Mr. Salt : a novel

Front matter

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BY WILL PAYN

[BY WILL PAYNE | d i Ag

II

THE tormented “ street,” — this fretted canyon of finance running between precipitous crags of huge buildings, — nervous over the times and haunted by the spectre of panic, found an exciting diversion in Salt’s fight with Leman.

With Salt and Leman both buying, the shares of the Coal and Iron Company had risen to 118. The crowd of speculators in the street, like hungry camp followers, watched the battle and tried to seize some spoils for themselves. There was a long queue of “ tailers-on,” men who bought the shares on margins without caring whether Salt or Leman finally won, but who, seeing these two powerful factions fighting for control, expected that the shares would continue to advance so that they could sell out their holdings at a round profit to whichever side would bid most.

And as though to give a clearer field for this battle, the cloud of panic lighted a little. Men drew fuller breaths and nervously assured each other that the worst was over.

In the brokers’ offices they discussed it eagerly. 13

Lyon & Drew, Salt’s chief brokers, had an office on the ground floor of the La Salle Building. A crowd of men loafed in the public room, watching the quotations that were posted on the big black board, reading the telegrams, discussing the market.

Hadley was a bull—a stump of a man with a mottled face.

“ Look at Coal and Iron there !”’ he cried triumphantly, as a higher quotation was set down. “Salt’s going to skin those fellows alive!” He spoke in a loud, cheerful voice, for he wished to attract the attention of Lyon, who was standing near. Hadley sought Lyon’s good will, hoping the big broker would give him a “tip” some day or let him trade on light margins. “ Ain’t he, Mr. Lyon?” he called out.

The big broker smiled indulgently, as one who knows but is not permitted to tell.

“ Look at what he’s made of that company — starting from nothing!” the man went on loudly, challengingly. “ Are the stockholders going to let him be put out of the management after he’s made millions for them? Will they turn the company : over to Leman? Not on your life. Can’t beat the old man at his own game. Got some Coal and Iron, Jim ?”

“ Well, I got a little. And I ain’t worrying any about iteither.”” The man smiled shrewdly. “ Wish I was worrying as little over some other things I’ve

got.”

« Pshaw, everything ’s all right,” said Hadley. “ We’ve seen the worst of the disturbance. The country ain’t broke by a darn sight. This Coal and Iron boom will turn the whole market upward in a day or two.”

“ Well, I hope not,” said a man with a drooping eyelid who had drifted up to the group, ‘ because I’m short up to my neck.”

“ Short!” cried the optimist. “ Well, you want to get under cover.” |

The man with the drooping eyelid smiled. “I’m betting there ’s going to be more trouble,” he said.

He was an habitué of the “ street,”’ an inveterate player of the market, the type of many. He cared nothing whether the country went up, down, or sideways so long as he could guess which way it was to go and make a profit by buying or selling stocks. Every event—the failure of a crop or abundance, a strike, the threat of war, whatever happened — he viewed impartially with reference to the market. He never tired of telling how he had gone short of the market only three days before 15

President Garfield was assassinated and had made a fine profit in the slump which followed.

Now he slipped some coins back and forth through his fingers, smiling complacently over the prospect of other winnings. “I’m betting there’s going to be more trouble,” he announced cheerfully.

A heavy man, with a powerful, hooked nose, and dim eyes behind glasses, came in.

“ Market ’s doing better, Mr. Martin,” called Hadley. “Look at Coal and Iron. What do you say now?”

“Salt is a fool,” said Martin with calm conviction. ‘And Leman is a fool. They ll both go broke. Somebody ought to take ’em to a lunatic asylum. Men who don’t know any more than to start a fight of this kind when the country’s in a panic ought to be locked up.”

“Oh, the panic’s all over,” said the optimist, but more doubtfully, for Martin was a man of money. |

“Over nothing,” Martin replied, his dim eyes fixed coldly upon the little man. ‘It hasn’t really begun yet. I remember ’73 and the five years that came after it too well. Were in for five years of hard times.”

