an old pair of tongs, "they will be glass. If you grasp them in a strong hand, they will become diamonds."

But to take a woman's money! I thought for a moment—and then dismissed the scruple as swiftly as it had come. This woman was a good gambler!

"All right!" I exclaimed, drawing on my overcoat, which I had laid aside.

"Good! Don't worry about anything. Make your trees bear fruit. That is what you can do, young man." Old Carboner patted me on the back in a fatherly fashion. "Now we will have some coffee together. There is yet time."

The man who had opened the door for me brought in two cups of strong coffee, and I drank mine standing while Carboner sipped his and talked.

"This disturbance will be over soon," he said sagely. "Then we shall have such times of wealth and speculation as the world has never seen. Great things will be done in a few years, and you will do some of them. There are those who have confidence in you, my son. And confidence is worth many millions in gold."

He gave me his hand in dismissal.

"Come to see me again, and we will talk," he added sociably.

On the ground floor of my building there was a broker's office. It was a new firm of young men, without much backing. My old friend, Dickie Pierson, was one of them, and on his account I had given the firm some business now and then. This morning, as I was hurrying back to my office, I ran into Dick standing in the door of his place. He beckoned me into the room where the New York quotations were beginning to go up on the board. He pointed to the local list of the day before; Meat Products stretched in a long string of quotations across the board, mute evidence of yesterday's slaughter.

"What's wrong with your concern?" Dick asked anxiously. "Some one is pounding it for all he is worth."

"Who were selling yesterday?"

"Stearns & Harris," he answered. (They were brokers that Strauss's crowd were known to use.)

There was a mystery here somewhere. For there could not be any considerable amount of the stock loose, now that Dround's block was locked up in Jules Carboner's safe. Yet did the Strauss crowd dare to sell it short in this brazen way? They must think it would be cheap enough soon, or they knew where they could get some stock when they wanted it.

"What's up?" Dick asked again, hovering at my elbow. I judged that he had gone into Meat Products on his own account, and wanted to know which way to jump.

"It looks bad for us," I said confidentially to Dickie. "You needn't publish this on the street." (I reckoned that the tip would be on the ticker before noon.) "But Dround has gone over to the other crowd. And probably some of our people are squeezed just now so they can't hold their Meat Products." I added some yarn about a lawsuit to make doubly sure of Dickie, and ordered him to sell a few hundred shares on my own account as a clincher.

When I reached my telephone I called up some brokers that I trusted and told them to watch the market for Meat Products stock, and pick it up quietly, leading on the gang that was pounding our issues all they could. An hour later, on my way back from the Tenth National, where I had had a most satisfactory interview with Mr. Orlando Bates, I dropped in at Dickie Pierson's place. Meat Products shares were active, and in full retreat across the broad board.

"I guess you had better sell some more for me," I said to Dickie. "Sell a thousand to-morrow."