CHAPTER XX
TWO GENTLEMEN BECOME ACQUAINTED
In a town like Mariona the tradition of riches is almost as good as the proved fact. It had been said for years that Ezra Dameron was the possessor of great wealth. How, indeed, could he be otherwise, when he was a miser and never spent any money? Old Roger Merriam had died one of the richest men in the state, and in dividing his property he had favored his daughters, so that Mrs. Forrest and Mrs. Dameron had received larger shares than their brothers. Copeland, the lawyer who never practised, possessed a great fund of useful information, and he estimated the value of Margaret Dameron’s estate at four hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and Copeland was a conservative man. Ezra Dameron’s personal estate was popularly supposed to be equally large, but this was something that no one knew anything about.
Ezra Dameron had been called a hard man. There was an uncharitable smile that went usually with the mention of his name. The friends of the Merriams said that he was an ugly blackguard; but there were people who did not admire the Merriams, and these were inclined to the belief that his wife’s family had misjudged and mistreated him. His way of living was not attractive to sane, reasonable people, but if he chose to shut himself off from the usual currents of human enjoyment he was the loser and it was his affair.
Ezra Dameron had long been content to lend money on mortgages, to buy and sell real estate and to invest in tax titles; but he had in recent years widened his field, through curious circumstances. He had held in his strong-box for a decade several hundred shares of stock in a western railway company that had never paid any dividends. The property had been absorbed by a great system with the result that the market value of the stock doubled instantly. As a result Dameron’s attitude toward the world of finance centered in Wall Street altered considerably. He became a close student of the stock list as printed in the daily newspapers. He procured copies of the annual financial statements of a number of railways and pored over them in his office. The tendency of prices was upward; political conditions, which he had always studied carefully, seemed favorable to a long-continued period of good times. He kept the stock he had, but bought more, chiefly among low-priced securities, buying outright through his bank. The stock in every case was bought in his own name as trustee; and he deposited it in his strong-box and watched the value of his holdings rise steadily.
He began to feel himself in touch with large matters. His ownership of this stock added fresh zest to life, and he experienced a thrill of pleasure as he contemplated his investments. He entered his transactions with scrupulous care in his account books; and his time, which had previously been given wholly to the care of real estate and mortgages, he began to divide, giving a large share of it to the study of the markets. He found that he could learn the daily stock quotations in advance of their publication in the afternoon newspapers by visiting the offices of a broker, who provided a large room with comfortable seats for his patrons and chalked the quotations on a bulletin board. He was free to visit the place when he liked; no one appeared to know him and no questions were asked. He continued this course for a year with growing interest. His life had been singularly free from excitement; but here was a game that he could watch as a calm spectator and with no danger to himself. Then the newspapers began to be filled with stories of the great fortunes that were made daily in Wall Street. The railroads had never before been so prosperous; there was a wail all over the land because there were not cars enough to handle the country’s business.
It was a great game, and Ezra Dameron watched the blackboard with increasing fascination, enjoying the gossip of the broker’s office, where the other habitués learned to know him, and confided to him their successes. They were poor men who had not money with which to purchase stock outright, yet they, too, found it possible to take advantage of the general prosperity. The idea pleased Dameron; he construed it as an evidence of the Providence of God, who was dispensing riches to all the faithful. He gradually reasoned himself into the belief that it was foolish to purchase and pay for stocks in full when a mere memorandum of ownership, based on the identical property and the same market, would greatly multiply his increase. He knew from his own observations in the broker’s office that it was an easy matter to make purchases on margins; he had witnessed thousands of such transactions at the cashier’s window. Nothing could be simpler; in no way could a dollar be invested to so good advantage.
He came slowly to the conclusion that it was absurd to buy shares outright when it was possible to gain all the advantage of a rising market by carrying a multiplied number of shares on margin. He argued himself into this belief gradually. He experienced the common misfortune of the beginner at games of chance; he was extremely successful. This he believed to be the result of his sagacity and shrewdness in studying the internal character of his investments, refusing to believe that he was profiting merely by a general upward tendency perceptible in every branch of trade.
