A Flutter in Finance

by Arthur Somers Roche

 

Again the Gray Ghost Produces
Mystery and Creates Another
New and Interesting Problem.

A Flutter in Finance

BY
ARTHUR SOMERS ROCHE

ACROSS the breakfast table, Mrs. Jonathan Cornwallis looked furtively at her husband. The trim maid—the Cornwallises refused to employ men-servants—had left the room in accordance with her custom. The Cornwallises liked to have the last few moments of the morning meal to themselves.

"I wanted," said Mrs. Cornwallis, timidly, "to talk about Mary."

Her timidity was entirely assumed, as was the furtiveness of her lance. It was a well established fiction between them that Jonathan was gruff and grumpy and must be approached delicately, circuitously.

"Well, now, what is it this time?" demanded the husband. "It seems to me that ever since Mary married her worthless professor I've done nothing but contribute to their support."

"Jonathan Cornwallis, you ought to be ashamed of yourself," his wife rebuked him. "You know that you're prouder of Mary for having married Tom Curtiss than if she'd married the President. The most distinguished explorer in America!"

"And what does the distinguished gentleman's wife want now?" demanded Jonathan.

"Well, the university can't send out the expedition to the south this year. Mary thought——"

"Oh, she thought, did she?" Jonathan's sarcasm was unconvincing.

"And I think," went on his wife, ignoring the interruption, "that it would be a very fine thing if you presented the university with half a million in order that the expedition should not be delayed."

"Humph! Haw!" grunted Jonathan. "It's a lot of money."

"Can't you spare it?" asked his wife.

"Permit me, madam, to finish my sentences. As I was about to say, it's a lot of money, but not enough. By tomorrow morning I expect that a certain matter, the details of which would bore you, will be settled. The first thing that I shall do will be to write a check, payable to the university, for one million dollars."

His wife rose, went around the table and kissed him. "Make it two million if you'll kiss me again like that," he said.

"You get sillier every minute," declared Mrs. Cornwallis.

"You get prettier," he countered gracefully.

"For a silly man you have amazing judgment," she told him.

"I wish you'd be more respectful, Mrs. Cornwallis," he said sternly.

"Good morning, Mr. Cornwallis; it's time you went to your office and I attended to my day's labors," said his wife.

But she accompanied him to the front door, patted him on the shoulder as she helped him into his coat, and gave him, gratis, a million-dollar kiss before he left. So that he was smiling, greatly contented with the world and his place therein, as he entered his waiting limousine.

****

TODAY, although his wife did not know it—it was a surprise which he held in reserve for her—he expected to retire from the active management of his business affairs. For months he had been negotiating for the sale of his interest in the Federated Motor Patents Company. A combination of that concern with several other similar companies was almost effected. Once the final papers were signed, he would retire. it was a matter that involved payment to him of some fifteen million dollars in bonds of the new holding company and it had taken months to get affairs in shape. Now they were in order. He planned to take his wife aboard a certain huge yacht, and set sail for the South Seas. Dreams, that devotion to business had made it impossible to realize, were coming true at last.

So he smiled, his eyes half closed; and so he was unaware of the sudden threat toward his life that the carelessness of two chauffeurs created.

Seeing an opening between a taxicab and a truck in front of him, Cornwallis' chauffeur made for it. He blew his horn thrice as he did so, but instead of turning in toward the curb the driver of the truck turned outward, to the left. And the driver of the taxicab, glancing back over his shoulder, seemed to lose his head completely. He applied the brakes to his car, and it came almost to a stop. Not even the quick braking by Cornwallis' chauffeur could prevent the limousine from being jammed between the two other machines.

Even so, the slow rate of speed at which the three vehicles were moving seemed to have precluded the possibility of accident. The policeman at the next street intersection was amazed when Cornwallis' chauffeur, who had leaped from his seat and opened the door of the car. and leaned inside, emerged and wildly waved his hands.

The policeman ran to assist. He waved the taxi and truck to the curb, and. noting that, beyond a crushed fender and some scraped paint, the limousine had suffered no damage, he looked inside the body of Cornwallis' car.

"Shock, I guess," said the chauffeur.

The officer looked at the financier, whose form had slumped to the floor of the car, and whose face was white. He saw that the eyes were closed.

"Better rush him him," he advised.

