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A Deal in Wheat
by
Of late—so sure was the bull crowd of its position—no one had even thought of glancing at the inspection sheet on the bulletin board. But now one of Going’s messengers hurried up to him with the announcement that this sheet showed receipts at Chicago for that morning of twenty-five thousand bushels, and not credited to Hornung. Some one had got hold of a line of wheat overlooked by the “clique” and was dumping it upon them.
“Wire the Chief,” said Going over his shoulder to Merriam. This one struggled out of the crowd, and on a telegraph blank scribbled:
“Strong bear movement—New man—Kennedy—Selling in lots of five contracts—Chicago receipts twenty-five thousand. ”
The message was despatched, and in a few moments the answer came back, laconic, of military terseness:
“Support the market. ”
And Going obeyed, Merriam and Kimbark following, the new broker fairly throwing the wheat at them in thousand-bushel lots.
“Sell May at ‘fifty; sell May; sell May. ” A moment’s indecision, an instant’s hesitation, the first faint suggestion of weakness, and the market would have broken under them. But for the better part of four hours they stood their ground, taking all that was offered, in constant communication with the Chief, and from time to time stimulated and steadied by his brief, unvarying command:
“Support the market. ”
At the close of the session they had bought in the twenty-five thousand bushels of May. Hornung’s position was as stable as a rock, and the price closed even with the opening figure—one dollar and a half.
But the morning’s work was the talk of all La Salle Street. Who was back of the raid?
What was the meaning of this unexpected selling? For weeks the pit trading had been merely nominal. Truslow, the Great Bear, from whom the most serious attack might have been expected, had gone to his country seat at Geneva Lake, in Wisconsin, declaring himself to be out of the market entirely. He went bass-fishing every day.
IV. THE BELT LINE
On a certain day toward the middle of the month, at a time when the mysterious Bear had unloaded some eighty thousand bushels upon Hornung, a conference was held in the library of Hornung’s home. His broker attended it, and also a clean-faced, bright-eyed individual whose name of Cyrus Ryder might have been found upon the pay-roll of a rather well-known detective agency. For upward of half an hour after the conference began the detective spoke, the other two listening attentively, gravely.
“Then, last of all,” concluded Ryder, “I made out I was a hobo, and began stealing rides on the Belt Line Railroad. Know the road? It just circles Chicago. Truslow owns it. Yes? Well, then I began to catch on. I noticed that cars of certain numbers—thirty-one nought thirty-four, thirty-two one ninety—well, the numbers don’t matter, but anyhow, these cars were always switched onto the sidings by Mr. Truslow’s main elevator D soon as they came in. The wheat was shunted in, and they were pulled out again. Well, I spotted one car and stole a ride on her. Say, look here,that car went right around the city on the Belt, and came back to D again, and the same wheat in her all the time. The grain was reinspected—it was raw, I tell you—and the warehouse receipts made out just as though the stuff had come in from Kansas or Iowa. ”
“The same wheat all the time!” interrupted Hornung.
“The same wheat—your wheat, that you sold to Truslow. ”
“Great snakes!” ejaculated Hornung’s broker. “Truslow never took it abroad at all. ”
“Took it abroad! Say, he’s just been running it around Chicago, like the supers in ‘Shenandoah,’ round an’ round, so you’d think it was a new lot, an’ selling it back to you again. ”