At first he put aside only a small amount of money for use in speculation, but he increased this gradually,—almost unconsciously. He grew afraid to be seen so much in the broker’s offices; he could no longer throw an air of inadvertence about his visits there, for he found himself spending whole days before the bulletin board. A number of his houses were placarded for rent, but the gambler’s passion had entered into his blood. He had traveled little, but now the magnitude of the country’s transportation interests struck him in a new light; he studied the maps of railways and pictured in his dreams the thousands of manufactories and the plains of corn and wheat in the West that were back of every share of stock in the great systems.
But it was best that no one should know at home that he was investing his money in these ways, and he next opened an account with a large brokerage firm in Chicago, and subscribed to a Chicago daily newspaper that he might the better keep in touch with the market. His cunning in hiding his steps on the perilous sands of speculation kept pace with the growth of his passion for the game. He made deposits with the brokers in cash drawn from the Mariona National Bank and sent by express to Chicago. He even alternated his use of the express companies.
When Jack Balcomb went to see Dameron about the plot of ground known as the creek strip, the old man was poring over a crop bulletin. His callers either came to collect or to confess their inability to pay, and as Dameron had never seen Balcomb before, he concluded at once that the young man was a collector. People who came to pay him were not usually so well appareled.
Balcomb stood for a moment in the door of the anteroom, drawing the glove from his right hand.
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Dameron. My name is Balcomb.” He advanced and placed a visiting card on the dingy green cover of Dameron’s desk.
Dameron picked up the card and inspected it without looking at his caller. Book agents often carried plain visiting cards and left their sample cases in the hall. Ezra Dameron classified Balcomb as belonging to their species.
“I have the honor to know your daughter slightly, Mr. Dameron.”
“That is possible,” said the old man, dryly, still not looking up.
“Yes, sir; I was fortunate enough to be associated with her in one of the Dramatic Club plays.”
“Humph!” and Ezra Dameron’s eyes wandered back to his papers. He was computing the possibility of a crop shortage, and Balcomb’s visit was ill-timed.
“I have no time to-day, sir; I’m very busy. I don’t care to buy anything,” he said.
His eyes returned to the tables he had been studying. Heavy rains had injured the corn in Nebraska, and he was speculating as to the effect of this on the railways that traversed that region.
“Pardon me,” said Balcomb, whose eyes had swept the contents of the bare room comprehensively, “but I didn’t come to sell anything. I see that you are busy and I should like to make an appointment with you for some other time.”
Dameron raised his eyes and looked Balcomb over carefully. Jack Balcomb was undeniably a presentable young man, as he stood with his head bent deferentially, holding his hat and glove in one hand. If he was not a collector or a book agent, he probably wished to borrow money. Just now Ezra Dameron had no money to lend.
“My time is much taken, but I have never found it profitable to defer interviews. What is it you want?”
A chair stood near Dameron’s desk, but it was covered with papers, and he made no effort to clear it for his caller. It was, in fact, one of Dameron’s rules never to ask callers to sit down. Most of his visitors came with tales of woe, and he had found that people in trouble are voluble.
“My business is serious,” said Balcomb, imperturbably, “and I should not like to take it up when you are busy.”
“We will take it up now or not at all.”
The old man was still bent over the table with his pencil poised in his hand. His glasses were pinched low down on his long thin nose, and he looked over them at Balcomb very coldly.
“I don’t want you to be in haste in considering—”
“You needn’t trouble yourself. There will be no delay whatever. It is my practice, sir, to pass on questions as they rise.” And Dameron tapped the table impatiently with his pencil.
“Very well,” said Balcomb, smiling amiably. “I wish to know whether you will put a price on that piece of ground you own on High Street near the creek. I have a description in my pocket, if you care to refresh your memory.”
“I know the piece perfectly. It is not for sale.”
“I understand that, Mr. Dameron. It is pretty well understood in Mariona that Mr. Dameron rarely sells real estate. That’s quite in keeping with my own ideas.”
Balcomb rested one of his highly polished shoes on a round of the chair and smiled agreeably at Ezra Dameron.
