第81章

"Hello!" said a small, dry transformation of Gretry's voice."Hello, is that you, J.? Well, in the matter of that cash wheat in Duluth, I've bought that for you.""All right," answered Jadwin, then he added, "I guess we had better have a long talk now.""I was going to propose that," answered the broker.

"Meet me this evening at seven at the Grand Pacific.

It's just as well that we're not seen together nowadays.Don't ask for me.Go right into the smoking-room.I'll be there.And, by the way, I shall expect a reply from Minneapolis about half-past five this afternoon.I would like to be able to get at you at once when that comes in.Can you wait down for that?""Well, I _was_ going home," objected Jadwin."I wasn't home to dinner last night, and Mrs.Jadwin----""This is pretty important, you know," warned the broker."And if I call you up on your residence telephone, there's always the chance of somebody cutting in and overhearing us.""Oh, very well, then," assented Jadwin."I'll call it a day.I'll get home for luncheon to-morrow.It can't be helped.By the way, I met Cressler this afternoon, Sam, and he seemed sort of suspicious of things, to me--as though he had an inkling"

"Better hang up," came back the broker's voice.

"Better hang up, J.There's big risk telephoning like this.I'll see you to-night.Good-by."And so it was that about half an hour later Laura was called to the telephone in the library.

"Oh, not coming home at all to-night?" she cried blankly in response to Jadwin's message.

"It's just impossible, old girl," he answered.

"But why?" she insisted.

"Oh, business; this building and loan association of mine.""Oh, I know it can't be that.Why don't you let Mr.

Gretry manage your----"

But at this point Jadwin, the warning of Gretry still fresh in his mind, interrupted quickly:

"I must hang up now, Laura.Good-by.I'll see you to-morrow noon and explain it all to you.Good-by....

Laura....Hello!...Are you there yet?...Hello, hello!"But Jadwin had heard in the receiver the rattle and click as of a tiny door closing.The receiver was silent and dead; and he knew that his wife, disappointed and angry, had "hung up" without saying good-by.

The days passed.Soon another week had gone by.The wheat market steadied down after the dollar mark was reached, and for a few days a calmer period intervened.

Down beneath the surface, below the ebb and flow of the currents, the great forces were silently at work reshaping the "situation." Millions of dollars were beginning to be set in motion to govern the millions of bushels of wheat.At the end of the third week of the month Freye reported to Crookes that Cressler was "in,"and promptly negotiations were opened between the clique and the great banking house of the Stires.But meanwhile Jadwin and Gretry, foreseeing no opposition, realising the incalculable advantage that their knowledge of the possibility of a "corner" gave them, were, quietly enough, gathering in the grain.As early as the end of March Jadwin, as incidental to his contemplated corner of May wheat, had bought up a full half of the small supply of cash wheat in Duluth, Chicago, Liverpool and Paris--some twenty million bushels; and against this had sold short an equal amount of the July option.Having the actual wheat in hand he could not lose.If wheat went up, his twenty million bushels were all the more valuable; if it went down, he covered his short sales at a profit.And all the while, steadily, persistently, he bought May wheat, till Gretry's book showed him to be possessed of over twenty million bushels of the grain deliverable for that month.

But all this took not only his every minute of time, but his every thought, his every consideration.He who had only so short a while before considered the amount of five million bushels burdensome, demanding careful attention, was now called upon to watch, govern, and control the tremendous forces latent in a line of forty million.At times he remembered the Curtis Jadwin of the spring before his marriage, the Curtis Jadwin who had sold a pitiful million on the strength of the news of the French import duty, and had considered the deal "big." Well, he was a different man since that time.

Then he had been suspicious of speculation, had feared it even.Now he had discovered that there were in him powers, capabilities, and a breadth of grasp hitherto unsuspected.He could control the Chicago wheat market, and the man who could do that might well call himself "great," without presumption.He knew that he overtopped them all--Gretry, the Crookes gang, the arrogant, sneering Bears, all the men of the world of the Board of Trade.He was stronger, bigger, shrewder than them all.A few days now would show, when they would all wake to the fact that wheat, which they had promised to deliver before they had it in hand, was not to be got except from him--and at whatever price he chose to impose.He could exact from them a hundred dollars a bushel if he chose, and they must pay him the price or become bankrupts.

By now his mind was upon this one great fact--May Wheat--continually.It was with him the instant he woke in the morning.It kept him company during his hasty breakfast; in the rhythm of his horses' hoofs, as the team carried him down town he heard, "Wheat--wheat--wheat, wheat--wheat--wheat." No sooner did he enter La Salle Street, than the roar of traffic came to his ears as the roar of the torrent of wheat which drove through Chicago from the Western farms to the mills and bakeshops of Europe.There at the foot of the street the torrent swirled once upon itself, forty million strong, in the eddy which he told himself he mastered.