was a matter for police investigation.”
The Commissioner stopped in his walk and looked at the detective.
“There’s little romance in finance,” he mused, “but there is something behind all this; do you remember the break of January 4th?”
Elk nodded; he saw there was a police side to this slump, and grew alert and knowledgeable.
“Yankees and gilt-edged American stock came tumbling down as though their financial foundations had been dug away. What was the cause?”
Elk thought.
“Wasn’t it the suicide of the President of the 11th National Bank?” he asked.
“Happened after the crash,” said T.B. promptly. “Do you remember the extraordinary slump in Russian Fours in April — a slump which, like the drop in Yankees, affected every market? What was the cause?”
“The attempt on the Czar.”
“Again you’re wrong,” said the other; “the slump anticipated the attempt, it did not follow it. Then we have the business of the 9th of August.”
“The Kaffir slump?”
“Yes.”
“But, surely, the reason for that may be traced,” said Elk; “it followed the decision of the Cabinet to abolish coloured labour on the mines.”
“It anticipated it,” corrected his chief, with a twinkle in his eye, “and do you remember no other occurrence that filled the public mind about that time?”
Elk thought with knit brows.
“There was the airship disaster at the Palace. Hike Mills was put away just about then for blackmail; there was the Vermont case — and the Sud Express wreck—”
“That’s it,” said the Commissioner, “wrecked outside Valladolid, three killed, many injured — do you remember who was killed?”
“Yes,” said Elk slowly, “a Frenchman whose name I’ve forgotten, Mr. Arthur Saintsbury, a King’s Messenger — by George!”
The connection dawned upon him, and T.B. grinned.
“Killed whilst carrying dispatches to the King of Portugal,” he said.
“Those dispatches related to the proposed withdrawal of native labour — much of which is recruited in Portuguese West Africa”; he paused a moment, and added as an afterthought, “his dispatch-box was never found.”
There was silence.
“You suggest?” said Elk suddenly.
“I suggest there is an intelligent anticipator in existence who is much too intelligent to be at large.” The Commissioner walked to the door.
He stood for a moment irresolutely.
“I offer you two suggestions,” he said; “the first is that the method which our unknown operator is employing is not unlike the method of Mr. George Baggin who departed this life some four years ago. The second is, that if by any chance I am correct in my first surmise, we lay this ghost for good and all!”
VI. At Bronte’s Bank
It was two days later, when Consols touched 80, that T.B. Smith gathered in Elk and marched him into the City.
The agitated Committeeman of the Stock Exchange met them in his office and led them to his private room.
“I must tell you the whole story,” he said, after he had carefully shut and locked the door. “Last Wednesday, the market still rising and a genuine boom in sight, Mogseys — they’re the biggest firm of brokers in the city — got a wire from their Paris agents, which was to this effect: ‘Sell Consols down to 80.’ They were standing then at 90, and were on the up grade. Immediately following the wire, and before it could be confirmed, came another instruction in which they were told to sell some gilt-edged stocks — this was on a rising market, too — down to prices specified. I have seen the list, and taking the prices as they stood on Wednesday morning and the price they stand at today, the difference is enormous — something like three millions.”
“Which means?”
“Which means that the unknown bears have pocketed that amount. Well, Mogseys were paralyzed at the magnitude of the order, and cabled away to their agent asking for particulars, and were equally dumbfounded to learn that they were acting on behalf of the Credit Bourbonaise, one of the biggest banks in the South of France. There was nothing else to do but to carry out the order, and on Thursday morning they had hammered stocks down ten points — stocks that have never fluctuated five points each way in mortal memory!”
The Committeeman, speaking in tones of reverence of these imperturbable securities, mopped his forehead with a tumultuous bandana.
“Now,” he resumed, “we know all the bears throughout all the world. The biggest of ’em is dead. That was George T. Baggin, one of the most daring and unscrupulous operators we have ever had in London. We know every man or woman or corporation likely to jump on to the market with both feet and set it snagging — but there isn’t a single known bear who has a hand in this.
We’ve tried to discover his identity, but we’ve always come up against a blank wall — the bank. The bank can’t give away its client, and even if it did, I doubt very much whether we should be any the wiser, for he’s pretty sure to have hidden himself too deep. “We’d probably find the bank was instructed by a broker, and the broker by another bank, and we’d be as far off a solution as ever.”
“Is there any cause for the present break!”
“I’m coming to that. In all previous slumps there has been a very good excuse for a panic hanging round. In the present instance no such excuse exists. There is a good feeling abroad, money is free and the Bank Eate is low, and the recent spurt in Kaffirs and Yankee rails has put a good heart into the market — why, even Bronte’s have dealt!”
He mentioned the name of the great bank, which in the City of London, ranks only second to the Bank of England.
“I don’t know exactly the details of their dealing, but it is pretty generally known in the City that they have increased their commitments, and when a conservative house like Bronte’s take advantage of a spell of prosperity, you may be sure that peace is in the very air we breathe.”
T.B. Smith was thoughtfully rolling a glass paperweight up and down a blottingpad, and Elk was regarding the ceiling with an air of pained resignation.
Neither of the two spoke when the Committeeman finished his recital, or when he looked from one to the other, secretly disappointed that two men of whom he expected so much should be so little perturbed, indeed, so little interested, by his story. He waited a little longer for them to offer some remark, and, finding that neither had any comment to make, he asked a little impatiently —
“Well!”