“Oh, pshaw!” gasped the optimist feebly, trying with all his might not to believe. But the group became silent. The spectre of hard times chilled their minds — business dwindling, mills and _ factories closing, men tramping the country looking for work, stagnation everywhere, They looked silently at the blackboard.

“ Well, let ’er come,” said the man with the drooping eyelid. ‘I’d as lief play the bear side as the bull side.” He was perfectly content. If the country weltered down in ruin he could make money by selling short.

‘There isn’t a bank in the country that isn’t scared to death right now,” Martin added.

The afternoon of the same day, Fredericks, president of the La Salle National Bank, declared, “ You ’re all frightened at your own shadow. That’s all that’s the matter. The country is just as prosperous as ever. There’s as much money now as there was a year ago. But everybody loses his nerve. All we need to do is to restore confidence.”’

He was speaking to a group of men in the Chieago Club, and he pronounced this dogma confidently, agressively. He was the youngest man there — barely forty, of a trim figure, always dressed with the touch of a dandy. His hair was iron-gray, almost white, and the contrast with his ruddy, smooth, youthful face gave him a distinguished appearance. His rise had been rapid. His bank was already one of the most important in the city. Sometimes they called it Salt’s Bank.

“T’d rather be afraid of my shadow than not to be afraid of an express train that was coming towards me when I stood on the track,” said Masters of the City Bank —a man of sixty, tall and loosejointed, with a narrow, leathery face and a long, receeding chin. It was seldom that Masters resorted to a joke.

Judson, of the Second National, putin: “ What can you expect but hard times with the country turned over to the Democrats. They began it eight years ago. They’ll finish it now. The day Cleveland was elected, I said, ‘ Look out!’ We’re in for it now. I guess Mr. Leman agrees with me,” he added deferentially, for Leman had walked that way.

Leman had long since sacrificed the silky side whiskers. His round, colorless, wrinkled face was smooth shaven. “The trouble with this country isn’t Cleveland or lack of confidence,” he said. ‘The trouble is reckless speculation and rascality in the management of great corporations. The trouble with this country is too much Salt.” This stroke delighted him so that he chuckled aloud and repeated it. ‘“ It’s a case of too much Salt.”

Masters laughed and wagged his head, partly because he did not like Salt himself and partly because he thought it his duty to laugh at a joke proposed by a man worth fifteen millions.

Fredericks smiled slightly. His own relations with Salt were well known, but he would not have expected Leman to forego airing his grievance against the president on that account. Leman never doubted that whatever he thought was important to other people.

“Well, Salt has done his share, I guess, in building up the country’s industry,’ Fredericks suggested mildly.

“ He’s done his share in lining his own pocket,” Leman declared belligerently, fixing Fredericks with his round, hard, blue eyes. “ He’s a rascal if there ever was one. But his day is done. We’re through with Mr. Salt.”

Masters looked solemnly at the millionaire. “Well, Salt has large resources,” he suggested cautiously. He was thinking of a loan of $300,000 made to Salt, with Coal and Iron stock as collateral, which his bank was carrying.

‘¢ His resources are all on paper,’’ Leman declared angrily. ‘“ He has n’ta free dollar to his name. He issues some stock and borrows money on it, and with that money he buys something else and issues bonds or stocks on that and borrows more money on these bonds or stock. He’s always borrowing. It’s simply a house of cards. When values shrink, the foundation gives way and down comes the house. He controls an immense amount of property, but it’s other people’s money that is in it — money of other stockholders and bondholders and of the banks from which he borrows. I hope we won’t find any banks in the ruins when the crash comes.” The millionaire looked hard at Fredericks.

‘“ Tiresome old ass. He can’t talk about anything but Salt,” said Fredericks under his breath, when Leman moved away.

But Masters only looked solemnly at him through his glasses. The cautious man was thinking of that loan. Leman might be right or wrong, but it was just as well to be on the safe side.