He returned to the chauffeur, but that person was in the middle of the street, holding both hands high in the air, stopping an approaching ambulance. A white-jacketed man swung down from the interior and ran to the limousine. He laid a finger on the wrist of the unconscious financier; his face grew grave; he leaned farther inside, loosened Cornwallis' collar, and placed his ear over the victim's heart. "Lucky I came along when I did," he said. He spoke to the chauffeur. "Help me carry him into the ambulance. I'll rush him to the hospital."

"Serious?" asked the policeman.

The ambulance physician shrugged. "He's an elderly man, and you never can tell what shock will do."

The officer produced a notebook. "Who is he?"

"Jonathan Cornwallis," replied the chauffeur.

The policeman whistled. "Well, it wasn't anybody's fault, really, but I think I'll have to arrest all three of you chauffeurs."

The ambulance was driven away, bearing the still unconscious financier, and the early afternoon newspapers proclaimed to an interested public that Jonathan Cornwallis lay in the private hospital of Dr. Morgan Leclerc, and that his condition was serious.

****

THE stock market responds instantly to certain news. The exchange closed in the middle of a furious bear drive upon Federated Motor Patents stock. When the closing hour came to the rescue of the bulls, who, in view of the prospective amalgamation had been active with the stock, they had suffered a loss of five points. In a thirty-million-dollar corporation this amounted to a million and a half. For all the world knew that, in the event of Cornwallis' death, the proposed amalgamation would be indefinitely postponed, and his stock would not be worth nearly so much as its recent quotations.

Not merely as a financier, but as a philanthropist, Cornwallis was of interest to the public. it read every bulletin issued by Dr. Leclerc and Dr. Madison, the private physician of the millionaire, who agreed with Leclerc that it would be fatal for Cornwallis to be moved from the hospital, and who even refused admittance to the sick chamber to Mrs. Cornwallis and her daughters.

Next morning Cornwallis' associates in the amalgamation rallied to the defense of their stock, but shortly before closing hour a drive of sales depressed the price badly. it closed two points worse than the day before. On the next day the stock rallied in the early hours, but after luncheon it reached a new low level.

During all this time Drs. Madison and Leclerc issued bulletins, and the world learned that Jonathan Cornwallis seemed to be losing steadily in his battle for life. He had not recovered consciousness. His wife had finally been admitted into the sick room, but was permitted to remain only a moment; her own condition was near to collapse.

On Saturday, at closing time. Federated Motors had dropped twenty-five points, representing a loss of over seven million dollars. Those men interested in keeping up the price visited the physicians in charge of the unconscious financier and pleaded with them to issue more favorable bulletins, or to cease issuing any reports whatsoever concerning the condition of Cornwallis. The doctors indignantly refused, justly replying that Jonathan Cornwallis was a national figure, and that the right of the public to receive information concerning him was superior to the rights of a clique of stock traders. Even the representation made to them by Cornwallis' attorneys—that they were costing their patient millions—failed to move them.

****

"THE most ethical bunch of throat-cutters I ever ran into," declared ex-Senator Devine of Devine, Bellows, Devine & Devine, attorneys for Cornwallis.

He was speaking to his nephew, the junior member of the firm, Anthony Devine. They were dining at their club.

The young man grinned. "If I weren't a practicing lawyer, and didn't know better. I'd say that there 'ought to be a law.' Certainly doctors ought not to be permitted to ruin their patients."

His uncle smiled wryly. "Not financially, anyway."

He called to an immaculately dressed gentleman, with graying hair, keen eyes, and a thin, sensitive nose.

"Hello, there, Pelham," he cried. "Why not show a friendly spirit?"

Smilingly Jimmy Pelham, the silent partner in the Tryon Detective Agency, approached and dropped into a chair at the table of the two Devines.

"I dislike to seem to offer advice to a distinguished member of the bar, but If I were you I'd gag the loquacious physicians of your client, Jonathan Cornwallis. I hear talk to the effect that their garrulity has cost their patient, and your client, millions already."

"You hear truth," declared the senior Devine. "If the accident to the old gentleman had been foreseen, and his doctors bribed, it couldn't have worked more strongly to his disadvantage."

"Who's behind the bear raid?" Pelham asked.

Devine shrugged. "Simmons & Leidy are the brokers handling practically all of the selling in Federated Motors. Why?"

Pelham's forehead wrinkled. "What sort of firm are they? Seems to me that I've heard rumors about them."

"Well," replied the elder Devine, cautiously, "I respect the libel laws highly. But I will say that If they hadn't had excellent counsel they'd have been suspended last winter."

