Blindfolded by Earle Ashley Walcott (best affordable ebook reader TXT) 📖

you have to pay sixty-five."

Eppner gave a bellow, and skated into a group of fat men, gesticulating violently. The roar increased, if such a thing were possible.

In a minute Eppner was back, perspiring, and I fancied a trifle worried.

"They're dropping it on me," he gasped in my ear. "Five hundred at sixty-two and one thousand at sixty. Small lots coming fast and big ones on the way."

"Good! Bid fifty-five, and then fifty, but get them."

With a roar he rushed into the midst of a whirling throng. I saw twenty brokers about him, shouting and threatening. One in his eagerness jumped upon the shoulders of a fat man in front of him, and shook a paper under his nose.

I could make out nothing of what was going on, except that the excitement was tremendous.

Twice Eppner reported to me. The stock was being hammered down stroke by stroke. There was a rush to sell. Fifty-five--fifty-three--fifty, came the price--then by leaps to forty-five and forty. It was a panic. At last the gong sounded, and the scene was over. Men staggered from the Exchange, white as death, some cursing, some angry and red, some despairing, some elate. I could see that ten had lost for one who had gained.

Eppner reported at the end of the call. He had bought for me twelve thousand five hundred shares, over ten thousand of them below fifty. The total was frightful. There was half a million dollars to pay when the time for settlement came. It was folly to suppose that my credit at the Nevada was of this size. But I put a bold face on it, gave a check for the figure that Eppner named, and rose.

"Any more orders?" he asked.

"Not till afternoon."

As I passed into the street I was astonished at the swift transformation that had come over it. The block about the Exchange was crowded with a tossing throng, hundreds upon hundreds pushing toward its fateful doors. But where cheerfulness and hope had ruled, fear and gloom now vibrated in electric waves before me. The faces turned to the pitiless, polished granite front of the great gambling-hall were white and drawn, and on them sat Ruin and Despair. The men were for the most part silent, with here and there one cursing; the women, who were there by scores, wept and mourned; and from the multitudes rose that peculiar whisper of crowds that tells of apprehension of things worse to come. And this, I must believe, was the work of Doddridge Knapp.


CHAPTER X

A TANGLE OF SCHEMES

Doddridge Knapp was seated calmly in my office when I opened the door. There was a grim smile about the firm jaws, and a satisfied glitter in the keen eyes. The Wolf had found his prey, and the dismay of the sheep at the sight of his fangs gave him satisfaction instead of distress.

The King of the Street honored me with a royal nod.

"There seems to have been a little surprise for somebody on the Board this morning," he suggested.

"I heard something about it on the street," I admitted.

"It was a good plan and worked well. Let me see your memoranda of purchases."

I gave him my slips.

He looked over them with growing perplexity in his face.

"Here's twelve thousand five hundred shares of Omega."

"Yes."

"You paid too much for that first lot." He was still poring over the list.

"It's easier to see that now than then," I suggested dryly.

"Humph! yes. But there's something wrong here." He was comparing my list with another in his hand.

"There!" I thought; "my confounded ignorance has made a mess of it." But I spoke with all the confidence I could assume: "What's the matter, now?"

"Eleven thousand and twelve thousand five hundred make twenty-three thousand five hundred; and here are sales of Omega this morning of thirty-three thousand eight hundred and thirty." He seemed to be talking more to himself than to me, and to be far from pleased.

"How's that? I don't understand." I was all in the dark over his musings.

"I picked up eleven thousand shares in the other Boards this morning, and twelve thousand five hundred through you, but somebody has taken in the other ten thousand." The King of the Street seemed puzzled and, I thought, a little worried.

"Well, you got over twenty-three thousand shares," I suggested consolingly. "That's a pretty good morning's work."

The King of the Street gave me a contemptuous glance.

"Don't be a fool, Wilton. I sold ten thousand of those shares to myself."

A new light broke upon me. I was getting lessons of one of the many ways in which the market was manipulated.

"Then you think that somebody else--"

The King of the Street broke in with a grim smile.

"Never mind what I think. I've got the contract for doing the thinking for this job, and I reckon I can 'tend to it."

The great speculator was silent for a few moments.

"I might as well be frank with you," he said at last. "You'll have to know something, to work intelligently. I must get control of the Omega Company, and to do it I've got to have more stock. I've been afraid of a combination against me, and I guess I've struck it. I can't be sure yet, but when those ten thousand shares were gobbled up on a panicky market, I'll bet there's something up."

