第77章

The sidewalks on either hand were encumbered with the "six o'clock crowd" that poured out incessantly from the street entrances of the office buildings.It was a crowd almost entirely of men, and they moved only in one direction, buttoned to the chin in rain coats, their umbrellas bobbing, their feet scuffling through the little pools of wet in the depressions of the sidewalk.They streamed from out the brokers' offices and commission houses on either side of La Salle Street, continually, unendingly, moving with the dragging sluggishness of the fatigue of a hard day's work.Under that grey sky and blurring veil of rain they lost their individualities, they became conglomerate--a mass, slow-moving, black.All day long the torrent had seethed and thundered through the street--the torrent that swirled out and back from that vast Pit of roaring within the Board of Trade.Now the Pit was stilled, the sluice gates of the torrent locked, and from out the thousands of offices, from out the Board of Trade itself, flowed the black and sluggish lees, the lifeless dregs that filtered back to their level for a few hours, stagnation, till in the morning, the whirlpool revolving once more, should again suck them back into its vortex.

The rain fell uninterruptedly.There was no wind.The cable cars jolted and jostled over the tracks with a strident whir of vibrating window glass.In the street, immediately in front of the entrance to the Board of Trade, a group of pigeons, garnet-eyed, trim, with coral-coloured feet and iridescent breasts, strutted and fluttered, pecking at the handfuls of wheat that a porter threw them from the windows of the floor of the Board.

"Well," repeated Jadwin, shifting with a movement of his lips his unlit cigar to the other corner of his mouth, "well, what do you think of it?"The broker, intent upon the figures and statistics, replied only by an indefinite movement of the head.

"Why, Sam," observed Jadwin, looking up from the paper, "there's less than a hundred million bushels in the farmers' hands....That's awfully small.Sam, that's awfully small.""It _ain't,_ as you might say, colossal," admitted Gretry.

There was a long silence while the two men studied the report still further.Gretry took a pamphlet of statistics from a pigeon-hole of his desk, and compared certain figures with those mentioned in the report.

Outside the rain swept against the windows with the subdued rustle of silk.A newsboy raised a Gregorian chant as he went down the street.

"By George, Sam," Jadwin said again, "do you know that a whole pile of that wheat has got to go to Europe before July? How have the shipments been?""About five millions a week."

"Why, think of that, twenty millions a month, and it's--let's see, April, May, June, July--four months before a new crop.Eighty million bushels will go out of the country in the next four months--eighty million out of less than a hundred millions.""Looks that way," answered Gretry.

"Here," said Jadwin, "let's get some figures.Let's get a squint on the whole situation.Got a 'Price Current' here? Let's find out what the stocks are in Chicago.I don't believe the elevators are exactly bursting, and, say," he called after the broker, who had started for the front office, "say, find out about the primary receipts, and the Paris and Liverpool stocks.Bet you what you like that Paris and Liverpool together couldn't show ten million to save their necks."In a few moments Gretry was back again, his hands full of pamphlets and "trade" journals.

By now the offices were quite deserted.The last clerk had gone home.Without, the neighbourhood was emptying rapidly.Only a few stragglers hurried over the glistening sidewalks; only a few lights yet remained in the facades of the tall, grey office buildings.And in the widening silence the cooing of the pigeons on the ledges and window-sills of the Board of Trade Building made itself heard with increasing distinctness.

Before Gretry's desk the two men leaned over the litter of papers.The broker's pencil was in his hand and from time to time he figured rapidly on a sheet of note paper.

"And," observed Jadwin after a while, "and you see how the millers up here in the Northwest have been grinding up all the grain in sight.Do you see that?""Yes," said Gretry, then he added, "navigation will be open in another month up there in the straits.""That's so, too," exclaimed Jadwin, "and what wheat there is here will be moving out.I'd forgotten that point.Ain't you glad you aren't short of wheat these days?""There's plenty of fellows that are, though," returned Gretry."I've got a lot of short wheat on my books--a lot of it."All at once as Gretry spoke Jadwin started, and looked at him with a curious glance.

"You have, hey?" he said."There are a lot of fellows who have sold short?""Oh, yes, some of Crookes' followers--yes, quite a lot of them."Jadwin was silent a moment, tugging at his mustache.

Then suddenly he leaned forward, his finger almost in Gretry's face.

"Why, look here," he cried."Don't you see? Don't you see""See what?" demanded the broker, puzzled at the other's vehemence.

Jadwin loosened his collar with a forefinger.

"Great Scott! I'll choke in a minute.See what? Why, Iown ten million bushels of this wheat already, and Europe will take eighty million out of the country.

Why, there ain't going to be any wheat left in Chicago by May! If I get in now and buy a long line of cash wheat, where are all these fellows who've sold short going to get it to deliver to me? Say, where are they going to get it? Come on now, tell me, where are they going to get it?"Gretry laid down his pencil and stared at Jadwin, looked long at the papers on his desk, consulted his pencilled memoranda, then thrust his hands deep into his pockets, with a long breath.Bewildered, and as if stupefied, he gazed again into Jadwin's face.

"My God!" he murmured at last.

"Well, where are they going to get it?" Jadwin cried once more, his face suddenly scarlet.