"Who are their clients in this attack on Federated Motors?" asked Pelham.

Young Devine laughed grimly. "If we could answer that, don't you think we'd have been to see them?"

"Why, we'd have arranged some sort of compromise," ejaculated the elder lawyer.

Young Devine vented some of the anger within him. "You'd think that Simmons & Leidy knew the exact moment when old Cornwallis was going to have his accident. They'd been selling quietly from the moment the exchange opened, and the minute that news of the mishap reached the exchange their floormen began unloading with both hands. It couldn't have been timed prettier."'

Pelham's brow came closer together. "Unless this accident, which prevented the closing of the amalgamation, had occurred, the stock would have gone 'way up, wouldn't it?"

"Bound to," assented Tony Devine.

"No sane trader, then, would have tried to bear the market on Federated Motors?" asked Pelham.

"No sane one," answered the elder Devine, emphatically.

"And it didn't look like & spontaneous movement, this selling? it looked like an organized plan, eh?"

The two lawyers exchanged glances. "What are you driving at?" demanded the older man.

Pelham ignored the question. "Since they were so close to bankruptcy and suspension last winter, have Simmons & Leidy numbered any big operators among their clientele?"

The Devines shook their heads. Tony answered: "They've barely kept above water."

"It wouldn't be possible to find out whom they were acting for?" inquired Pelham.

"We've tried," said the elder Devine, "but there are no leaks in that office."

"Suppose I try?" suggested Pelham.

"What are you driving at?" asked the senior lawyer again.

"I made a suggestion; do you wish to retain me?" fenced Pelham.

"Your're retained," said the former senator.

****

THE more Jimmy Pelham thought about the bear arid on Federated Motors, the more he became convinced that design, not coincidence, had timed the beginning of the selling operation. If Pelham could find out who had learned of the accident at about the moment of its occurrence, he would be near to knowing who was behind the bear raid.

Of course, some stock speculator, passing in his own motor, could have seen the collision between Cornwallis' limousine and the other cars. But, even had he recognized the old man and seen that he was unconscious, he would hardly have assumed that his accident was serious. No sensible man would have risked hundreds of thousands on such a chance. And yet, according to further information given him by the Devines, thousands of shares of Federated Motors had been offered for sale the minute the exchange opened, a good two hours before news of the accident had become public.

The accident had occurred at 9:30. The old man must have been in Dr. Leclerc's hospital by 9:45. Between that time and 10 o'clock, information as to the financier's condition must have reached the client of Simmons & Leidy. Who had given that information?

By Tuesday morning he had definitely learned that only one telephone call had been recorded in the central office as having been made from the hospital between the hours of 9:30 and 10:45. That call had been put in at five minutes of 10 and was to Mrs. Cornwallis. And the Cornwallis telephone had not been used, for an outgoing call, until after 11 o'clock.

Clearly, then, the information as to the injury to the financier had come from neither the hospital nor his home.

Senator Devine, by Tuesday, was close to nervous prostration. For the attacks on Federated Motors seemed to have gathered new vigor over the week end. The stock slumped badly on Monday and sank even lower on Tuesday. At first almost jesting in his retaining of Pelham's services, the lawyer, catching at a straw, was frantic in his appeals to the detective to "do something."

Pelham went to the police station to which Cornwallis' chauffeur and the drivers of the taxicab and truck had been taken on the morning of the accident. Here he learned that, in view of Cornwallis' condition, the three chauffeurs had been held on heavy bail, ten thousand dollars in each case.

Downtown he found out the name of the lawyer who had represented the drivers. And now his pulse began to quicken, for the same lawyer had represented all three men. Pelham called upon him and plumped a question at him.

"Who retained you to act for the chauffeurs involved in the accident to Jonathan Cornwallis?"

The criminal lawyer lost his smile. "That's funny," he said. "I've been puzzled myself. I wonder why the same man was interested in all three. However, he had a fairly plausible reason. Said that he was representing a new insurance company. Said that these three men all had policies protecting them, guaranteeing them lawyers in case of trouble that arose from accidents that occurred in the line of their employment. He paid me a fee, and put up thirty thousand dollars in cash as bail."

"I don't see anything in that to puzzle you. Casualty insurance isn't anything new," Pelham asserted.

The lawyer grinned. "That's what I thought, until, quite by accident, I learned that the Chauffeurs' Interstate Casualty Company has no existence."

