A quick examination of a dozen of the gems picked at random, and an even quicker eye-estimate of the quantity, put wonder and excitement into Charley Tippery’s face.
“They’re worth millions! millions!” he exclaimed. “What are you going to do with them?”
“Negotiate them, so as to help Francis out,” Henry answered. “They’re security for any amount, aren’t they?”
“Close up the suit-case,” Charley Tippery cried, “while I telephone!—I want to catch my father before he leaves the house,” he explained over his shoulder, while waiting for his switch. “It’s only five minutes’ run from here.”
Just as he concluded the brief words with his father, Parker, followed by a police lieutenant and two policemen, entered.
“There’s the gang, lieutenant—arrest them,” Parker said.—“Oh, sir, I beg your pardon, Mr. Tippery. Not you, of course.—Only the other two, lieutenant. I don’t know what the charge will be—crazy, anyway, if not worse, which is more likely.”
“How do you do, Mr. Tippery,” the lieutenant greeted familiarly.
“You’ll arrest nobody, Lieutenant Burns,” Charley Tippery smiled to him. “You can send the wagon back to the station. I’ll square it with the Inspector. For you’re coming along with me, and this suit-case, and these suspicious characters, to my house. You’ll have to be bodyguard—oh, not for me, but for this suit-case. There are millions in it, cold millions, hard millions, beautiful millions. When I open it before my father, you’ll see a sight given to few men in this world to see.—And now, come on everybody. We’re wasting time.”
He made a grab at the suit-case simultaneously with Henry, and, as both their hands clutched it, Lieutenant Burns sprang to interfere.
“I fancy I’ll carry it until it’s negotiated,” Henry asserted.
“Surely, surely,” Charley Tippery conceded, “as long as we don’t lose any more precious time. It will take time to do the negotiating. Come on! Hustle!”
CHAPTER XXIX
Helped tremendously by the moratorium, the sagging market had ceased sagging, and some stocks were even beginning to recover. This was true for practically every line save those lines in which Francis owned and which Regan was bearing. He continued bearing and making them reluctantly fall, and he noted with joy the huge blocks of Tampico Petroleum which were being dumped obviously by no other person than Francis.
“Now’s the time,” Regan informed his bear conspirators. “Play her coming and going. It’s a double ruff. Remember the list I gave you. Sell these, and sell short. For them there is no bottom. As for all the rest, buy and buy now, and deliver all that you sold. You can’t lose, you see, and by continuing to hammer the list you’ll make a double killing.”
“How about yourself?” one of his bear crowd queried.
“I’ve nothing to buy,” came the answer. “That will show you how square I have been in my tip, and how confident I am. I haven’t sold a share outside the list, so I have nothing to deliver. I am still selling short and hammering down the list, and the list only. There’s my killing, and you can share in it by as much as you continue to sell short.”
“There you are!” Bascom, in despair in his private office, cried to Francis at ten-thirty. “Here’s the whole market rising, except your lines. Regan’s out for blood. I never dreamed he could show such strength. We can’t stand this. We’re finished. We’re smashed now——you, me, all of us——everything.”
Never had Francis been cooler. Since all was lost, why worry?—was his attitude; and, a mere layman in the game, he caught a glimpse of possibilities that were veiled to Bascom who too thoroughly knew too much about the game.
“Take it easy,” Francis counseled, his new vision assuming form and substance with each tick of a second. “Let’s have a smoke and talk it over for a few minutes.”
Bascom made a gesture of infinite impatience.
“But wait,” Francis urged. “Stop! Look! Listen! I’m finished, you say?”
His broker nodded.
“You’re finished?”
Again the nod.
“Which means that we’re busted, flat busted,” Francis went on to the exposition of his new idea. “Now it is perfectly clear, then, to your mind and mine, that a man can never be worse than a complete, perfect, hundred-percent., entire, total bust.”
“We’re wasting valuable time,” Bascom protested as he nodded affirmation.
“Not if we’re busted as completely as you’ve agreed we are,” smiled Francis. “Being thoroughly busted, time, sales, purchases, nothing can be of any value to us. Values have ceased, don’t you see.”
“Go on, what is it?” Bascom said, with the momentarily assumed patience of abject despair. “I’m busted higher than a kite now, and, as you say, they can’t bust me any higher.”
“Now you get the idea!” Francis jubilated. “You’re a member of the Exchange. Then go ahead, sell or buy, do anything your and my merry hearts decide. We can’t lose. Anything from zero always leaves zero. We’ve shot all we’ve got, and more. Let’s shoot what we haven’t got.”
Bascom still struggled feebly to protest, but Francis beat him down with a final:
“Remember, anything from zero leaves zero.”
And for the next hour, as in a nightmare, no longer a free agent, Bascom yielded to Francis’ will in the maddest stock adventure of his life.
“Oh, well,” Francis laughed at half-past eleven, “we might as well quit now. But remember, we’re no worse off than we were an hour ago. We were zero then. We’re zero now. You can hang up the auctioneer’s flag any time now.”
Bascom, heavily and wearily taking down the receiver, was about to transmit the orders that would stop the battle by acknowledgment of unconditional defeat, when the door opened and through it came the familiar ring of a pirate stave that made Francis flash his hand out in peremptory stoppage of his broker’s arm.
“Stop!” Francis cried. “Listen!”
And they listened to the song preceding the singer:
“Back to back against the mainmast,
Held at bay the entire crew.”
As Henry swaggered in, carrying a huge and different suit-case, Francis joined with him in the stave.
“What’s doing?” Bascom queried of Charley Tippery, who, still in evening dress, looked very jaded and worn from his exertions.
