XXXII. LANGDON COMES TO THE SURFACE
I shall not estimate the vast sums it cost the Roebuck-Langdon cliqueto maintain the prices of National Coal, and so give plausibility tothe fiction that the public was buying eagerly. In the third week of mycampaign, Melville was so deeply involved that he had to let the two otherstake the whole burden upon themselves.
In the fourth week, Langdon came to me.
The interval between his card and himself gave me a chance to recover frommy amazement. When he entered he found me busily writing. Though I hadnerved myself, it was several seconds before I ventured to look at him.There he stood, probably as handsome, as fascinating as ever, certainly asself-assured. But I could now, beneath that manner I had once envied, seethe puny soul, with its brassy glitter of the vanity of luxury and show.I had been somewhat afraid of myself--afraid the sight of him would stirup in me a tempest of jealousy and hate; as I looked, I realized thatI did not know my own nature. "She does not love this man," I thought."If she did or could, she would not be the woman I love. He deceived herinexperience as he deceived mine."
"What can I do for you?" said I to him politely, much as if he were astranger making an untimely interruption.
My look had disconcerted him; my tone threw him into confusion. "You keepout of the way, now that you've become famous," he began, with a haltingbut heroic attempt at his customary easy superiority. "Are you living up inConnecticut, too? Sam Ellersly tells me your wife is stopping there withold Howard Forrester. Sam wants me to use my good offices in making it upbetween you two and her family."
I was completely taken aback by this cool ignoring of the real situationbetween him and me. Impudence or ignorance?--I could not decide. It seemedimpossible that Anita had not told him; yet it seemed impossible, too, thathe would come to me if she had told him. "Have you any _business_ withme?" said I.
His eyelids twitched nervously, and he adjusted his lips several timesbefore he was able to say:
"You and your wife don't care to make it up with the Ellerslys? I fanciedso, and told Sam you'd simply think me meddlesome. The other matter is theTravelers Club. I've smoothed things out there. I'm going to put you up andrush you through."
"No, thanks," said I. It seemed incredible to me that I had ever caredabout that club and the things it represented, as I could remember Iundoubtedly did care. It was like looking at an outgrown toy and tryingto feel again the emotions it once excited.
"I assure you, Matt, there won't be the slightest difficulty." His mannerwas that of a man playing the trump card in a desperate game--he feels itcan not lose, yet the stake is so big that he can not but be a littlenervous.
"I do not care to join the Travelers Club," said I, rising. "I must ask youto excuse me. I am exceedingly busy."
A flush appeared in his cheeks and deepened and spread until his whole bodymust have been afire. He seated himself. "You know what I've come for," hesaid sullenly, and humbly, too.
All his life he had been enthroned upon his wealth. Without realizing it,he had claimed and had received deference solely because he was rich. Hehad thought himself, in his own person, most superior; now, he found thatlike a silly child he had been standing on a chair and crying: "See howtall I am." And the airs, the cynicism, the graceful condescension, whichhad been so becoming to him, were now as out of place as crown and robes ona king taking a swimming lesson.
"What are your terms, Blacklock? Don't be too hard on an old friend," saidhe, trying to carry off his frank plea for mercy with a smile.
I should have thought he would cut his throat and jump off the Battery wallbefore he would get on his knees to any man for any reason. And he wasdoing it for mere money--to try to save, not his fortune, but only animperiled part of it. "If Anita could see him now!" I thought.
To him I said, the more coldly because I did not wish to add to hishumiliation by showing him that I pitied him: "I can only repeat, Mr.Langdon, you will have to excuse me. I have given you all the time I canspare."
His eyes were shifting and his hands trembling as he said: "I will transfercontrol of the Coal combine to you."
His tones, shameful as the offer they carried, made me ashamed for him.For money--just for money! And I had thought him a man. If he had been aself-deceiving hypocrite like Roebuck, or a frank believer in the right ofmight, like Updegraff, I might possibly, in the circumstances, have triedto release him from my net. But he had never for an instant deceivedhimself as to the real nature of the enterprises he plotted, promoted andprofited by; he thought it "smart" to be bad, and he delighted in makingthe most cynical epigrams on the black deeds of himself and his associates.
"Better sell out to Roebuck," I suggested. "I control all the Coal stock Ineed."
"I don't care to have anything further to do with Roebuck," Langdonanswered. "I've broken with him."
"When a man lies to me," said I, "he gives me the chance to see just howmuch of a fool he thinks I am, and also the chance to see just how much ofa fool he is. I hesitate to think so poorly of you as your attempt to foolme seems to compel."
But he was unconvinced. "I've found he intends to abandon the ship andleave me to go down with it," he persisted. "He believes he can escape anddenounce me as the arch rascal who planned the combine, and can convincepeople that I foozled him into it."
Ingenious; but I happened to know that it was false. "Pardon me, Mr.Langdon," said I with stiff courtesy. "I repeat, I can do nothing for you.Good morning." And I went at my work as if he were already gone.