Pelham uttered an exclamation of dismay. He left the lawyer's office and raced uptown in a taxi. Inwardly moaning because he had not got to work on this case—if it really proved to be a case—days earlier.

That there had been clues he was certain after an interview with the housekeeper at the home of Mrs. Cornwallis. The financier's wife was unable to receive him, but the elderly maid who attended to the domestic management informed him that Gaffney, Cornwallis' chauffeur, had not been around the premises since the accident. A visit to the rooming house where Gaffney had been living revealed the fact that the chauffeur had not been seen there since the morning of his employer's last ride.

Another visit to the police station gave Pelham the numbers of the taxi cab and truck which had figured in the collision. He telephoned Jerry Tryon and suggested that Jerry put men to work running down the owners of those cars, and also finding, if possible, their chauffeurs. Then he went to the bank where Simmons & Leidy kept their account.

****

BANKERS are very reluctant to divulge information concerning their patrons, but in these days the name of Pelham had a magical effect He told what he wanted, addressing himself to no less a person than the president of the bank.

"Simmons & Leidy? A week ago Saturday they deposited three hundred thousand dollars."

"Was that unusual?" asked Pelham.

"Well, even the amount would be a bit unusual for them; they had been carrying a small balance since their difficulties with the exchange authorities last winter. But a deposit of three hundred thousand dolars in cash is rather unusual at any time."

Pelham pursed his lips. "That is funny," he conceded.

"The rest is funnier still," declared the banker. "As you know, they have been doing all the selling of Federated Motors. They've made a profit of close to ten millions. And most of that amount has been withdrawn."

Pelham leaned eagerly forward. "That's exactly what I want to hear. To whom have their checks been payable?"

"To cash," replied the banker.

"But that's incredible," cried Pelham.

"Nevertheless, it's true. They've deposited, in one afternoon, checks from fifty brokerage houses. On the next day they have come to the bank, one or the other of the partners, accompanied by bodyguards, and have withdrawn as much as a million dollars in cash."

Pelham stared at him. "Why?" he demanded.

The banker smiled. "You're the one to answer that, not I."

Pelham sat up late that night, going over the matter with Jerry Tryon.

"The only thing," said Jerry, toward the end of their talk, "that seems to shed any light on the situation is the mention by Carey, the banker, of the Gray Ghost."

"I don't see where he comes in," objected Pelham.

"That's exactly the point," retorted Tryon. "When you don't see his hand, you can sort of figure that it's there, somewhere."

Pelham chuckled. "Jerry, you're an old woman."

"Maybe so." Jerry was stubborn. "You and I certainly do differ on the Gray Ghost. One day you see him everywhere, and he don't even creep into a corner of my eye. Next day I spot him in something, and you're color-blind, so far as he's concerned."

Pelham laughed again. But long after Jerry had left the apartment Pelham sat staring into the flames in his fireplace. He admitted to himself that he had suspicions that something crooked lay behind the bear raids on Federated Motors. The speculation of the Gray Ghost would be such only in name; in reality it would be an operation conducted with the certainty of an engineer repeating a proved problem.

The Gray Ghost would pick his stock; he would make its fluctuation, its rise or fall, absolutely certain. He would pick a stock of which great things were expected along a certain line and cause opposite things to happen.

But why not be specific in his dreamy theorizing? The Gray Ghost picked Federated Motors; he arranged for an accident; he planned to capitalize that accident....

Pelham rose from his chair, laughing at his own absurdity; this was a little too far-fetched.

****

NEXT morning he ordered Slim Dickenson, the Maine guide he had brought from the woods as his personal attendant—and friend—to go to the offices of Simmons & Leidy and open an account.

"I want to find out who is the client that is raiding Federated Motors," he told Slim, "and why Simmons & Leidy make such tremendous cash withdrawals from their bank."

He himself sought the scene of the accident and made himself known to the policeman on duty in the neighborhood, who was properly impressed at meeting the Gray Ghost's great opponent.

"A private matter, officer," Pelham explained. "We've been trying to trace the drivers of the truck and taxi. It seems that they either had false numbers or you didn't read them correctly."

Tryon's operatives had reported that the numbers given by the policeman were registered as belonging to owners of private cars up state.

The officer shook his head. "I got those numbers right," he declared. "Catch me making a mistake when a person like Mr. Cornwallis is injured. Say," he added, "that ambulance surgeon dropped something out of his pocket. So long as you are working for Mr. Cornwallis or his wife you probably will see the doctor before I'll find time to get around to his place. Would you give him this?"