II

CoAL AND IRON advanced to121. Then something went wrong. The shares began to decline.

Hadley sidled up to Lyon. “Say, what’s the matter with Coal and Iron?” he asked anxiously, one eye on the blackboard where a quotation of 118 had just been set down.

The broker shook his head. ‘“ Don’t know,” he said, — “only they ’re selling it.” He stooped confidentially. “We’re getting orders from New York to sell.” :

Hadley’s anxious eye searched the broker’s face. «¢ Would you sell out?” he asked.

Lyon smiled mysteriously. “ You can see the market as well as I can,” he said, “I guess you won’t find Salt buying any to-day.”

This was at eleven o’clock on Tuesday. By one o’clock the stock was down to 116, and a flight of rumors, emanating none knew where, invaded the street. Here they said Salt was in deep water — on the verge of bankruptcy ; there that the company itself was in a bad way — veins of coal had run out, great repairs were necessary at the mills. A little 21 later word flew around that the banks were calling Salt’s loans. Coal and Iron closed at 114.

Wednesday morning blocks of the stock were thrown on the market. Every one knew that the City Bank was selling Salt out. The old man was broken ; the company was going to the deuce. Before noon there was a fresh alarm. The lease by which the company held the Coal Creek Mine — its most valuable coal property — was fatally defective. A bill had been filed in the United States Court to set it aside. The noon editions of the newspapers announced the filing of the bill in big headlines.

Hadley was jubilant. “I sold out Tuesday morning,” he declared ; “ I knew this was coming.”

Fear possessed the street. Coal and Iron shares were thrown on the market by the wholesale. The price sank with fearful rapidity. The long queue of “ tailers-on,” the camp followers who had bought the shares on margins hoping to make a great profit by selling to Salt or Leman, saw their margins swept away and their stock sold out. By two o'clock Coal and Iron was down to par and the street was wild. ‘Then still another version spread about. Salt had sold all his stock. He knew that the company was going to pieces and had dumped 22 his holdings on the market to get out before the smash came. Men of wealth who had bought the shares because Leman was buying became infected _ with the panic. Bewildered by the cloud of rumors, not knowing what to believe, feeling the universal fright and seeing the shares drop point after point, they, too, sold out, glad to save something out of the wreck.

The shares dropped to 96, then steadied, held firm, moved up to 98. And when the market closed it was evident that somebody had bought at the low point on a huge scale. In the morning again somebody was buying, taking all the stock that frightened holders offered.

Two days of confusion and turmoil passed before the truth began to emerge clearly from the smoke. The street gradually awoke to a realization of the situation. It was Salt— Salt had engineered the slump, and Salt had done the buying at the bottom. He had scooped in an immense quantity of shares at the low price — all that held by the “ tailers-on,” by the margin traders, by the timid Lemanites, by those whom the panic had inspired to sell. His control of the company was firmer than ever. There was no doubt now that he would carry the election. The Leman crowd was nowhere.

The street gave itself over to amazement and to rage. That even Salt himself should attempt such a stroke under the panic conditions then prevailing almost passed belief. It was like undertaking a difficult and hazardous manceuvre in the midst of a hurricane. The sheer audacity of the thing dazed many. The victims raged. The man was a buccaneer, an incendiary, who deliberately started a fire when his neighbors were fighting a conflagration. Leman was apoplectic with wrath. He walked into the Chicago Club, his feet stumping along the tiling, trembling, his round blue eyes glaring at everybody.

“The man’s an anarchist! an enemy of society! He ought to be hung up to a lamp post!” he stuttered.

And the habitués of the club, millionaires in middle life, eminent merchants, the money aristoeracy of the city, nodded approvingly. Salt’s reckless stroke imperiled everything.

“We'll see if we’ve got to stand this sort of thing!” Leman declared. “It’s time to make an example of the fellow.”

Salt grinned contentedly when Fredericks told him. “ Well, if he ’ll let it go this time,” said the president, “1°11 promise to leave money by 24

MR. SALT my will to found a retreat for crippled millionaires.”