Had I been vindictive, I would have led him on to humiliate himself moredeeply, if greater depths of humiliation there are than those to whichhe voluntarily descended. But I wished to spare him; I let him see theuselessness of his mission. He looked at me in silence--the look of hatethat can come only from a creature weak as well as wicked. I think itwas all his keen sense of humor could do to save him from a melodramaticoutbreak. He slipped into his habitual pose, rose and withdrew withoutanother word. All this fright and groveling and treachery for plunder, theloss of which would not impair his fortune--plunder he had stolen with manya jest and gibe at his helpless victims. Like most of our debonair dollarchasers, he was a good sportsman only when the game was with him.
That afternoon he threw his Coal holdings on the market in great blocks.His treachery took Roebuck completely by surprise--for Roebuck believed inthis fair-weather "gentleman," foul-weather coward, and neglected to allowfor that quicksand that is always under the foundation of the man who hasinherited, not earned, his wealth. But for the blundering credulity ofrascals, would honest men ever get their dues? Roebuck's brokers had boughtmany thousands of Langdon's shares at the high artificial price beforeRoebuck grasped the situation--that it was not my followers recklesslygambling to break the prices, but Langdon unloading on his "pal." As soonas he saw, he abruptly withdrew from the market. When the Stock Exchangeclosed, National Coal securities were offered at prices ranging from elevenfor the bonds to two for the common and three for the preferred--offered,and no takers.
"Well, you've done it," said Joe, coming with the news that Thornley, ofthe Discount and Deposit Bank, had been appointed receiver.
"I've made a beginning," replied I. And the last sentence of my nextmorning's "letter" was:
"To-morrow the first chapter of the History of the Industrial NationalBank."
* * * * *
"I have felt for two years," said Roebuck to Schilling, who repeated it tome soon afterward, "that Blacklock was about the most dangerous fellow inthe country. The first time I set eyes on him, I saw he was a borniconoclast. And I've known for a year that some day he would use thatengine of publicity of his to cannonade the foundations of society."
"He knew me better than I knew myself," was my comment to Schilling. And Imeant it--for I had not finished the demolition of the Coal combine when Ibegan to realize that, whatever I might have thought of my own ambitions,I could never have tamed myself or been tamed into a devotee of
dollarsand of respectability. I simply had been keeping quiet until my tools weresharp and fate spun my opportunity within reach. But I must, in fairness,add, it was lucky for me that, when the hour struck, Roebuck was not twentyyears younger and one-twentieth as rich. It's a heavy enough handicap,under the best of circumstances, to go to war burdened with years; add theburden of a monster fortune, and it isn't in human nature to fight well.Youth and a light knapsack!
But--to my fight on the big bank.
Until I opened fire, the public thought, in a general way, that a bank wasan institution like Thornley's Discount and Deposit National--a place forthe safe-keeping of money and for accommodating business men with loans tobe used in carrying on and extending legitimate and useful enterprises. Andthere were many such banks. But the real object of the banking business,as exploited by the big bandits who controlled it and all industry, wasto draw into a mass the money of the country that they might use it tomanipulate the markets, to wreck and reorganize industries and wreck themagain, to work off inflated bonds and stocks upon the public at inflatedprices, to fight among themselves for rights to despoil, making the peoplepay the war budgets--in a word, to finance the thousand and one schemeswhereby they and their friends and relatives, who neither produce nor helpto produce, appropriate the bulk of all that is produced.
And before I finished with the National Industrial Bank, I had shown thatit and several similar institutions in the big cities throughout thecountry were, in fact, so many dens to which rich and poor were lured forspoliation. I then took up the Universal Life, as a type. I showed howinsuring was, with the companies controlled by the bandits, simply thedecoy; that the real object was the same as the real object of the bigbandit banks. When I had finished my series on the Universal Life I hadnamed and pilloried Roebuck, Langdon, Melville, Wainwright, Updegraff, VanSteen, Epstein--the seven men of enormous wealth, leaders of the sevencliques that had the political and industrial United States at their mercy,and were plucking the people through an ever-increasing army of agents.The agents kept some of the feathers--"The Seven" could afford to payliberally. But the bulk of the feather crop was passed on to "The Seven."
I shall answer in a paragraph the principal charges that were made againstme. They say I bribed employees on the telegraph companies, and so gotpossession of incriminating telegrams that had been sent by "The Seven" inthe course of their worst campaigns. I admit the charge. They say I bribedsome of their confidential men to give me transcripts and photographsof secret ledgers and reports. I admit the charge. They say I boughttranslations of stenographic notes taken by eavesdroppers on certainimportant secret meetings. I admit the charge. But what was the chiefelement in my success in thus getting proofs of their crimes? Not thebribery, but the hatred that all the servants of such men have for them. Itempted no one to betray them. _Every item, of information I got wasoffered to me_. And I shall add these facts:
First, in not a single case did they suspect and discharge the "guilty"persons.