He handed Pelham a small leather case. Pelham took it and thrust it carelessly into his pocket.

"Of course I will," he promised.

"I'd say that old boy Cornwallis must have a terrible case of heart trouble to be unconscious this long," declared the policeman. "He wasn't even touched."

"Well, he's an old man," said Pelham.

Dickenson returned to Pelham's apartment that afternoon with a report of his experiences.

"There's a bunch of workmen in the offices of Simmons & Leidy. Makin' alterations. Busy there all the time, tearing down partitions and building new ones. Well, I took a look around. They have a couple of safes, but, believe me, I wouldn't trust a nickel of mine in one of them. Old-fashioned affairs that any yegg could blow.

"And yet Simmons & Leidy are bringing about a million dollars a day in cash to their offices.

"But they don't trust those safes." He paused dramatically.

Pelham paid him the compliment of excitement. "Go on, Slim!"

"The workmen all quit at noon; they all had lunch boxes with them. You'd have thought they'd eat in the hall or on the stairs. Well, sir, they all went downstairs, carrying their lunch boxes. I followed them; sort of thought I might mix in and get acquainted."

"Did you?" asked Pelham.

"I did not," answered Slim, with emphasis. "Why? Listen. One of those carpenters tripped on a stair; his lunch box fell and the lid flew open. Do you know what kind of sandwiches those workmen eat? Yellow ones!"

"Get to it, Slim," ordered Pelham.

"Big yellow bills! The lunch box was jammed with money. That's where the cash goes! Well, I telephoned Mr. Tryon; he rushed a couple of men right over. They followed the workmen into a cheap restaurant, just a coffee place. They all ordered coffee, and the waiters there, when they brought them the coffee, managed to get the money out of their boxes and substitute food. Oh, according to Mr. Tryon's men, every last one of them was a sleight-of-hand artist."

"Pickpockets are," commented Pelham.

"You're getting it," cried Slim. "Well, I watched the waiters. Leastwise. I watched a couple of them. The operatives tipped me off as they come out. They were carrying suit cases, and they took them, riding in a taxi, to a house on 23d street. One of those houses set way back from the street, with a yard and fence. They went in, and they're there yet, so far as I know."

****

FOR a long time after Slim had finished Pelham was silent. How could Grey Ghost have foreseen, with certainty, that the financier would be immediately rendered unconscious by the accident, and that he would remain so for the better part of two weeks?

He jammed his hands into his pockets; the fingers of one hand touched something. And he knew!

He could not act without further evidence; but that came to him at nine o'clock that night. For at that hour Dr. Leclerc alighted from a taxicab before the shabby house on 23d street, looked furtively about him, and swiftly went through the gate and up walk. As he was admitted to the house whither the waiters of the lunchroom had carried the money Tryon and Pelham, leading a score of the bravest of their operatives, smashed down the door, and entered the building. ...

"When," asked Jerry Tryon, late that night, "did you begin to agree with me that the Gray Ghost was in this matter?"

"When I discovered this," said Pelham. He held out the little leather case that had been given him by the policeman. "Know what it is?"

Jerry wrinkled his forehead. "It might hold a fountain pen," he said.

Pelham laughed grimly. "It might, but it didn't. It held a hypodermic needle. The policeman said that Dr. Leclerc had dropped it. But if Leclerc hadn't dropped it, and if the chauffeur of Cornwallis had dropped it. It explained everything."

"Of course," cried Jerry. "The missing link in the plot. The chauffeur leaned through the limousine door and jabbed the old man——"

"Exactly," said Pelham. "I had to find a connection between Leclerc and the speculators. And when Leclerc showed up—well, we know the rest. He's confessed, and so has Madison, to being bribed to keep Cornwallis drugged. But if we could only find the man who bribed them——"

"Who is the Gray Ghost," declared Tryon.

"Or an agent of his," amended Pelham. He sighed. "If only he'd bring suit to recover the millions in cash we found in that 23d street house."

"Well," said Jerry, "this is one time the Gray Ghost loses."

Pelham's face grew grave. "Think of the times he's won," he said soberly. "Also, think of Cornwallis, drugged for a fortnight; of his wife—Jerry, the Gray Ghost owes more than he can ever pay."

"He'll settle his debts some day," declared Tryon savagely.

"Perhaps," said Pelham.

(Copyright, 1923.)