Hastily writing a wire to the cashier of the Denver bank where he kept his personal account, and another to Adair, and leaving brief notes for Kenneth and Truitt, he took a cab and had himself driven at a gallop to the Union Station. He was the last man through the platform gates, but he made his train, and was settling himself in the sleeper when another telegram was thrust into his hand. This was from Frisbie, at Saint’s Rest; and that it brought more bad news might be argued from the way in which he crushed it slowly in his hand and jammed it into his pocket. On this day, if never before, he was proving the truth of the old adage that misfortunes do not come singly.
Upon arriving in New York late the following evening, he had himself driven to the Waldorf, where he found Adair waiting for him. A few words sufficed to outline the situation, which the lapse of another day had made still more desperate. So far from recovering, the falling stock had dropped to twenty-nine and a half, and there was every indication that the bottom was not yet reached.
“How do you account for it?” asked Ford, when the dismal tale had been told.
“Oh, it’s easy enough, when you know how,” was the light-hearted rejoinder. “As I wired you, there was something of a scramble on the floor of the Exchange last week when we were fighting to find out whether we should control our own majority or let the Transcontinental have it. Our pool got its fifty-one per cent. all right, but in the nature of things the enemy stood as the next largest stock-holder in P. S-W., since they’d been buying right and left against us. Now, since we don’t need any more, and nobody else wants it, all the Transcontinental people have to do is to unload on the market, and down she goes.”
Ford looked incredulous, and then wrathful.
“Adair, tell me: did I have to stop my work when my time is worth fifty dollars a minute, and come all the way to New York to tell you folks what to do?” he demanded.
Adair’s laugh was utterly and absolutely care-free.
“It looks that way, doesn’t it? Have you got the compelling club up your sleeve, as usual?”
“A boy might carry it—and swing it, too,” was the disgusted answer. “When does the board meet again? Or has it concluded to lie down in the harness?”
“Oh, it gets together every morning—got the meeting habit, you know. Everybody’s in a blue funk, but we still have the daily round-up to swap funeral statistics.”
“All right. Meet me here in the morning, and we’ll go and join the procession. Can you make it nine o’clock?”
“Sure. It’s too late to go home, and I’ll stay here. Then you’ll be measurably certain that I can’t escape. May I see the tip end of the club?”
“No,” said Ford grumpily. “You don’t deserve it. Go to bed and store up a head of steam that will carry you through the hardest day’s work you ever hoped to do. Good night.”