the “House” was jubilant, the “Street” was no less gratified, for since the “Baggin Failure” and financial cataclysm, which dragged down the little investors to ruin, there had been a sad flatness in the world of shares. There are many places of public resort where the “Street” people meet — those speculators who daily, year in and out, promenade the pavement of Throgmorton Street, buying and selling on an “eighth” margin. To them, from time to time, come the bareheaded clerks with news of this or that rise or fall, to receive instructions gravely imparted, and as gravely accepted, and to retire to the mysterious deeps of the “House” to execute their commissions.
The market was rising, steadily as the waters of a river rise; that was the most pleasant knowledge of all. It did not jump or leap or flare; it progressed by sixteenths, by thirty-seconds, by sixty-fourths; but all down the money columns in the financial papers of the press were tiny little plus marks which brought joy to the small investor, who is by nature a “bull.”
Many people who are not directly interested In finance regarded the signs with sympathy. The slaves of the street, ‘busmen, cabmen, the sellers of clamorous little financial papers, all these partook in the general cheeriness.
Slowly, slowly climbed the market.
“Like old times!” said a hurrying clerk; but the man he spoke to sniffed contemptuously, being by nature one of that sour class from which all beardom is recruited.
“Like old times!” chuckled a man standing at the Bodega bar, a little dazed with his prosperity. Somebody reminded him of the other booms that had come and undergone sudden collapse, but the man standing at the counter twiddled the stem of the glass in his hand and smiled indulgently.
“Industrials are the feature,” said an evening paper, and indeed the biggest figures behind the tiny plus marks were those against the famous commercial concerns best known in the city. The breweries, the bakeries, the cotton corporations, the textile manufacturing companies enjoying quotation in the share list — all these participated in the upward rush; nay, led the van.
Into Old Broad Street, on one day at the height of the boom, came a man a little above middle height, cleanshaven, his face the brick-tan of one who spends much of his life in the open air. He wore a suit of blue serge, well-cut but plain, a spotless grey Tirai hat, broad-brimmed, white spats over his patent shoes, and a thin cane in his hand. “A fellow in the Kaffir market—” guessed one of the group about the corner of ’Change Alley, but somebody better informed turned hastily when he saw the quick, striding figure approaching, and dived down a side court.
A showily attired young man, standing on the edge of the pavement chewing a quill toothpick thoughtfully, did not see the nqwcomer until he was close on him, then started and changed colour. The man in the wide-brimmed hat recognised him and nodded. He checked his walk and stopped.
“Here’s Moss,” he said. He had a snappy, curt delivery and a disconcerting habit of addressing one in the third person. “How is Moss? Straight now? Straight as a die, I’ll swear. He’s given up rigging, given up Punk Prospectuses for Petty Punters. Oh, Moss! Moss!”
He shook his head with gentle melancholy, though a light twinkled in his humorous grey eyes.
“I don’t know why you’re so ‘ard on me, Mister Smith,” said the embarrassed Moss; “we’ve all got our faults—”
“Not me, Mr. Moss,” said T.B. Smith promptly.
“I dessay even you, sir,” insisted the other.
“I’ve ‘ad my flutter; and I failed. There’s lots of people who’ve done more than I ever done, worse things, and crookeder things, who are livin* in what I might call the odour of sanctity.
“There’s people in the ‘Ouse,” Moss wagged an admonitory finger towards ’Change, and his tone was bitter but envious, “who’ve robbed by the million, an’ what do we see?”
T.B. Smith shook his head.
“We see,” said the indignant young man, “motorcars, an’ yachts, an’ racehorses — because they ‘aven’t been found out!”
“Moral,” mused T.B. Smith: “don’t allow yourself—”
“I know, I know.” Moss loftily waved aside the dubious morality of Mr. Assistant-Commissioner Smith. “But I was found out. Twelve months in the second division. Is that justice?”
“It all depends,” cautiously, “what you mean by justice. I thought the sentence was rather light.”
“Look here, Mr. Smith,” said Mr. Moss firmly; “ — let’s put the matter another way round. Here’s Baggin’s case, an’ Grayson’s case. Now, I ask you, man to man, are these chaps dead?”
T.B. Smith was discreetly silent.
“Are they dead?” again demanded Moss, with emotion. “You know jolly well they ain’t. You know as well as I do who’s at the bottom of these bear raids to send the market into the mud. I know them raids!” In his excitement Mr. Moss got farther and farther away from the language of his adoption. “They smell o’ Baggin, George T. Baggin; he’s operatin’ somewhere. I recognise the touch. George T. Baggin, I tell you, an’, as the good book says, his right hand hath not lost its cunnin’.”
“And,” said T.B. Smith, blandly ignoring the startling hypothesis; “what is Mr. Moss doing now to earn the bread, butter, and et ceteras of life?”
“Me? Oh, I’m in the East mostly,” said the other moodily;—” got a client or two; give a tip an’ get a tip now an’ again. Small money an’ small profits.”
He dropped his eyes under the steady and pseudo-benevolent gaze of the other.
“No companies?” said the detective softly.
“No companies, Mr. Moss? No Amalgamated Peruvian Concessions, eh? No Brazilian Rubber and Exploitation Syndicate?”
The young man shifted his feet uneasily.
“Genuine concerns, them,” he said doggedly; “an’, besides, I’m only a shareholder.”
“Not promoter. Mr. Moss is not a promoter?”
In desperation the badgered shareholder turned.
“How in ‘Eaven’s name you get hold of things I don’t know,” he said in helpless annoyance.
“An’ all I can say — excuse me.”
T.B. Smith saw his expression undergo a sudden change.
“Don’t look round, sir,” said the other breathlessly; “there’s one o’ my clients comin’ along; genuine business, Mr. Smith; don’t crab the deal.”
In his agitation he grew a little incoherent.
T.B. Smith might have walked on discreetly, leaving Moss to transact his business in quiet and peace. Indeed, the young man’s light-blue eyes pleaded for this indulgence; but the gentleman from Scotland Yard was singularly obtuse this morning.
“You don’t want to meet him,” urged Mr. Moss. “He’s not in your line, sir; he’s a gentleman.”
“I think you’re very rude, Mr. Moss,” said T.B. Smith, and waited, whilst Moss and client met.
“Permit me,” said Moss, with all the grace he could summon at a moment’s notice, “to introduce you to a friend of mine — name of Smith — in the Government.”
The stranger bowed and offered a gloved hand.
“Er—” said T.B., hesitant. “I did not quite catch your name?”
“Count Poltavo,” said Mr. Moss defiantly; “a friend of mine an’ a client.”
“Delighted to make your acquaintance, count. I have met you somewhere.”