Theodore Dreiser - The Titan

“Yes.”

“A number of the principal financial men of the city are gathered here at my house this evening. The question of ways and means of preventing a panic to-morrow is up for discussion. As you probably know, Hull & Stackpole are in trouble. Unless something is done for them tonight they will certainly fail to-morrow for twenty million dollars. It isn’t so much their failure that we are considering as it is the effect on stocks in general, and on the banks. As I understand it, a number of your loans are involved. The gentlemen here have suggested that I call you up and ask you to come here, if you will, to help us decide what ought to be done. Something very drastic will have to be decided on before morning.”

During this speech Cowperwood’s brain had been reciprocating like a well-oiled machine.

“My loans?” he inquired, suavely. “What have they to do with the situation? I don’t owe Hull & Stackpole anything.”

“Very true. But a number of the banks are carrying securities for you. The idea is that a number of these will have to be called—the majority of them—unless some other way can be devised to-night. We thought you might possibly wish to come and talk it over, and that you might be able to suggest some other way out.”

“I see,” replied Cowperwood, caustically. “The idea is to sacrifice me in order to save Hull & Stackpole. Is that it?”

His eyes, quite as though Arneel were before him, emitted malicious sparks.

“Well, not precisely that,” replied Arneel, conservatively; “but something will have to be done. Don’t you think you had better come over?”

“Very good. I’ll come,” was the cheerful reply. “It isn’t anything that can be discussed over the ’phone, anyhow.”

He hung up the receiver and called for his runabout. On the way over he thanked the prevision which had caused him, in anticipation of some such attack as this, to set aside in the safety vaults of the Chicago Trust Company several millions in low-interest-bearing government bonds. Now, if worst came to worst, these could be drawn on and hypothecated. These men should see at last how powerful he was and how secure.

As he entered the home of Arneel he was a picturesque and truly representative figure of his day. In a light summer suit of cream and gray twill, with a straw hat ornamented by a blue-and-white band, and wearing yellow quarter-shoes of the softest leather, he appeared a very model of trig, well-groomed self-sufficiency. As he was ushered into the room he gazed about him in a brave, leonine way.

“A fine night for a conference, gentlemen,” he said, walking toward a chair indicated by Mr. Arneel. “I must say I never saw so many straw hats at a funeral before. I understand that my obsequies are contemplated. What can I do?”

He beamed in a genial, sufficient way, which in any one else would have brought a smile to the faces of the company. In him it was an implication of basic power which secretly enraged and envenomed nearly all those present. They merely stirred in a nervous and wholly antagonistic way. A number of those who knew him personally nodded—Merrill, Lawrence, Simms; but there was no friendly light in their eyes.

“Well, gentlemen?” he inquired, after a moment or two of ominous silence, observing Hand’s averted face and Schryhart’s eyes, which were lifted ceilingward.

“Mr. Cowperwood,” began Mr. Arneel, quietly, in no way disturbed by Cowperwood’s jaunty air, “as I told you over the ’phone, this meeting is called to avert, if possible, what is likely to be a very serious panic in the morning. Hull & Stackpole are on the verge of failure. The outstanding loans are considerable—in the neighborhood of seven or eight million here in Chicago. On the other hand, there are assets in the shape of American Match stocks and other properties sufficient to carry them for a while longer if the banks can only continue their loans. As you know, we are all facing a falling market, and the banks are short of ready money. Something has to be done. We have canvassed the situation here to-night as thoroughly as possible, and the general conclusion is that your loans are among the most available assets which can be reached quickly. Mr. Schryhart, Mr. Merrill, Mr. Hand, and myself have done all we can thus far to avert a calamity, but we find that some one with whom Hull & Stackpole have been hypothecating stocks has been feeding them out in order to break the market. We shall know how to avoid that in the future” (and he looked hard at Cowperwood), “but the thing at present is immediate cash, and your loans are the largest and the most available. Do you think you can find the means to pay them back in the morning?”

Arneel blinked his keen, blue eyes solemnly, while the rest, like a pack of genial but hungry wolves, sat and surveyed this apparently whole but now condemned scapegoat and victim. Cowperwood, who was keenly alive to the spirit of the company, looked blandly and fearlessly around. On his knee he held his blue-banded straw hat neatly balanced on one edge. His full mustache curled upward in a jaunty, arrogant way.

“I can meet my loans,” he replied, easily. “But I would not advise you or any of the gentlemen present to call them.” His voice, for all its lightness, had an ominous ring.

“Why not?” inquired Hand, grimly and heavily, turning squarely about and facing him. “It doesn’t appear that you have extended any particular courtesy to Hull or Stackpole.” His face was red and scowling.

“Because,” replied Cowperwood, smiling, and ignoring the reference to his trick, “I know why this meeting was called. I know that these gentlemen here, who are not saying a word, are mere catspaws and rubber stamps for you and Mr. Schryhart and Mr. Arneel and Mr. Merrill. I know how you four gentlemen have been gambling in this stock, and what your probable losses are, and that it is to save yourselves from further loss that you have decided to make me the scapegoat. I want to tell you here”—and he got up, so that in his full stature he loomed over the room—“you can’t do it. You can’t make me your catspaw to pull your chestnuts out of the fire, and no rubber-stamp conference can make any such attempt successful. If you want to know what to do, I’ll tell you—close the Chicago Stock Exchange to-morrow morning and keep it closed. Then let Hull & Stackpole fail, or if not you four put up the money to carry them. If you can’t, let your banks do it. If you open the day by calling a single one of my loans before I am ready to pay it, I’ll gut every bank from here to the river. You’ll have panic, all the panic you want. Good evening, gentlemen.”

He drew out his watch, glanced at it, and quickly walked to the door, putting on his hat as he went. As he bustled jauntily down the wide interior staircase, preceded by a footman to open the door, a murmur of dissatisfaction arose in the room he had just left.

“The wrecker!” re-exclaimed Norrie Simms, angrily, astounded at this demonstration of defiance.

“The scoundrel!” declared Mr. Blackman. “Where does he get the wealth to talk like that?”

“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Arneel, stung to the quick by this amazing effrontery, and yet made cautious by the blazing wrath of Cowperwood, “it is useless to debate this question in anger. Mr. Cowperwood evidently refers to loans which can be controlled in his favor, and of which I for one know nothing. I do not see what can be done until we do know. Perhaps some of you can tell us what they are.”

But no one could, and after due calculation advice was borrowed of caution. The loans of Frank Algernon Cowperwood were not called.

The failure of American Match the next morning was one of those events that stirred the city and the nation and lingered in the minds of men for years. At the last moment it was decided that in lieu of calling Cowperwood’s loans Hull & Stackpole had best be sacrificed, the stock-exchange closed, and all trading ended. This protected stocks from at least a quotable decline and left the banks free for several days (ten all told) in which to repair their disrupted finances and buttress themselves against the eventual facts. Naturally, the minor speculators throughout the city—those who had expected to make a fortune out of this crash—raged and complained, but, being faced by an adamantine exchange directorate, a subservient press, and the alliance between the big bankers and the heavy quadrumvirate, there was nothing to be done. The respective bank presidents talked solemnly of “a mere temporary flurry,” Hand, Schryhart, Merrill, and Arneel went still further into their pockets to protect their interests, and Cowperwood, triumphant, was roundly denounced by the smaller fry as a “bucaneer,” a “pirate,” a “wolf”—indeed, any opprobrious term that came into their minds. The larger men faced squarely the fact that here was an enemy worthy of their steel. Would he master them? Was he already the dominant money power in Chicago? Could he thus flaunt their helplessness and his superiority in their eyes and before their underlings and go unwhipped?