But the victims did not propose to let it go this time. The injury was too great.

On Monday afternoon the evening papers issued extras. Salt, Gary, and Lyon had been arrested on warrants charging them with conspiracy to depress the value of Coal and Iron shares. One of the papers quoted the statute in that case made and provided. ‘The extreme penalty was a term in the penitentiary.

That evening Salt, Lyon, Bishop, and Gary sat in the president’s office, talking over the situation.

Salt was considering. “Oh, I think you best let the stenographer alone,” he said. “She looked all right. How would they get hold of her?”

Bishop pursed his lips. It would be rather awkward, you know, if she turned up on the other side with that letter,’ he suggested.

The point was that the prosecution, to make out its case, would have to prove that the defendants inspired the injurious rumors affecting the stock, and the only tangible evidence on that score was the letter which Esther had transcribed.

“‘ How would the copy of the letter be gone from the files ?”’ said Lyon.

For the copy was gone from the files. It looked bad. None of the men in the room overlooked the fact that they had to deal with powerful enemies who were too furious to be scrupulous, who moreover would regard the overthrow of Salt as a public benefit of such value that the means by which it was accomplished scarcely counted.

Still the president was stubborn. He was used to taking risks, and he recalled the young woman perfectly — her modest, soft gray eyes and sweet humor. In his headstrong and stubborn way he did many things without being able to say just why.

‘I’m guessing the stenographer is all right,” he said. 3

“The letter is gone, sure enough,’ Gary suggested.

“Seems to me there ’s no use in guessing when we can know,” said Lyon irritably.

*¢Oh, well, go ahead then,” said the president. “ Let Gary go find her and bring her up here — tell her I want to see her.”

But when Gary returned an hour later, he reported that Esther was not at home. She had not appeared at dinner time. About seven o’clock a messenger had delivered an unsigned note saying that she had been detained down town and had decided to spend 26

MER. SADT the night with friends. The people with whom she lived, who seemed to be relatives, were worried about her, Gary said.

‘It looks as though we ’d have to reckon on finding the young woman on the other side,” said Bishop dryly.

“ I’m guessing she’s on the square,” said Salt.

IV

Frep Hawarp and Elizabeth came to the stenographer’s room early next morning. On the way up town they now and then assured each other, nervously, that their fears must be groundless — surely Esther had stayed overnight with a friend, and they would find her safe in the office.

But they knew she had no friend with whom she would be likely to spend a night in that way. In their nameless dread there was the feeling of a kind of inveterate unworldliness in her which unfitted her to cope with some things.

They were the first ones at the office, and there was a heavy period of waiting. Bess sat down while Fred paced restlessly about the room. Now and then they looked at each other with numberless questions in their eyes and helplessly made suggestions as to where and with whom she might have spent the night.

Elizabeth persisted illogically in connecting the two extraordinary things that had happened together — Mr. Salt’s arrest and Esther’s disappearance. They had read in the morning paper that

Salt, Gary, and Lyon were to have a preliminary examination before a justice of the peace at nine o'clock.

“If she doesn’t come to the office she will be there,” said Bess for the sixth time.

By and by the other stenographers came in, but no one knew anything of Esther. She had left the office the day before at the usual time. One young woman remembered that she had been called to the telephone just before she left.

Fred and Elizabeth went into the corridor.

“She ’ll be at the justice’s,’ said Elizabeth firmly, although her lip trembled a little and her dark eyes were full of fear.

“¢ Well, maybe she will,” said Fred ae

They looked at each other in wordless misery, their minds picturing the intricate vastness of the city, at once a wilderness and a labyrinth, into which Esther had disappeared, suddenly, silently, tracklessly. They had the common reluctance to call in official aid, to apply to the police, as though there were some inscrutable suggestion of scandal in that.

“I’m going to the justice’s office, Fred,” said Bess, “+ and if she is n’t there at the trial, 111 come back to the bank and tell you.”

