As if fearing that these adverse conditions did not sufficiently ensure the stock's downfall, the Shepler group of Federal Oil operators beat it down further with what was veritably a golden sledge. That is, they exported gold at a loss. At a time when obligations could have been met more cheaply with bought bills they sent out many golden cargoes at an actual loss of three hundred dollars on the half million. As money was already dear, and thus became dearer, the temptation and the means to hold copper stock, in spite of all discouragements, were removed from the paths of hundreds of the harried holders.

Incidentally, Western Trolley had gone into the hands of a receiver, a failure involving another hundred million dollars, and Union Cordage had fallen thirty-five points through sensational disclosures as to its overcapitalisation.

Into this maelstrom of a panic market the Bines fortune had been sucked with a swiftness so terrible that the family's chief advising member was left dazed and incredulous.

For two days he clung to the ticker tape as to a life line. He had committed the millions of the family as lightly as ever he had staked a hundred dollars on the turn of a card or left ten on the change-tray for his waiter.

Then he had seen his cunningly built foundations, rested upon with hopes so high for three months, melt away like snow when the blistering Chinook comes.

It has been thought wise to adopt two somewhat differing similes in the foregoing, in order that the direness of the tragedy may be sufficiently apprehended.

The morning of the first of the two last awful days, he was called to the office of Fouts and Hendricks by telephone.

"Something going to happen in Consolidated to-day."

He had hurried down-town, flushed with confidence. He knew there was but one thing _could_ happen. He had reached the office at ten and heard the first vicious little click of the ticker--that beating heart of the Stock Exchange--as it began the unemotional story of what men bought and sold over on the floor. Its inventor died in the poorhouse, but Capital would fare badly without his machine. Consolidated was down three points. The crowd about the ticker grew absorbed at once. Reports came in over the telephone. The bears had made a set for the stock. It began to slump rapidly. As the stock was goaded down, point by point, the crowd of traders waxed more excited.

As the stock fell, the banks requested the brokers to margin up their loans, and the brokers, in turn, requested Percival to margin up his trades. The shares he had bought outright went to cover the shortage in those he had bought on a twenty per cent margin. Loans were called later, and marginal accounts wiped out with appalling informality.

Yet when Consolidated suddenly rallied three points just at the close of the day's trading, he took much comfort in it as an omen of the morrow. That night, however, he took but little satisfaction in Uncle Peter's renewed a.s.surances of trust in his ac.u.men. Uncle Peter, he decided all at once, was a fatuous, doddering old man, unable to realise that the whole fortune was gravely endangered. And with the gambler's inveterate hope that luck must change he forbore to undeceive the old man.

Uncle Peter went with him to the office next morning, serenely interested in the prospects.

"You got your pa's way of taking hold of big propositions. That's all I need to know," he rea.s.sured the young man, cheerfully.

Consolidated Copper opened that day at 78, and went by two o'clock to 51.

Percival watched the decline with a conviction that he was dreaming. He laughed to think of his relief when he should awaken. The crowd surged about the ticker, and their voices came as from afar. Their acts all had the weird inconsequence of the people we see in dreams. Yet presently it had gone too far to be amusing. He must arouse himself and turn over on his side. In five minutes, according to the dream, he had lost five million dollars as nearly as he could calculate. Losing a million a minute, even in sleep, he thought, was disquieting.

Then upon the tape he read another chapter of disaster. Western Trolley had gone into the hands of a receiver,--a fine, fat, promising stock ruined without a word of warning; and while he tried to master this news the horrible clicking thing declared that Union Cordage was selling down to 58,--a drop of exactly 35 points since morning.

Fouts, with a slip of paper in his hand, beckoned him from the door of his private office. He went dazedly in to him,--and was awakened from the dream that he had been losing a fortune in his sleep.

Coming out after a few moments, he went up to Uncle Peter, who had been sitting, watchful but unconcerned, in one of the armchairs along the wall. The old man looked up inquiringly.

"Come inside, Uncle Peter!"

They went into the private office of Fouts. Percival shut the door, and they were alone.

"Uncle Peter, Burman's been suspended on the Board of Trade; Fouts just had this over his private wire. Corn broke to-day."

