第76章

"It is now universally conceded that an Unknown Bull has invaded the Chicago wheat market since the beginning of the month, and is now dominating the entire situation.The Bears profess to have no fear of this mysterious enemy, but it is a matter of fact that a multitude of shorts were driven ignominiously to cover on Tuesday last, when the Great Bull gathered in a long line of two million bushels in a single half hour.Scalping and eighth-chasing are almost entirely at an end, the smaller traders dreading to be caught on the horns of the Unknown.The new operator's identity has been carefully concealed, but whoever he is, he is a wonderful trader and is possessed of consummate nerve.It has been rumoured that he hails from New York, and is but one of a large clique who are inaugurating a Bull campaign.But our New York advices are emphatic in denying this report, and we can safely state that the Unknown Bull is a native, and a present inhabitant of the Windy City."Page looked up at Landry quickly, and he returned her glance without speaking.There was a moment's silence.

"I guess," Landry hazarded, lowering his voice, "Iguess we're both thinking of the same thing.""But I know he told my sister that he was going to stop all that kind of thing.What do you think?""I hadn't ought to think anything."

"Say 'shouldn't think,' Landry."

"Shouldn't think, then, anything about it.My business is to execute Mr.Gretry's orders.""Well, I know this," said Page, "that Mr.Jadwin is down town all day again.You know he stayed away for a while.""Oh, that may be his real estate business that keeps him down town so much," replied Landry.

"Laura is terribly distressed," Page went on."I can see that.They used to spend all their evenings together in the library, and Laura would read aloud to him.But now he comes home so tired that sometimes he goes to bed at nine o'clock, and Laura sits there alone reading till eleven and twelve.But she's afraid, too, of the effect upon him.He's getting so absorbed.He don't care for literature now as he did once, or was beginning to when Laura used to read to him; and he never thinks of his Sunday-school.And then, too, if you're to believe Mr.Cressler, there's a chance that he may lose if he is speculating again."But Landry stoutly protested:

"Well, don't think for one moment that Mr.Curtis Jadwin is going to let any one get the better of him.

There's no man--no, nor gang of men--could down him.

He's head and shoulders above the biggest of them down there.I tell you he's Napoleonic.Yes, sir, that's what he is, Napoleonic, to say the least.Page," he declared, solemnly, "he's the greatest man I've ever known."Very soon after this it was no longer a secret to Laura Jadwin that her husband had gone back to the wheat market, and that, too, with such impetuosity, such eagerness, that his rush had carried him to the very heart's heart of the turmoil.

He was now deeply involved; his influence began to be felt.Not an important move on the part of the "Unknown Bull," the nameless mysterious stranger that was not duly noted and discussed by the entire world of La Salle Street.

Almost his very first move, carefully guarded, executed with profoundest secrecy, had been to replace the five million bushels sold to Liverpool by five million more of the May option.This was in January, and all through February and all through the first days of March, while the cry for American wheat rose, insistent and vehement, from fifty cities and centres of eastern Europe; while the jam of men in the Wheat Pit grew ever more frantic, ever more furious, and while the impassive hand on the great dial over the floor of the Board rose, resistless, till it stood at eighty-seven, he bought steadily, gathering in the wheat, calling for it, welcoming it, receiving full in the face and with opened arms the cataract that poured in upon the Pit from Iowa and Nebraska, Minnesota and Dakota, from the dwindling bins of Illinois and the fast-emptying elevators of Kansas and Missouri.

Then, squarely in the midst of the commotion, at a time when Curtis Jadwin owned some ten million bushels of May wheat, fell the Government report on the visible supply.

"Well," said Jadwin, "what do you think of it?"He and Gretry were in the broker's private room in the offices of Gretry, Converse & Co.They were studying the report of the Government as to the supply of wheat, which had just been published in the editions of the evening papers.It was very late in the afternoon of a lugubrious March day.Long since the gas and electricity had been lighted in the office, while in the streets the lamps at the corners were reflected downward in long shafts of light upon the drenched pavements.From the windows of the room one could see directly up La Salle Street.The cable cars, as they made the turn into or out of the street at the corner of Monroe, threw momentary glares of red and green lights across the mists of rain, and filled the air continually with the jangle of their bells.Further on one caught a glimpse of the Court House rising from the pavement like a rain-washed cliff of black basalt, picked out with winking lights, and beyond that, at the extreme end of the vista, the girders and cables of the La Salle Street bridge.