“You flatter me,” said the old man, dryly. “May I ask who sent you here?”
“Certainly, sir. I represent no one but myself. I never employ agents. I prefer to do business at first hand.”
“Then I’m sure your business is well cared for,” said Dameron.
Balcomb grinned respectfully at the old man’s irony.
“I am fairly prosperous,” he said, and Dameron looked him over again. The market had been uncertain for several days. The bears had been making a raid, and he had lost some money,—not very much, to be sure,—but still the steady gains of several prosperous weeks had been wiped out. But he was confident of a reaction. He had of late paid little attention to the property which Balcomb had mentioned, and his thoughts turned upon it.
“Have you ever been here before?”
“No, sir.”
“What do you want with that property?”
“I’m not at liberty to state at present.”
“Then you’re not really your own master after all, but negotiating for other parties.”
“Not at all. As I told you, I represent no one but myself. But I don’t propose telling you what I expect to do with that ground; my ideas are worth something to me.”
“You rather imply that you don’t trust me;” and the old man smiled and drew his hand across his face.
“Not further,” said Balcomb, pleasantly, “than I could throw an elephant by the tail.”
The old man scrutinized Balcomb with new interest, drawing lines on a blotter with his pencil.
“You’re insulting,” he said, but without irritation.
“No,” said Balcomb, “I’m just frank. I’m merely saying to you what everybody else thinks. I make a point of being frank. I’ve found that it pays.”
“You’re evidently a very observing young man. You don’t consider that my reputation in the community is of the first order,—is that what you mean?” And the old man continued to make marks on the blotter.
“You’ve caught it exactly. I don’t recall just now that I ever heard any one say a good word for you. You asked the question and I have answered you.”
“You certainly are a frank young man;” and Dameron brought the tips of his fingers together, and examined Jack Balcomb more critically. The promoter’s bold air pleased him.
“What piece of property was it you mentioned?” he asked with a feigned air of forgetfulness.
“You have made a fair sketch of it on that blotter,” said Balcomb, grinning. “That triangle is unmistakable,—that’s the creek there on the uneven side.”
Dameron looked down at the blotter over which his pencil had been traveling unconsciously. He had indeed sketched an outline of the plot of ground, and he looked up at Balcomb with a shrewd smile.
“You are a clever young man,—a very clever young man. I am glad to enjoy your acquaintance. You may go now.”
He resettled his glasses on his nose and picked up his pencil. The interview had ceased to interest him, and he would sustain his dignity by dismissing Balcomb as though the young man were a school-boy.
Balcomb laughed and slapped his leg.
“Do you know, I like you! I think we’re going to do some business together some day. They told me you were a terrible frost, and I guess you are too many for the most of them. Not many men know how to carry on a trade, but you have the right idea. Always turn a man down on a first interview; that’s one of my own principles.”
Ezra Dameron
Balcomb drew on his glove, not in the least disturbed by Dameron’s renewed absorption in his figures. He bent forward far enough to see that the old man was studying a statistical table. He knew the table well enough, because it was of a type that was circulated freely by a local broker, whose name was printed at the top of the sheet in red ink, and the sight of it and Dameron’s deep interest in it pleased Balcomb immensely. He felt that he had made a capital beginning. He was not ready to buy the site for the Patoka Plats just yet, but there was no question in his mind but that he should have an opportunity to buy a little later on. He knew that when a man of Dameron’s age and character begins to fail the failure is often very rapid. He smoothed his gloves carefully as he looked down on Dameron’s figure drooping over the table, contemplating him with something of the satisfaction with which a young buzzard watches an old horse stumbling about a pasture and making ready to die.
“My address is printed on the card, if you should care to see me before I come back. Please don’t do anything until you hear from me. I have that sentence printed on all my stationery!”
Dameron shook his head impatiently and continued to study his figures without looking up. But when he heard the outer door close and knew that Balcomb had gone he leaned back in his chair and brought his hands together in their familiar attitude of prayer; and he sat thus until dark, dreaming many dreams.