"That so? Oh, well, maybe it was worth a couple of million to find out Burman plays corn like he plays poker; 'twas if you couldn't get it fur any less."

"Uncle Peter, we're wiped out."

"How, wiped out? What do you mean, son?"

"We're done, I tell you. We needn't care a d.a.m.n now where copper goes to. We're out of it--and--Uncle Peter, we're broke."

"Out of copper? Broke? But you said--" He seemed to be making an effort to comprehend. His lack of grasp was pitiful.

"Out of copper, but there's Western Trolley and that Cordage stock--"

"Everything wiped out, I tell you--Union Cordage gone down thirty-five points, somebody let out the inside secrets--and G.o.d only knows how far Western Trolley's gone down."

"Are you all in?"

"Every dollar--you knew that. But say," he brightened out of his despair, "there's the One Girl--a good producer--Shepler knows the property--Shepler's in this block--" and he was gone.

The old man strolled out into the trading-room again. A curious grim smile softened his square jaw for a moment. He resumed his comfortable chair and took up a newspaper, glancing incidentally at the crowd of excited men about the tickers. He had about him that air of repose which comes to big men who have stayed much in big out-of-door solitudes.

"Ain't he a nervy old guy?" said a crisp little money-broker to Fouts.

"They're wiped out, but you wouldn't think he cared any more about it than Mike the porter with his bra.s.s polish out there."

The old man held his paper up, but did not read.

Percival rushed in by him, beckoning him to the inner room.

"Shepler's all right about the One Girl. He'll take a mortgage on it for two hundred thousand if you'll recommend it--only he can't get the money before to-morrow. There's bound to be a rally in this stock, and we'll go right back for some of the hair of the--why,--what's the matter--Uncle Peter!"

The old man had reeled, and then weakly caught at the top of the desk with both hands for support.

"Ruined!" he cried, hoa.r.s.ely, as if the extent of the calamity had just borne in upon him. "My G.o.d! Ruined, and at my time of life!" He seemed about to collapse. Percival quickly helped him into a chair, where he became limp.

"There, I'm all right. Oh, it's terrible! and we all trusted you so. I thought you had your pa's brains. I'd 'a' trusted you soon's I would Shepler, and now look what you led us into--fortune gone--broke--and all your fault!"

"Don't, Uncle Peter--don't, for G.o.d's sake--not when I'm down! I can't stand it!"

"Gamble away your own money--no, that wa'n't enough--take your poor ma's share and your sister's, and take what little I had to keep me in my old age--robbed us all--that's what comes of thinkin' a d.a.m.ned tea-drinkin' fop could have a thimble-full of brains!"

"Don't, please,--not just now--give it to me good later--to-morrow--all you want to!"

"And here I'm come to want in my last days when I'm too feeble to work.

I'll die in bitter privation because I was an old fool, and trusted a young one."

"Please don't, Uncle Peter!"

"You led us in--robbed your poor ma and your sister. I told you I didn't know anything about it and you talked me into trusting you--I might 'a' known better."

"Can't you stop awhile--just a moment?"

"Of course I don't matter. Maybe I can hold a drill, or tram ore, or something, but I can't support your ma and Pishy like they ought to be, with my rheumatiz comin' on again, too. And your ma'll have to take in boarders, and do washin' like as not, and think of poor Pishy--prob'ly she'll have to teach school or clerk in a store--poor Pish--she'll be lucky now if she can marry some common scrub American out in them hills--like as not one of them shoe-clerks in the Boston Cash Store at Montana City! And jest when I was lookin' forward to luxury and palaces in England, and everything so grand! How much you lost?" "That's right, no use whining! Nearly as I can get the round figures of it, about twelve million."

"Awful--awful! By Cripes! that man Blythe that done himself up the other night had the right of it. What's the use of living if you got to go to the poorhouse?"

"Come, come!" said Percival, alarm over Uncle Peter crowding out his other emotions. "Be a game loser, just as you said pa would be. Sit up straight and make 'em bring on another deck."

He slapped the old man on the back with simulated cheerfulness; but the despairing one only cowered weakly under the blow.