"Who is in it?" I asked politely.

"They've kept themselves covered," said the King of the Street, "but I'll have them out in the open before the end. And then, my boy, you'll see the fur fly."

As these words were uttered I could see the yellow-gray goatee rise like bristles, and the fangs of the Wolf shine white under the yellow- gray mustache.

"I've got a few men staked out," he continued slowly, "and I reckon I'll know something about it by this time to-morrow." There was the growl of the Wolf in his voice.

"Now for this afternoon," he continued. "There's got to be some sharp work done. I reckon the falling movement is over. We've got to pay for what we get from now on. I've got a man looking after the between-Board trading. With the scare that's on in the chipper crowd out there, I look to pick up a thousand shares or so at about forty."

"Well, what's the program?" I asked cheerfully.

"Buy," he said briefly. "Take everything that's offered this side of seventy-five."

"Um--there's a half-million wanted already to settle for what I bought this morning."

The bushy brows drew down, but the King of the Street answered lightly:

"Your check is good for a million, my boy, as long as it goes to settle for what you're ordered to buy." Then he added grimly: "I don't think you'd find it worth much for anything else."

There was a knock at the door beyond, and he hastily rose.

"Be here after the two-thirty session," he said. And the Wolf, huge and masterful, disappeared with a stealthy tread, and the door closed softly behind him.

A million dollars! My check honored for unlimited amounts! Doddridge Knapp trusting me with a great fortune! I was overwhelmed, intoxicated, with the consciousness of power.

Yet this was the man who had brought death to Henry Wilton, and had twice sought my life in the effort to wrest from me a packet of information I did not have. This was the man whose face had gleamed fierce and hateful in the lantern's flash in the alley. This was the man I had sworn to bring to the gallows for a brutal crime. And now I was his trusted agent, with control, however limited, of millions.

It was a puzzle too deep for me. I was near coming to Mother Borton's view that there was something uncanny about Doddridge Knapp. Did two spirits animate that body? What was the thread that should join all parts of the mystery into one harmonious whole?

I wondered idly who Doddridge Knapp's visitor might be, but as I could see no way of finding out, and felt no special concern over his identity or purposes, I rose and left the office. As I stepped into the hall I discovered that somebody had a deeper curiosity than I. A man was stooping to the keyhole of Doddridge Knapp's room in the endeavor to see or hear. As he heard the sound of my opening door he started up, and with a bound, was around the turn of the hall and pattering down the stairs.

In another bound I was after him. I had seen his form for but a second, and his face not at all. But in that second I knew him for Tim Terrill of the snake-eyes and the murderous purpose.

When I reached the head of the stairs he was nowhere to be seen, but I heard the patter of his feet below and plunged down three steps at a time and into Clay street, nearly upsetting a stout gentleman in my haste. The street was busy with people, but no sign of the snake-eyed man greeted me.

Much disturbed in mind at this apparition of my enemy, I sought in vain for some explanation of his presence. Was he spying on Doddridge Knapp? Did he not stand on a better footing with his employer than this? He was, I must suppose, trusted with the most secret and evil purposes of that strange man, and should be able to speak with him on even terms. Yet here he was, doing the work of the merest spy. What wickedness was he planning? What treachery was he shaping in his designs on the man whose bread he was eating and whose plans of crime he was the chief agent to assist or execute?

I must have stood gaping in the street like a countryman at a fair as I revolved these questions in my mind without getting an answer to them, for I was roused by a man bumping into me roughly.

I suspected that he had done it on purpose, but I begged his pardon and felt for my watch. I could find none of my personal property missing, but I noticed the fellow reeling back toward me, and doubled my fist with something of an intention to commit a breach of the peace if he repeated his trick. I thought better of it, and started by him briskly, when he spoke in a low tone:

"You'd better go to your room, Mr. Wilton." He said something more that I did not catch, and, reeling on, disappeared in the crowd before I could turn to mark or question him.

I thought at first that he meant the room I had just left. Then it occurred to me that it was the room Henry had occupied--the room in which I had spent my first dreadful night in San Francisco, and had not revisited in the thirty hours since I had left it.

The advice suited my inclination, and in a few minutes I was entering the dingy building and climbing the worn and creaking stairs. The place lost its air of mystery in the broad sunshine and penetrating daylight, and though its interior was as gloomy as ever, it lacked the haunting suggestions it had borrowed from darkness and the night.

Slipped under the door I found two notes. One was from Detective Coogan, and