Friday, the Thirteenth by Thomas W. Lawson

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Finally, on the fourth anniversary, in a panic that seemed to be running
into something more terrible than any previous, he savagely refused to
accede to my appeal, telling me that he would not stop, even if Randolph
& Randolph were doomed to go down in the crash. It had become known on the
floor that I was the only one who could do anything with him in his
frenzies, and my pleading with him in the lobby was watched by the members
of the Exchange with triple eyed suspense. When it was clear from his
emphatic gestures and raised voice--for he was in a reckless mood from
drink and madness and took no pains to disguise his intentions--that I
could not prevail upon him, there was a frantic rush for the poles to
throw over stocks in advance of him. Suddenly, after I had turned from him
in despair, there flashed into my mind an idea. The situation was
desperate. I was dealing with a madman, and I decided that I was justified
in making this last try. I rushed back to him. "Bob, good-bye," I
whispered in his ear, "good-bye. In ten minutes you will get word that Jim
Randolph has cut his throat!" He stopped as though I had plunged a knife
into him, struck his forehead a resounding blow, and into his wild brown
eyes came a sickening look of fear.

"Stop, Jim, for God's sake, don't say that to me. My cup is full now.
Don't tell me I am to have that crime on my soul." He thought a moment.
"I don't know whether you mean it, Jim, but I can take no chances, not for
all the money in the world, not even for revenge. Wait here, Jim." He
yelled for his brokers, and several rushed to him from different parts of
the room. He sent them back into the crowd while he dashed for the
Amalgamated-pole. The day was saved.

Presently he came back to me. "Jim, I must have a talk with you. Come over
to my office." When we got there he turned the key and stood in front of
me. His great eyes looked full into mine. In college days, gazing into
their brown depths, by some magic I seemed to see the heroes and heroines
of always happy-ending tales, as the child sees enchanted creatures far
back in the burning Yule log flames. But there were no joyous beings in
the haunted depths of Bob's eyes that day.

"Jim, you gave me an awful scare," he said brokenly. "Don't ever do it
again. I have little left to live for. To be sure I have some feeling for
mother, Fred, and sisters. But for you I have a love second only to that I
should have felt for Beulah had I been allowed to have her. The thought,
Jim, that I had wrecked your life, with all you have to live for, would
have been the last straw. My life is purgatory. Beulah is only an
ever-present curse to me--a ghost that rends my heart and soul, one minute
with a blind frenzy to revenge her wrongs, the next with an icy remorse
that I have not already done so. If I did not have her, perhaps in time I
could forget; perhaps I might lay out some scheme to help poor devils
whose poverty makes life unendurable, and with the millions I have taken
from that main shaft of hell I might do things that would at least bring
quiet to my soul; but it is impossible with the living corpse of Beulah
Sands before me every minute and that devil machinery whirling in my brain
all the time the song, 'Revenge her and her father, revenge yourself.' It
is impossible to give it up, Jim. I must have revenge. I must stop this
machinery that is smashing up more American hearts and souls each year
than all the rest of earth's grinders combined. Every day I delay I become
more fiendish in my desires. Jim, don't think I do not know that I have
literally turned into a fiend. Whenever of late I see myself in the
mirror, I shudder. When I think of what I was when your father stood us up
in his office and started us in this heart-shrivelling, soul-callousing
business, and what I am now, I cannot keep the madness down except with
rum. You know what it means for me to say this, me who started with all
the pride of a Brownley; but it is so, Jim. The other night I went home
with my soul frozen with thoughts of the past and with my brain ablaze
with rum, intending to end it all. I got out my revolver, and woke Beulah,
but as I said, 'Bob is going to kill Beulah and himself,' she laughed that
sweet child's laugh and clapping her hands said, 'Bob is so good to play
with Beulah,' and then I thought of that devil Reinhart and the other
fiends of the 'System' being left to continue their work unhindered and I
could not do it. I must have revenge; I must smash that heart-crushing
machinery. Then I can go, and take Beulah with me. Now, Jim, let us have
it clearly understood once and for all."

