In the first trading hour of Monday a hideous rumour flew round the sixty acres of the financial district. It came into being as the lightning comes—a blink that seems to begin nowhere; though it is to be suspected that it was first whispered over the telephone—together with an urgent selling order by some employee in the cable service. A sharp spasm convulsed the convalescent share-list. In five minutes the dull noise of the kerbstone market in Broad Street had leapt to a high note of frantic interrogation. From within the hive of the Exchange itself could be heard a droning hubbub of fear, and men rushed hatless in and out. Was it true? asked every man; and every man replied, with trembling lips, that it was a lie put out by some unscrupulous ‘short’ interest seeking to cover itself. In another quarter of an hour news came of a sudden and ruinous collapse of ‘Yankees’ in London at the close of the Stock Exchange day. It was enough. New York had still four hours’ trading in front of her. The strategy of pointing to Manderson as the saviour and warden of the markets had recoiled upon its authors with annihilating force, and Jeffrey, his ear at his private telephone, listened to the tale of disaster with a set jaw. The new Napoleon had lost his Marengo. He saw the whole financial landscape sliding and falling into chaos before him. In half an hour the news of the finding of Manderson’s body, with the inevitable rumour that it was suicide, was printing in a dozen newspaper offices; but before a copy reached Wall Street the tornado of the panic was in full fury, and Howard B. Jeffrey and his collaborators were whirled away like leaves before its breath.
All this sprang out of nothing.
Nothing in the texture of the general life had changed. The corn had not ceased to ripen in the sun. The rivers bore their barges and gave power to a myriad engines. The flocks fattened on the pastures, the herds were unnumbered. Men laboured everywhere in the various servitudes to which they were born, and chafed not more than usual in their bonds. Bellona tossed and murmured as ever, yet still slept her uneasy sleep. To all mankind save a million or two of half-crazed gamblers, blind to all reality, the death of Manderson meant nothing; the life and work of the world went on. Weeks before he died strong hands had been in control of every wire in the huge network of commerce and industry that he had supervised. Before his corpse was buried his countrymen had made a strange discovery—that the existence of the potent engine of monopoly that went by the name of Sigsbee Manderson had not been a condition of even material prosperity. The panic blew itself out in two days, the pieces were picked up, the bankrupts withdrew out of sight; the market ‘recovered a normal tone’.
While the brief delirium was yet subsiding there broke out a domestic scandal in England that suddenly fixed the attention of two continents. Next morning the Chicago Limited was wrecked, and the same day a notable politician was shot down in cold blood by his wife’s brother in the streets of New Orleans. Within a week of its rising, ‘the Manderson story’, to the trained sense of editors throughout the Union, was ‘cold’. The tide of American visitors pouring through Europe made eddies round the memorial or statue of many a man who had died in poverty; and never thought of their most famous plutocrat. Like the poet who died in Rome, so young and poor, a hundred years ago, he was buried far away from his own land; but for all the men and women of Manderson’s people who flock round the tomb of Keats in the cemetery under the Monte Testaccio, there is not one, nor ever will be, to stand in reverence by the rich man’s grave beside the little church of Marlstone.
IN the only comfortably furnished room in the offices of the Record, the telephone on Sir James Molloy’s table buzzed. Sir James made a motion with his pen, and Mr Silver, his secretary, left his work and came over to the instrument.
‘Who is that?’ he said. ‘Who? … I can’t hear you … Oh, it’s Mr Bunner, is it? … Yes, but … I know, but he’s fearfully busy this afternoon. Can’t you … Oh, really? Well, in that case—just hold on, will you?’
He placed the receiver before Sir James. ‘It’s Calvin Bunner, Sigsbee Manderson’s right-hand man,’ he said concisely. ‘He insists on speaking to you personally. Says it is the gravest piece of news. He is talking from the house down by Bishopsbridge, so it will be necessary to speak clearly.’
Sir James looked at the telephone, not affectionately, and took up the receiver. ‘Well?’ he said in his strong voice, and listened. ‘Yes,’ he said. The next moment Mr Silver, eagerly watching him, saw a look of amazement and horror. ‘Good God!’ murmured Sir James. Clutching the instrument, he slowly rose to his feet, still bending ear intently. At intervals he repeated ‘Yes.’ Presently, as he listened, he glanced at the clock, and spoke quickly to Mr Silver over the top of the transmitter. ‘Go and hunt up Figgis and young Williams. Hurry.’ Mr Silver darted from the room.
The great journalist was a tall, strong, clever Irishman of fifty, swart and black-moustached, a man of untiring business energy, well known in the world, which he understood very thoroughly, and played upon with the half-cynical competence of his race. Yet was he without a touch of the charlatan: he made no mysteries, and no pretences of knowledge, and he saw instantly through these in others. In his handsome, well-bred, well-dressed appearance there was something a little sinister when anger or intense occupation put its imprint about his eyes and brow; but when his generous nature was under no restraint he was the most cordial of men. He was managing director of the company which owned that most powerful morning paper, the Record, and also that most indispensable evening paper, the Sun, which had its offices on the other side of the street. He was, moreover, editor-in-chief of the Record, to which he had in the course of years attached the most variously capable personnel in the country. It was a maxim of his that where you could not get gifts, you must do the best you could with solid merit; and he employed a great deal of both. He was respected by his staff as few are respected in a profession not favourable to the growth of the sentiment of reverence.
‘You’re sure that’s all?’ asked Sir James, after a few minutes of earnest listening and questioning. ‘And how long has this been known? … Yes, of course, the police are; but the servants? Surely it’s all over the place down there by now … Well, we’ll have a try … Look here, Bunner, I’m infinitely obliged to you about this. I owe you a good turn. You know I mean what I say. Come and see me the first day you get to town … All right, that’s understood. Now I must act on your news. Goodbye.’
Sir James hung up the receiver, and seized a railway timetable from the rack before him. After a rapid consultation of this oracle, he flung it down with a forcible word as Mr Silver hurried into the room, followed by a hard-featured man with spectacles, and a youth with an alert eye.
‘I want you to jot down some facts, Figgis,’ said Sir James, banishing all signs of agitation and speaking with a rapid calmness. ‘When you have them, put them into shape just as quick as you can for a special edition of the Sun.’ The hard-featured man nodded and glanced at the clock, which pointed to a few minutes past three; he pulled out a notebook and drew a chair up to the big writing-table. ‘Silver,’ Sir James went on, ‘go and tell Jones to wire our local correspondent very urgently, to drop everything and get down to Marlstone at once. He is not to say why in the telegram. There must not be an unnecessary word about this news until the Sun is on the streets with it—you all understand. Williams, cut across the way and tell Mr Anthony to hold himself ready for a two-column opening that will knock the town endways. Just tell him that he must take all measures and precautions for a scoop. Say