XX. A BREATHING SPELL.Langdon, after several years of effort, had got recognition for Textilein London, but that was about all. He hadn't succeeded in unloading anygreat amount of it on the English. So it was rather because I neglectednothing than because I was hopeful of results that I had made a point oftelegraphing to London news of my proposed suit. The result was a littletrading in Textiles over there and a slight decline in the price. This factwas telegraphed to all the financial centers on this side of the water, andreinforced the impression my lawyers' announcement and my own "bear" letterwere making.
Still, this was nothing, or next to it. What could I hope to avail againstLangdon's agents with almost unlimited capital, putting their whole energyunder the stock to raise it? In the same newspapers that published my bearattack, in the same columns and under the same head-lines, were officialdenials from the Textile Trust and the figures of enormous increase ofbusiness as proof positive that the denials were honest. If the publichad not been burned so many times by "industrials," if it had not learnedby bitter experience that practically none of the leaders of finance andindustry were above lying to make or save a few dollars, if Textiles hadnot been manipulated so often, first by Dumont and since his death by hisbrother-in-law and successor, this suave and cynical Langdon, my desperateattack would have been without effect. As it was--
Four months before, in the same situation, had I seen Textiles stagger asthey staggered in the first hour of business on the Stock Exchange thatmorning, I'd have sounded the charge, clapped spurs to my charger, andborne down upon them. But--I had my new-born yearning for "respectability";I had my new-born squeamishness, which led me to fear risking Bob Coreyand his bank and the money of my old friend Healey; finally, there wasAnita--the longing for her that made me prefer a narrow and uncertainfoothold to the bold leap that would land me either in wealth and poweror in the bottomless abyss.
Instead of continuing to sell Textiles, I covered as far as I could; andI bought so eagerly and so heavily that, more than Langdon's corps ofrocketers, I was responsible for the stock's rally and start upward. When Isay "eagerly" and "heavily," I do not mean that I acted openly or withoutregard to common sense. I mean simply that I made no attempt to back up myfollowers in the selling campaign I had urged them into; on the contrary,I bought as they sold. That does not sound well, and it is no better thanit sounds. I shall not dispute with any one who finds this action of minea betrayal of my clients to save myself. All I shall say is that it wasbusiness, that in such extreme and dire compulsion as was mine, it was--andis--right under the code, the private and real Wall Street code.
You can imagine the confused mass of transactions in which I was involvedbefore the Stock Exchange had been open long. There was the stock we hadbeen able to buy or get options on at various prices, between the closingof the Exchange the previous day and that morning's opening--stock from allparts of this country and in England. There was the stock I had been buyingsince the Exchange opened--buying at figures ranging from one-eighth abovelast night's closing price to fourteen points above it. And, on the debitside, there were the "short" transactions extending over a period of nearlytwo months--"sellings" of blocks large and small at a hundred differentprices.
An inextricable tangle, you will say, one it would be impossible for aman to unravel quickly and in the frantic chaos of a wild Stock Exchangeday. Yet the influence of the mysterious state of my nerves, which I havedescribed above, was so marvelous that, incredible though it seems, themoment the Exchange closed, I knew exactly, where I stood.
Like a mechanical lightning calculator, my mind threw up before me the netresult of these selling and buying transactions. Textile Common closedeighteen points above the closing quotation of the previous day; ifLangdon's brother had not been just a little indiscreet, I should have beenas hopeless a bankrupt in reputation and in fortune as ever was ripped upby the bulls of Wall Street.
As it was, I believed that, by keeping a bold front, I might extricate andfree myself when the Coal reorganization was announced. The rise of Coalstocks would square my debts--and, as I was apparently untouched bythe Textile flurry, so far as even Ball, my nominal partner and chieflieutenant, knew, I need not fear pressure from creditors that I couldnot withstand.
I could not breathe freely, but I could breathe.