Remorse and softness were past; he was the Indian again. "I am going to
wreck that hell-annex some day, and that some day will be the next time I
start in. Don't argue with me, don't misunderstand me. To-day you stopped
me. I don't know whether you meant what you threatened; I don't care now.
It is just as well that I stopped, for the 'System's' machine will be
there whenever I start in again. It loses nothing of its fiendishness,
none of its destructive powers by grinding, but, on the contrary, as you
know, it increases its speed every day it runs. Now, Jim Randolph, I want
to tell you that you must get yours and the house's affairs in such shape
that you won't be hurt when I go into that human rat-pit the next time,
for when I come from it the New York Stock Exchange and the 'System' will
have had their spines unjointed. Yes, and I'll have their hearts out, too.
Neither will ever again be able to take from the American people their
savings and their manhood and womanhood and give them in exchange
unadulterated torment. I am going to be fair with you, Jim; this is the
last time I will discuss the subject. After this you must take your chance
with the rest of those who have to do with the cursed business. When I
strike again, none will be spared. I will wreck 'the Street', and the
innocent will go down with the guilty, if they have any stocks on hand at
that time.

"My power, Jim, is unlimited; nothing can stay it. I am not going to
explain any further. You have seen me work. You must know that my power is
greater than the 'System's,' and you and I and 'the Street' have always
known that the 'System' is more powerful than the Government, more
powerful than are the courts, legislatures, Congress, and the President of
the United States combined, that it absolutely controls the foundation on
which they rest--the money of the nation. But my power is greater, a
thousand, yes, a million times greater than theirs. Jim, they say that I
have made more money than any man in the world. They say that I have five
hundred millions of dollars, but the fools don't keep track of my
movements. They only know that I have pulled five hundred millions from my
open whirls, the ones they have had an opportunity to keep tab on. But I
tell you that I have made even more in my secret deals than the amount
they have seen me take. I have had my agents with my capital in every
deal, every steal the 'System' has rigged up. The world has been throwing
up its hands in horror because Carnegie, the blacksmith of Pittsburgh,
pulled off three hundred millions of swag in the Steel hold-up--yes,
swag, Jim. Don't scowl as though you wanted to read me a lecture on the
coarseness of my language. I have learned to call this game of ours by its
right name. It is not business enterprise with earned profits as results,
but pulled-off tricks with bags of loot--black-jack swag--for their end.

"I got away with three hundred millions when Steel slumped from 105 to 50
and from 50 to 8, and no one knew I'd made a dollar. You and 'the Street'
read every morning last year the 'guesses' as to who could be rounding up
the hundreds of millions on the slump. The papers and the market letters
one morning said it was 'Standard Oil'; the next, that it was Morgan; then
it was Frick, Schwab, Gates, and so on down through the list. Of course,
none of them denied; it is capital to all these knights of the road to be
making millions in the minds of the world, even though they never get any
of the money. Dick Turpin and Jonathan Wild never were fonder of having
the daring hold-ups that other highwaymen perpetrated laid to their doors,
than are these modern bandits of being credited with ruthless deeds that
they did not commit. But Jim, 'twas I, 'twas I who sold Pennsylvania
every morning for a year, while the selling was explained by the press as
'Cassatt cutting down Gould's telegraph poles. Gould and old man
Rockefeller selling Pennsylvania to get even.' Jim Randolph, I have to-day
a billion dollars, not the Rockefeller or Carnegie kind, but a real
billion. If I had no other power but the power to call to-morrow for that
billion in cash, it would be sufficient to lay in waste the financial
world before to-morrow night. You are welcome, Jim, to any part of that
billion, and the more you take the happier you will make me, but when I
strike in again, don't attempt to stay me, for it will do no good."

Shortly after this talk Bob left for Europe with Beulah. A great German
expert on brain disorders had held out hope that a six month's treatment
at his sanitarium in Berlin might aid in restoring her mind. They returned
the following August. The trip had been fruitless. It was plain to me that
Bob was the same hopelessly desperate man as when he left, more hopeless,
more desperate if anything than when he warned me of his determination.