The young man could think of nothing better. The girl’s courage comforted him a little ; but there was a trouble deeper than any other in his mind, for as to Esther his conscience was not free. He had scarcely been fair to her since Bess came in.

“Come to the bank, Bess,” he said. It was past the hour when he should have appeared there to take his place on a high stool and begin his daily, grind as an under bookkeeper.

On the ground floor, as he turned away to mount the broad marble steps which led up to the bank, he looked so miserable that the girl took a quick step after him.

“She ’1l be there, Fred,” she asserted confidently.

The way she said it warmed his leaden heart ; but the girl’s own heart was heavy with dread as she set out briskly.

The justice’s office was in the second story of a shabby building on Clark Street. An unkempt young man without coat or shirt collar, but with a nickel-plated star of authority on his greasy vest, had the dingy court room to himself when Bess arrived. A wooden railing divided this narrow room in halves. Behind the railing were a pine table and half a dozen chairs. A door in there led to a private room. Before the railing—ain the space 30 allotted to the sovereign public — were two wooden benches against the wall. The rest was standing room. _ The unkempt young man discovered an unexpected gallantry for this pretty visitor. He advised

her to sit on the end of the bench next the railing where she could hear and see everything, and he dusted that end of the bench for her with a soiled handkerchief which he carried by tucking it through a suspender buckle.

Other early spectators began to drop in, eager to — get good places for the show of Salt’s arraignment. Before nine o’clock the room was packed, and a constable stood guard at the door. By the time the justice came from the inner office and sat down at the pine table, men were standing so close about Bess that she had to lean over to see. She looked vaguely at the justice — an elderly man in a black alpaca office jacket — and at the three or four men who came out of the inner room with him. She supposed them to be lawyers. She had no interest in them or in what they were going to do. To her strained nerves these men were only dim, inconsequential figures in a scene which focused about the unknowable spot where Esther should appear.

She heard a commotion at the door, the com-

dl mands of the officers, and she felt the painful jostlings of the pack of spectators as some one forced a way through. In the crowding a man toppled over her knees and she had to bend her head while, with his hands against the wall, he pushed himself upright again. Then she saw Salt roughly shouldering his way out of the pack and striding through the gate in the railing, followed by Lyon, Gary, and Bishop. The president’s face was drawn in an impatient frown. One strong hand clutched his felt hat. He looked exasperated, threatening, formidable. But the sight of him brought an odd comfort to Bess. Crowded in her little space against the railing, with that pack of rough men about her, all rudely indifferent to her discomfort, her eyes fixed upon Salt’s angry face, her troubled mind was filled with a sense of hispower. He coulddo anything. Hecommanded money, men, organizations. Great forces arrayed themselves under his hand; and she kept helplessly thinking that if she could only get across the railing she would say to him, “ Mr. Salt, Esther is lost. We can’t find her. Won’t youhelp us?” She was dimly conscious that he was very angry, wholly taken up with this arrest ; that he did not know her at all and hardly knew Esther. Yet it kept recurring temptingly to her that if she could only speak to 32 him he would listen and help; that he would set at work all those far-spread forces which he commanded.

There was a rapping and Elizabeth perceived by - the stir and settling of the figures behind the rail that the hearing was about to begin. Her heart quailed anew, for Esther, surely, was not there.

Salt and Gary sat at one end of the pine table, Bishop standing beside them. The half dozen persons — lawyers and witnesses — of the prosecution were on the other side. There was an empty chair on that side. The pack of spectators ceased its stir and stood with craning necks.

Then the door to that inner room opened. A young man came out. Esther was with him. She did not lift her eyes, but, looking steadily at the floor, followed the young man to the vacant chair and sat down. Salt stared at her. Bishop bent down. They whispered together a moment. The trial began.

