"But why not frighten them?" Louisa asked. "I thought you wanted to frighten them. You were full of that idea a while ago."He smiled genially. "I've learned some new wrinkles since then. We'll frighten 'em stiff enough, before we're through with them. But at the start we just go easy.
If they got word that there was a 'corner,' there would be a dead scare among the jobbers. They'd be afraid to sell or name a price for Rubber Consols unless they had the shares in hand. And there are other ways in which that would be a nuisance. Presently, of course, we shall liberate some few shares, so that there may be some actual dealings.
Probably a certain number of the 5,000 which went to the general public will come into the market too.
But of course you see that all such shares will simply go through one operation before they come back to us.
Some one of the fourteen men we are squeezing will snap them up and bring them straight to Semple, to get free from the fortnightly tax we are levying on them. In that way we shall eventually let out say half of these fourteen 'shorts,' or perhaps more than half.""What do you want to do that for?" The sister's grey eyes had caught a metallic gleam, as if from the talk about gold.
"Why let anybody out? Why can't you go on taking their money for ever?"Thorpe nodded complacently. "Yes--that's what I asked too.
It seemed to me the most natural thing, when you'd got 'em in the vise, to keep them there. But when you come to reflect--you can't get more out of a man than there is in him. If you press him too hard, he can always go bankrupt--and then he's out of your reach altogether, and you lose everything that you counted on making out of him. So, after a certain point, each one of the fourteen men whom we're squeezing must be dealt with on a different footing. We shall have to watch them all, and study their resources, as tipsters watch horses in the paddock.
"You see, some of them can stand a loss of a hundred thousand pounds better than others could lose ten thousand.
All that we have to know. We can take it as a principle that none of them will go bankrupt and lose his place on the exchange unless he is pressed tight to the wall.
Well, our business is to learn how far each fellow is from the wall to start with. Then we keep track of him, one turn of the screw after another, till we see he's got just enough left to buy himself out. Then we'll let him out. See?""It's cruel, isn't it?" she commented, calmly meditative, after a little pause.
"Everything in the City is cruel," he assured her with a light tone. "All speculative business is cruel.
Take our case, for example. I estimate in a rough way that these fourteen men will have to pay over to us, in differences and in final sales, say seven hundred thousand pounds--maybe eight hundred. Well, now, not one of those fellows ever earned a single sovereign of that money.
They've taken the whole of it from others, and these others took it from others still, and so on almost indefinitely.
There isn't a sovereign of it that hasn't been through twenty hands, or fifty for that matter, since the last man who had done some honest work for it parted company with it.
Well--money like that belongs to those who are in possession of it, only so long as they are strong enough to hold on to it. When someone stronger still comes along, he takes it away from them. They don't complain: they don't cry and say it's cruel. They know it's the rule of the game.
They accept it--and begin at once looking out for a new set of fools and weaklings to recoup themselves on.
That's the way the City goes."
Thorpe had concluded his philosophical remarks with ruminative slowness. As he lapsed into silence now, he fell to studying his own hands on the desk-top before him.
He stretched out the fingers, curved them in different degrees, then closed them tight and turned the bulky hard-looking fists round for inspection in varying aspects.
"That's the kind of hand," he began again, thoughtfully, "that breaks the Jew in the long run, if there's only grit enough behind it. I used to watch those Jews' hands, a year ago, when I was dining and wining them.
They're all thin and wiry and full of veins. Their fingers are never still; they twist round and keep stirring like a lobster's feelers. But there aint any real strength in 'em. They get hold of most of the things that are going, because they're eternally on the move.
It's their hellish industry and activity that gives them such a pull, and makes most people afraid of them.
But when a hand like that takes them by the throat"--he held up his right hand as he spoke, with the thick uncouth fingers and massive thumb arched menacingly in a powerful muscular tension--"when THAT tightens round their neck, and they feel that the grip means business--my God! what good are they?"
He laughed contemptuously, and slapped the relaxed palm on the desk with a noise which made his sister start.
Apparently the diversion recalled something to her mind.