When he left for Europe "the Street" breathed more freely, and as time
went by and there was no sign of his confidence-disturbing influence in
the market, the "System" began to bring out its deferred deals. Times were
ripe for setting up the most wildly inflated stock lamb-shearing traps. It
had been advertised throughout the world that Tom Reinhart, now a
two-hundred-time millionaire, was to consolidate his and many other
enterprises into one gigantic trust with twelve billions of capital. His
Union and Southern Pacific Railroads, his coal and Southern lines,
together with his steamship company and lead, iron, and copper mines, were
to be merged with the steel, traction, gas, and other enterprises he owned
jointly with "Standard Oil." Some of the railroads owned by Rockefeller
and his pals, in which Reinhart had no part, were to go in too, and with
these was to unite that mother hog of them all, "Standard Oil" itself. The
trust was to be an enormous holding company, the like of which had until
then not even been dreamed of by the most daring stock manipulators. The
"System's" banks, as well as trust and insurance companies throughout the
country, had for a long time been getting into shape by concentrating the
money of the country for this monster trust. It was newspaper and news
bureau gossip that Reinhart and his crowd had bought millions of shares of
the different stocks involved in the deal, and it was common knowledge
that upon its successful completion Reinhart's fortune would be in the
neighbourhood of a billion. On October 1st the certificate of the
Anti-People's Trust, $12,000,000,000 capital, 120,000,000 shares, were
listed upon the New York, London, and Boston Stock Exchanges, and the
German and French Bourses, and trading in them started off fast and
furious at 106. The claim that one billion of the twelve billions capital
had been set aside to be used in protecting and manipulating the stock in
the market, had been so widely advertised that even the most daring
plunger did not think of selling it short.

It was evident to all in the stock-gambling world that this was to be the
"System's" grand coup, that at its completion the masses would be rudely
awakened to a realisation that their savings were invested in the combined
American industries at vastly inflated values, that the few had all the
real money, and that any attempt upon the people's part to regulate and
control the new system of robbery, would be fraught with unparalleled
disaster--not to the "System," but to the people.

Since Bob's return from Europe I had seen him but a few times. Up to
October 1st he had not been near the Stock Exchange or "the Street."
Shortly after the listing of the "People Be Damned," as "the Street" had
dubbed the new trust, he began to show up at his office regularly. This
was the condition of affairs when Fred Brownley called me up on the
telephone, as I related at the beginning of my story, which I did not
realise I had been so long in telling.

My thoughts had been chasing each other with lightning-like rapidity back
over the last five years and the fifteen before them, and each thought
deepened the black mist over my present mental vision. In the midst of my
reflections my telephone rang again.

"Mr. Randolph, for Heaven's sake have you done nothing yet?" It was Fred
Brownley's voice. "Things are frightful here. Bob's brokers are selling
stocks at five and ten thousand-lot clips. Barry Conant is leading
Reinhart's forces. It is said he has the pool's protection order in
Anti-People's and that it is unlimited, but Bob has the Reinhart crowd
pretty badly scared. Swan has just finished giving Conant a hundred
thousand off the reel in 10,000 lots, and he told me a moment ago he was
going over to get Bob himself to face Barry Conant. They're down twenty
points on the average, although they haven't let Anti-People's break an
eighth yet. They have it pegged at 106, but there is an ugly rumour just
in that Bob, under cover of a general attack, is unloading Anti-People's
on to the Reinhart wing for Rogers and Rockefeller, and the rumour is
getting in its work. Even Barry Conant is growing a bit anxious. The
latest talk is that Reinhart is borrowing hundreds of millions on
Anti-People's, and that his loans are being called in all directions. Do
you know Reinhart is at his place in Virginia and cannot get here before
to-morrow night? If Bob breaks through Anti-People's peg, it will be the
worst crash yet."

"All right, Fred," I answered. "I will go over to Bob's right now. I hate
to do it, but there is no other hope."

I dropped the receiver and started for Bob's office. As I went through his
counting-room one of the clerks said, "They have just broken Anti-People's
to 90 on a bulletin that Tom Reinhart's wife and only daughter have been
killed in an automobile accident at their place in Virginia. They first
had it that Reinhart himself was killed. That has been corrected, although
the latest word is that he is prostrated."

I rapped on Bob's private-office door. I felt the coming struggle as I
heard his hoarse bellow, "Come in." He stood at the ticker, with the tape
in one hand, while with the other he held the telephone receiver to his
ear. My God, what a picture for a stage! His magnificent form was erect,
his feet were as firmly planted as if he were made of bronze, his
shoulders thrown back as if he were withstanding the rush of the Stock
Exchange hordes, his eyes afire with a sullen, smouldering blaze, his jaw
was set in a way that brought into terrible relief the new, hard lines of
desperation that had recently come into his face. His great chest was
rising and falling as though he were engaged in a physical struggle; his
perfect-fitting, heavy black Melton cutaway coat, thrown back from the
chest, and a low, turned-down, white collar formed the setting for a
throat and head that reminded one of a forest monarch at bay on the
mountain crag awaiting the coming of the hounds and hunters.