The testimony of the complaining witness showed the plan of the prosecution. The object was to prove that Salt had prearranged the dissemination of the false reports about the company and even inspired the bringing of the suit in the United States Court, and that he had done this to depress the value of the shares so that he might buy them cheap. Telegrams from New York, rumors which had been given currency on the street concerning the company, were put in evidence. Three brokers testified to the effect of these reports in breaking the market, and of the purchases at the depressed price, supposed to be for Salt.

“Call Esther Ross,” said the lawyer. ' Esther stood up without looking at any one. The young man who had come into the room with her stepped to herside. She obeyed the indication of his slight gesture by going to the corner of the table, facing the magistrate, but with her eyes still stubbornly downcast. She lifted her hand at the magistrate’s direction and stood passive while he pronounced the oath. She seated herself in the witness chair beside the table which the young man indicated to her, but never once looked up. It produced an odd effect — this slender, graceful, gentle-looking young woman whose veiled eyes gave her an air of enfolding herself from the scene. The drama and the mystery of the trial seemed to be shut up within her. The crowd craned and peered breathlessly. Salt moved slightly in his chair in order to face her squarely, his eyes bent hard on her face. Bishop dropped his bland smile and set his lips. So far the 34

= witnesses had told only what was common knowledge or what was mere rumor and surmise. There had not been a word positively connecting Salt with the trick that had broken the market.

In answering the preliminary questions, Esther’s low voice trembled slightly ; but she was soon speaking steadily, deliberately, never saying a word more than was necessary. She was twenty-three years old, a stenographer, employed in the office of the Illinois Coal and Iron Company. She knew Mr. Salt. He was president of the company. She was not his personal stenographer, but she had done some work for him.

Deliberately, with an air of producing a climax, the lawyer drew from his pocket three folded sheets of white paper. He carefully flattened them out, slowly spread the sheets apart and put them together again, like a conjurer assuring his audience before he performs the trick.

Bishop’s lower lip protruded slightly. Gary’s throat moved with the act of swallowing. Salt’s powerful hand tightened upon the arm of the chair — all in the moment of tense silence while the lawyer held the sheets before him. To the three men from the Coal and Iron office the squares of paper looked familiar. They were precisely such sheets as the carbon duplicates of the president’s letters were made upon.

The lawyer handed the sheets to Esther, asking her to look them over. She took them deliberately, gave one quick glance at the first, then held her eyes steadily upon her own cuff while she turned the sheets over slowly, one by one, as though she were reading them.

There was no need for her to read them. She knew what they contained — the copy of that letter which she had written at Nelson Salt’s dictation, full of the terms of the company’s business and of the stock market, especially explaining the importance to the company of the Coal Creek Mine. Statements out of this letter were embodied in those telegrams from Wall Street which had been put in evidence, and in that bill filed in the United States Court. This letter was the link connecting Salt with the trick.

Salt and Bishop waited, tensely, like men prepared to receive and parry a deadly blow. A little fumbling here might be fatal. Nevertheless in Salt’s mind at that crucial instant there was an odd suspense, an odd questioning. Had this girl sold him out, betrayed him, stolen the copy of his letter and gone over to the enemy? It certainly looked that way. Yet he had a stubborn, inexplicable sort of faith in her.

“ Read it over, Miss Ross,” the lawyer was say- _ing, ‘and tell the court whether that is the copy of a letter which you wrote at the dictation of the defendant, Mr. Salt ?”

For the first time Esther looked up. Her eyes went at once to Salt’s face as though she had known all the time where he was, and there poured from them a look the memory of which would always remain with him, — gentle, joyous, loyal.

“‘ No, sir,” she replied firmly; “it is not.”

The prosecutor started, galvanized by astonishment from his theatrical pose. “Do y’ mean y’ did n’t write that letter?” he demanded in a breath, menacingly.

But Bishop was prompt with his objection. The witness had answered. She had not written such a letter for Mr. Salt. That settled it. The lawyers argued, quarreled. Then the court sustained Bishop. Witness had said that she did not write the letter for Mr. Salt. That settled it. However, the prosecutor might repeat his question. He did repeat it. Did she write that letter for Mr. Salt?