IN the noon hour of the following day was enacted the brief final scene in the drama of the "Rubber Consols corner."For long weeks, Mr. Stormont Thorpe had given much thought to this approaching climax of his great adventure--looking forward to it both as the crowning event of his life, and as the dawn of a new existence in some novel, enchanted world. It was to bring his triumph, and even more, his release. It was at once to crown him as a hero and chieftain among City men, and transfigure him into a being for whom all City things were an abomination.
In his waking hours, the conflict between these aims did not specially force itself upon his attention: he mused upon, and spun fancies about, either one indifferently, and they seemed not at all irreconcilable. But his dreams were full of warfare,--wearily saturated with strife, and endless endeavour to do things which could not be done, and panic-stricken terrors before the shadow of shapeless calamities,--until he dreaded to go to sleep. Then he discovered that an extra two glasses of whiskey-and-water would solve that particular difficulty, and send him into prompt, leaden slumber--but the early mornings remained as torturing as ever. In the twilight he awoke oppressed and sick at heart with gloom--and then dozed at intervals through fantastic new ordeals of anguish and shame and fear, till it was decently possible to get up.
Then, indeed, the big cold sponge on his head and spine scattered these foolish troubles like chaff, and restored to him his citizenship among the realities. He dressed with returning equanimity, and was almost cheerful by the time he thrust his razor into the hot water.
Yet increasingly he was conscious of the wear and strain of it all, and increasingly the date, September twelfth, loomed before him with a portentous individuality of its own.
This day grew to mean so much more to him than had all the other days of the dead years together that he woke in the darkness of its opening hours, and did not get satisfactorily to sleep again. His vigil, however, was for the once free from grief. He drowsily awaited the morning in vague mental comfort; he had recurring haphazard indolent glimpses of a protecting fact standing guard just outside the portals of consciousness--the fact that the great day was here. He rose early, breakfasted well, and walked by the Embankment to the City, where at ten he had a few words with Semple, and afterward caused himself to be denied to ordinary callers.
He paced up and down the Board Room for the better part of the ensuing two hours, luxuriating in the general sense of satisfaction in the proximity of the climax, rather than pretending to himself that he was thinking out its details.
He had provided in his plans of the day for a visit from Messrs. Rostocker and Aronson, which should constitute the dramatic finale of the "corner," and he looked forward to this meeting with a certain eagerness of expectation.
Yet even here he thought broadly of the scene as a whole, and asked himself no questions about words and phrases.
It seemed to be taken for granted in his mind that the scene itself would be theatrically impressive, even spectacular.
In the event, this long-awaited culmination proved to be disappointingly flat and commonplace. It was over before Thorpe had said any considerable proportion of the things he saw afterward that he had intended to say.
The two men came as he had expected they would--and they bought their way out of the tragic "corner"at precisely the price he had nominated in his mind.
But hardly anything else went as he had dimly prefigured it.
Mr. Rostocker was a yellow-haired man, and Mr. Aronson was as dark as a Moor, and no physical resemblance of features or form suggested itself to the comparing eye, yet Thorpe even now, when they stood brusquely silent before him, with their carefully-brushed hats pulled down over their eyes, stuck to it in his own mind that it was hard to tell them apart. To the end, there was something impersonal in his feeling toward them.
They, for their part, coldly abstained from exhibiting a sign of feeling about him, good, bad, or indifferent.
It was the man with the fair hair and little curly flaxen beard who spoke: "How do you do! I understand that we can buy eight thousand five hundred Rubber Consols from you at 'twenty-three.'""No--twenty-five," replied Thorpe.
The dark man spoke: "The jobbers' price is twenty-three.""To carry over--yes," Thorpe answered. "But to buy it is twenty-five."The two sons of the race which invented mental arithmetic exchanged an alert glance, and looked at the floor for an engrossed instant.
"I don't mind telling you," Thorpe interposed upon their silence, "I put on that extra two pounds because you got up that story about applying to the Stock Exchange Committee on a charge of fraud.""We didn't get up any story," said Rostocker, curtly.
"You tried to plant it on us," Aronson declared.
"One of your own Directors put it about. I thought it was a fake at the time."This view of the episode took Thorpe by surprise.
As it seemed, in passing, to involve a compliment to his own strategic powers, he accepted it without comment.
"Well--it is twenty-five, anyway," he told them, with firmness.
"Twenty-four," suggested Aronson, after another momentary pause.
"Not a shilling less than twenty-five," Thorpe insisted, with quiet doggedness.
"We can always pay our creditors and let you whistle,"Rostocker reminded him, laconically.
"You can do anything you like," was the reply, "except buy Rubber Consols under twenty-five. It doesn't matter a fig to me whether you go bankrupt or not. It would suit me as well to have you two 'hammered' as to take your money."Upon the spur of a sudden thought he drew out his watch.
"In just two minutes' time to a tick, the price will be thirty.""Let's be 'hammered' then!" said Aronson to his companion, with simulated impulsiveness.