I hesitated at the threshold to catch my breath, as I took in the
terrific figure. Had Bob Brownley been an enemy of mine I should have
backed out in fear, and I do not confess to more than my fair share of
cowardice. Inwardly I thanked God that Bob was in his office instead of on
the floor of the Exchange. His whole appearance was frightful. He showed
in every line and lineament that he was a man who would hesitate at
nothing, even at killing, if he should find a human obstacle in his road
and his mind should suggest murder. He was the personification of the most
awful madness. Even when he caught sight of me, he hardly moved, although
my coming must have been a surprise.

"So it is you, Jim Randolph, is it? What brings _you_ here?" His voice was
hoarse, but it had a metallic ring that went to my marrow. Bob Brownley in
all the years of our friendship had never spoken to me except in kind and
loving regard. I looked at him, stunned. I must have shown how hurt I was.
But if he saw it, he gave no sign. His eyes, looking straight into mine,
changed no more than if he had been addressing his deadliest enemy.

Again his voice rang out, "What brings you here? Do you come to plead
again for that dastard Reinhart after the warning I gave you?"

I clenched both hands until I felt the nails cut the flesh of my palms. I
loved Bob Brownley. I would have done anything to make him happy, would
willingly have sacrificed my own life to protect his from himself or
others, but this madman, this wild brute, was no more Bob Brownley as I
had known him than the howling northeast gale of December is the gentle,
welcome zephyr of August; and I felt a resentment at his brutal speech
that I could hardly suppress. With a mighty effort I crushed it back,
trying to think of nothing but his awful misery and the Bob of our college
days.

I said in a firm voice, "Bob, is this the way to talk to me in your own
office?" At any time before, my words and tone would have touched his
all-generous Southern chivalry, but now he said harshly--"To hell with
sentiment. What----" He did not take his eyes from mine, but they told me
that he was listening to a voice in the receiver. Only for a second; then
he let loose a wild laugh, which must have penetrated to the outer office.

"Eighty and coming like a spring freshet," he said into the mouthpiece,
"and the boys want to know if I won't let up now that Reinhart is down?
Go back and smother them with all they will take down to 60. That's my
answer. Tell them if Reinhart had ten more wives and daughters and they
were all killed, I'd rend his bastard trust to help him dull his sorrow.
Give the word at every pole that I will have Reinhart where he will curse
his luck that he was not in the automobile with the rest of his tribe----

"To hell with sentiment!" He was speaking to me again. "What do you want?
If you are here to beg for Reinhart and his pack of yellow curs, you've
got your answer. I wouldn't let up on that fiendish hyena, not if his wife
and daughter and all the dead wives and daughters of every 'System' man
came back in their grave clothes and begged. I wouldn't let up a share." I
gasped in horror.

"When did those robbers of men and despoilers of women and children ever
let up because of death? When were they ever known to wait even till the
corpse stiffened to pluck out the hearts of the victims? It is my turn
now, and if I let up a hair may I, yes, and Beulah, too, be damned,
eternally damned."

I could not stand it. If I stayed, I, too, should become mad. I reached
for the doorknob, but before I could swing the door open Bob was upon me
like a wolf. He grasped me by the shoulders and with the strength of a
madman hurled me half across the room. I sank into a chair.

"No, you don't, Jim Randolph, no, you don't. You came here for something
and, by heaven, you will tell me what it is! You know me; you are the only
human being who does. You know what I was, you see what I am. You know
what they did to me to make me what I am. You know, Jim Randolph, you know
whether I deserved it. You know whether in all my life up to the day those
dollar-frenzied hounds tore my soul, I had done any man, woman, or child a
wrong. You know whether I had, and now you are going to sneak off and
leave me as though I were a cur dog of the Reinhart-'Standard Oil' breed
gone mad!"

He was standing over me, a terrible yet a magnificent figure. As he hurled
these words at me, I was sure he had really lost his mind; that I was in
the presence of a man truly mad. But only for an instant; then my horror,
my anger turned to a great, crushing, all-consuming agony of pity for
Bob, and I dropped my head on my hands and wept. It is hard to admit it,
but it is true--I wept uncontrollably. In an instant the room was quiet
except for the sound of my own awful grief. I heard it, was ashamed of it,
but I could not stop. The telephone rang again and again, wildly, shrilly,
but there was no answer. The stillness became so oppressive that even my
own sobs quieted. I gasped as the lump in my throat choked me, then I
slowly raised my eyes.

