第82章

"Ruined! Ruined! Ruined!" And his shoulders, his whole body, shook like a child in a paroxysm.

A long, long ring at the telephone.Fanning-Smith, irritated by the insistent jingling so close to his ear, lifted himself and answered--the tears were guttering his swollen face; his lips and eyelids were twitching.

"Well?" he said feebly.

"We've got 'em on the run," came the reply in Zabriskie's voice, jubilant now.

"Who?"

"Don't know who--whoever was trying to squeeze us.I had to throw over some Woolens--but I'll pick it up again--maybe to-day."Fanning-Smith could hear the roar of the Exchange--wilder, fiercer than three hours before, but music to him now.He looked sheepishly at the portrait of his grandfather.When its eyes met his he flushed and shifted his gaze guiltily."Must have been something I ate for breakfast," he muttered to the portrait and to himself in apologetic explanation of his breakdown.

In a distant part of the field all this time was posted the commander-in-chief of the army of attack.Like all wise commanders in all well-conducted battles, he was far removed from the blinding smoke, from the distracting confusion.He had placed himself where he could hear, see, instantly direct, without being disturbed by trifling reverse or success, by unimportant rumors to vast proportions blown.

To play his game for dominion or destruction John Dumont had had himself arrayed in a wine-colored, wadded silk dressing-gown over his white silk pajamas and had stretched himself on a divan in his sitting-room in his palace.A telephone and a stock-ticker within easy reach were his field-glasses and his aides--the stock-ticker would show him second by second the precise posture of the battle; the telephone would enable him to direct it to the minutest manoeuver.

The telephone led to the ear of his chief of staff, Tavistock, who was at his desk in his privatest office in the Mills Building, about him telephones straight to the ears of the division commanders.None of these knew who was his commander;indeed, none knew that there was to be a battle or, after the battle was on, that they were part of one of its two contending armies.They would blindly obey orders, ignorant who was aiming the guns they fired and at whom those guns were aimed.Such conditions would have been fatal to the barbaric struggles for supremacy which ambition has waged through all the past; they are ideal conditions for these modern conflicts of the market which more and more absorb the ambitions of men.Instead of shot and shell and regiments of "cannon food," there are battalions of capital, the paper certificates of the stored-up toil or trickery of men; instead of mangled bodies and dead, there are minds in the torment of financial peril or numb with the despair of financial ruin.But the stakes are the same old stakes--power and glory and wealth for a few, thousands on thousands dragged or cozened into the battle in whose victory they share scantily, if at all, although they bear its heaviest losses on both sides.

It was half-past eight o'clock when Dumont put the receiver to his ear and greeted Tavistock in a strong, cheerful voice.

"Never felt better in my life," was his answer to Tavistock's inquiry as to his health."Even old Sackett admits I'm in condition.But he says I must have no irritations--so, be careful to carry out orders."He felt as well as he said.His body seemed the better for its rest and purification, for its long freedom from his occasional but terrific assaults upon it, for having got rid of the superfluous flesh which had been swelling and weighting it.

He made Tavistock repeat all the orders he had given him, to assure himself he had not been misunderstood.As he listened to the rehearsal of his own shrewd plans his eyes sparkled."I'll bag the last----of them," he muttered, and his lips twisted into a smile at which Culver winced.

When the ticker clicked the first quotation of Great Lakes Dumont said: "Now, clear out, Culver! And shut the door after you, and let no one interrupt me until I call." He wished to have no restraint upon his thoughts, no eyes to watch his face, no ears to hear what the fortune of the battle might wring from him.

As the ticker pushed out the news of the early declines and recoveries in Great Lakes, Tavistock leading the Fanning-Smith crowd on to make heavier and heavier plunges, Dumont could see in imagination the battle-field--the floor of the Stock Exchange--as plainly as if he were there.

The battle began with a languid cannonade between the two seemingly opposed parts of Dumont's army.Under cover of this he captured most of the available actual shares of Great Lakes--valuable aids toward making his position, his "corner,"impregnable.But before he had accomplished his full purpose Zabriskie, nominal lieutenant-commander, actual commander of the Fanning-Smith forces, advanced to give battle.Instead of becoming suspicious at the steadiness of the price under his attacks upon it, Zabriskie was lured on to sell more of those Great Lakes shares which he did not have.And he beamed from his masked position as he thought of the batteries he was holding in reserve for his grand movement to batter down the price of the stock late in the day, and capture these backers of the property that was supposed to be under the protection of the high and honorable Fanning-Smiths.

He was still thinking along this line, as he stood aloof and apparently disinterested, when Dumont began to close in upon him.

Zabriskie, astonished by this sudden tremendous fire, was alarmed when under its protection the price advanced.He assaulted in force with large selling orders; but the price pushed on and the fierce cannonade of larger and larger buying orders kept up.