Second, I have to-day as good means of access to their secrets as I everhad--and, if they discharged all who now serve them, I should be able soonto reestablish my lines; men of their stripe can not hope to be servedfaithfully.
Third, I had offers from all but three of "The Seven" to "peach" on theothers in return for immunity. There may be honor among some thieves, butnot among "respectable" thieves. Hypocrisy and honor will be found in thesame character when the sun shines at night--not before.
* * * * *
It was the sardonic humor of fate that Langdon, for all his desire to keepout of my way, should have compelled me to center my fire upon him; that I,who wished to spare him, if possible, should have been compelled to make ofhim my first "awful example."
I had decided to concentrate upon Roebuck, because he was the richest andmost powerful of "The Seven." For, in my pictures of the three main phasesof "finance"--the industrial, the life-insurance and the banking--he, asarch plotter in every kind of respectable skulduggery, was necessarily inthe foreground. My original intention was to demolish the Power Trust--or,at least, to compel him to buy back all of its stock which he had workedoff on the public. I had collected many interesting facts about it, factstypical of the conditions that "finance" has established in so many of ourindustries.
For instance, I was prepared to show that the actual earnings of the PowerTrust were two and a half times what its reports to stock-holders alleged;that the concealed profits were diverted into the pockets of Roebuck, hissons, eleven other relatives and four of "The Seven," the lion's sharegoing, of course, to the lion. Like almost all the great industrialenterprises, too strong for the law and too remote for the supervisionof their stock-holders, it gathered in enormous revenues to disbursethem chiefly in salaries and commissions and rake-offs on contracts tofavorites. I had proof that in one year it had "written off" twelvemillions of profit and loss, ten millions of which had found its way toRoebuck's pocket. That pocket! That "treasury of the Lord"!
Dishonest? Roebuck and most of the other leaders of the various gangs,comprising, with all their ramifications, the principal figures inreligious, philanthropic, fashionable society, did not for an instantthink their doings dishonest. They had no sense of trusteeship for thismoney intrusted to them as captains of industry bankers, life-insurancedirectors. They felt that it was theirs to do with as they pleased.
And they felt that their superiority in rank and in brains entitled themto whatever remuneration they could assign to themselves without rousingthe wrath of a public too envious to admit the just claims of the "upperclasses." They convinced themselves that without them crops would ceaseto grow, sellers and buyers would be unable to find their way to market,barbarism would spread its rank and choking weeds over the whole garden ofcivilization. And, so brainless is the parrot public, they have succeededin creating a very widespread conviction that their own high opinion oftheir services is not too high, and that some dire calamity would come ifthey were swept from between producer and consumer! True, thieves are foundonly where there is property; but who but a chucklebrain would think thethieves made the property?
Roebuck was the keystone of the arch that sustained the structure ofchicane. To dislodge him was the direct way to collapse it. I was about toset to work when Langdon, feeling that he ought to have a large supply ofcash in the troublous times I was creating, increased the capital stockof his already enormously overcapitalized Textile Trust and offered thenew issue to the public. As the Textile Trust was even better bulwarked,politically, than the Power Trust, it was easily able to declare temptingdividends out of its lootings. So the new stock could not be attacked inthe one way that would make the public instantly shun it--I could nottruthfully charge that it would not pay the promised dividends. Yet attackI must--for that issue was, in effect, a bold challenge of my chargesagainst "The Seven." From all parts of the country inquiries poured in uponme: "What do you think of the new Textile issue? Shall we invest? Is theTextile Company sound?"
I had no choice. I must turn aside from Roebuck; I must first show that,while Textile was, in a sense, sound just at that time, it had beenunsound, and would be unsound again as soon as Langdon had gathered ina sufficient number of lambs to make a battue worth the while of a mandealing in nothing less than seven figures. I proceeded to do so.
The market yielded slowly. Under my first day's attack Textile preferredfell six points, Textile common three. While I was in the midst ofdictating my letter for the second day's attack, I suddenly came to a fullstop. I found across my way this thought: "Isn't it strange that Langdon,after humbling himself to you, should make this bold challenge? It's atrap!"
"No more at present," said I, to my stenographer. "And don't write out whatI've already dictated."
I shut myself in and busied myself at the telephone. Half an hour after Iset my secret machinery in motion, a messenger brought me an envelop, theaddress type-written. It contained a sheet of paper on which appeared, intype-writi
ng; these words, and nothing more:
"He is heavily short of Textiles."
It was indeed a trap. The new issue was a blind. He had challenged me toattack his stock, and as soon as I did, he had begun secretly to sell itfor a fall. I worked at this new situation until midnight, trying to gettogether the proofs. At that hour--for I could delay no longer, and myproofs were not quite complete--I sent my newspapers two sentences:
"To-morrow I shall make a disclosure that will send Textiles up. Do not sell Textiles!"