Bob's towering figure was in front of me. His head had fallen forward, and
his arms were folded across his breast. But that he stood erect I should
have thought him dead, so still was he. I jumped to my feet and looked
into his face, down which great tears were dropping silently. I touched
him on the shoulder.

"Bob, my dear old chum, Bob, forgive me. For God's sake, forgive me for
intruding on your misery."

I looked at him. I will never forget his face. No heartbroken woman's
could have been sadder. He slowly raised his head, then staggered and
grasped the ticker-stand for support.

"Don't, Jim, don't--don't ask me to forgive you. Oh, Jim, Jim, my old
friend, forgive me for my madness; forget what I said to you, forget the
brute you just saw and think of me as of old, when I would have plucked
out my tongue if I had caught it saying a harsh word to the best and
truest friend man ever had. Jim, forget it all. I was mad, I am mad, I
have been mad for a long time, but it cannot last much longer. I know it
can't, and, Jim, by all our past love, by the memories of the dear old
days at St. Paul's and at Harvard, the dear old days of hope and
happiness, when we planned for the future, try to think of me only as you
knew me then, as you know that I should now be, but for the 'System's'
curse."

The clerks were pounding on the door; through the glass showed many forms.
They had been gathering for minutes while Bob talked in his low, sad tone,
a tone that no one could believe came from the same mouth that a few
moments before had poured forth a flood of brutal heartlessness.

Bob went to the door. The office was in an uproar. Twenty or thirty of
Bob's brokers were there, aghast at not getting a reply to their calls.
Many more were pouring in through the outer office. Bob looked at them
coldly. "Well, what is the trouble? Is it possible we are down to a point
where the Stock Exchange rushes over to a man's office when his wire
happens to break down?"

They saw his bluff. You cannot deceive Stock Exchange men, at least not
the kind that Bob Brownley employed on panic days, but his coolness
reassured them, and when they saw me it was odds-on that they guessed to a
man why Bob had ignored his wires--guessed that I had been pleading for
the life of "the Street."

"Well, where do you stand?"

Frank Swan answered for the crowd: "The panic is in full swing. She's a
cellar-to-ridge-pole ripper. They're down 40 or over on an average.
Anti-People's is down to 35, and still coming like sawdust over a broken
dam. Barry Conant's house and a dozen other of Reinhart's have gone under.
His banks and trust companies are going every minute. The whole Street
will be overboard before the close. The governing committee has just
called a meeting to see whether it will not be best to adjourn the
Exchange over to-day and to-morrow."

Bob listened as if he had been a master at the wheel in a gale, receiving
reports from his mates.

There was no trace now of the scene he had just been through. He was cool,
masterful, like the seasoned sea-dog who knows that in spite of the
ocean's rage and the wind's howl, the wheel will answer his hand and the
craft its rudder. "Jim, come over to the Exchange." The crowd followed
along. "We have but a minute and I want to have you say you forgive me,"
he said to me. "I know, Jim, you understand it all, but I must tell you
how sorrowful I am that in my madness I should have so forgotten my
admiration, respect, and love for you, yes, and my gratitude to you, as to
say what I did. I'll do the only thing I can to atone. I will stop this
panic and undo as much as possible of my work; and now that I have wrecked
Reinhart I am through with this game forever, yes, through forever."

He pressed my hand in his strong, honest one and strode into the Exchange
ahead of the crowd. All was chaos, although the trading had toned down to
a sullen desperation. So many houses, banks, and trust companies had
failed that no man knew whether the member he had traded with early in
the day would on the morrow be solvent enough to carry out his trades. The
man who had been "long" in the morning, and had sold out before the crash,
and who thought he now had no interest in the panic, found himself with
his stock again on hand, because of the failure of the one to whom he had
sold, and the price cut in two. The man who was "short" and who a few
minutes before had been eagerly counting his profits now knew that they
had been turned to loss, because the man from whom he had borrowed his
short stocks for delivery would be in no condition to repay for them, the
next day, when they should be returned to him. The "short" man was
himself, therefore, "long" stocks he had bought to cover his "short" sale.
In depressing the price he had been working against his own pocket instead
of against the bulls he had thought he was opposing. All was confusion and
black despair. There is, indeed, no blacker place than the floor of the
Stock Exchange after a panic cyclone has swept it, and is yet lingering in
its corners, while the survivors of its fury do not know whether or not it
will again gather force.

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