Burning Daylight

by Jack London

  CHAPTER II

  It was not long afterward that Daylight came on to New York. A letterfrom John Dowsett had been the cause--a simple little typewrittenletter of several lines. But Daylight had thrilled as he read it. Heremembered the thrill that was his, a callow youth of fifteen, when, inTempas Butte, through lack of a fourth man, Tom Galsworthy, thegambler, had said, "Get in, Kid; take a hand." That thrill was hisnow. The bald, typewritten sentences seemed gorged with mystery. "OurMr. Howison will call upon you at your hotel. He is to be trusted. Wemust not be seen together. You will understand after we have had ourtalk." Daylight conned the words over and over. That was it. The biggame had arrived, and it looked as if he were being invited to sit inand take a hand. Surely, for no other reason would one man soperemptorily invite another man to make a journey across the continent.

  They met--thanks to "our" Mr. Howison,--up the Hudson, in a magnificentcountry home. Daylight, according to instructions, arrived in aprivate motor-car which had been furnished him. Whose car it was he didnot know any more than did he know the owner of the house, with itsgenerous, rolling, tree-studded lawns. Dowsett was already there, andanother man whom Daylight recognized before the introduction was begun.It was Nathaniel Letton, and none other. Daylight had seen his face ascore of times in the magazines and newspapers, and read about hisstanding in the financial world and about his endowed University ofDaratona. He, likewise, struck Daylight as a man of power, though hewas puzzled in that he could find no likeness to Dowsett. Except inthe matter of cleanness,--a cleanness that seemed to go down to thedeepest fibers of him,--Nathaniel Letton was unlike the other in everyparticular. Thin to emaciation, he seemed a cold flame of a man, a manof a mysterious, chemic sort of flame, who, under a glacier-likeexterior, conveyed, somehow, the impression of the ardent heat of athousand suns. His large gray eyes were mainly responsible for thisfeeling, and they blazed out feverishly from what was almost adeath's-head, so thin was the face, the skin of which was a ghastly,dull, dead white. Not more than fifty, thatched with a sparse growthof iron-gray hair, he looked several times the age of Dowsett. YetNathaniel Letton possessed control--Daylight could see that plainly.He was a thin-faced ascetic, living in a state of high, attenuatedcalm--a molten planet under a transcontinental ice sheet. And yet,above all most of all, Daylight was impressed by the terrific andalmost awful cleanness of the man. There was no dross in him. He hadall the seeming of having been purged by fire. Daylight had thefeeling that a healthy man-oath would be a deadly offence to his ears,a sacrilege and a blasphemy.

  They drank--that is, Nathaniel Letton took mineral water served by thesmoothly operating machine of a lackey who inhabited the place, whileDowsett took Scotch and soda and Daylight a cocktail. Nobody seemed tonotice the unusualness of a Martini at midnight, though Daylight lookedsharply for that very thing; for he had long since learned thatMartinis had their strictly appointed times and places. But he likedMartinis, and, being a natural man, he chose deliberately to drink whenand how he pleased. Others had noticed this peculiar habit of his, butnot so Dowsett and Letton; and Daylight's secret thought was: "Theysure wouldn't bat an eye if I called for a glass of corrosivesublimate."

  Leon Guggenhammer arrived in the midst of the drink, and orderedScotch. Daylight studied him curiously. This was one of the greatGuggenhammer family; a younger one, but nevertheless one of the crowdwith which he had locked grapples in the North. Nor did LeonGuggenhammer fail to mention cognizance of that old affair. Hecomplimented Daylight on his prowess--"The echoes of Ophir came down tous, you know. And I must say, Mr. Daylight--er, Mr. Harnish, that youwhipped us roundly in that affair."

  Echoes! Daylight could not escape the shock of the phrase--echoes hadcome down to them of the fight into which he had flung all his strengthand the strength of his Klondike millions. The Guggenhammers sure mustgo some when a fight of that dimension was no more than a skirmish ofwhich they deigned to hear echoes.

  "They sure play an almighty big game down here," was his conclusion,accompanied by a corresponding elation that it was just precisely thatalmighty big game in which he was about to be invited to play a hand.For the moment he poignantly regretted that rumor was not true, andthat his eleven millions were not in reality thirty millions. Well,that much he would be frank about; he would let them know exactly howmany stacks of chips he could buy.

  Leon Guggenhammer was young and fat. Not a day more than thirty, hisface, save for the adumbrated puff sacks under the eyes, was as smoothand lineless as a boy's. He, too, gave the impression of cleanness.He showed in the pink of health; his unblemished, smooth-shaven skinshouted advertisement of his splendid physical condition. In the faceof that perfect skin, his very fatness and mature, rotund paunch couldbe nothing other than normal. He was constituted to be prone tofatness, that was all.

  The talk soon centred down to business, though Guggenhammer had firstto say his say about the forthcoming international yacht race and abouthis own palatial steam yacht, the Electra, whose recent engines werealready antiquated. Dowsett broached the plan, aided by an occasionalremark from the other two, while Daylight asked questions. Whateverthe proposition was, he was going into it with his eyes open. And theyfilled his eyes with the practical vision of what they had in mind.

  "They will never dream you are with us," Guggenhammer interjected, asthe outlining of the matter drew to a close, his handsome Jewish eyesflashing enthusiastically. "They'll think you are raiding on your ownin proper buccaneer style."

  "Of course, you understand, Mr. Harnish, the absolute need for keepingour alliance in the dark," Nathaniel Letton warned gravely.

  Daylight nodded his head. "And you also understand," Letton went on,"that the result can only be productive of good. The thing islegitimate and right, and the only ones who may be hurt are the stockgamblers themselves. It is not an attempt to smash the market. As yousee yourself, you are to bull the market. The honest investor will bethe gainer."

  "Yes, that's the very thing," Dowsett said. "The commercial need forcopper is continually increasing. Ward Valley Copper, and all that itstands for,--practically one-quarter of the world's supply, as I haveshown you,--is a big thing, how big, even we can scarcely estimate.Our arrangements are made. We have plenty of capital ourselves, andyet we want more. Also, there is too much Ward Valley out to suit ourpresent plans. Thus we kill both birds with one stone--"

  "And I am the stone," Daylight broke in with a smile.

  "Yes, just that. Not only will you bull Ward Valley, but you will atthe same time gather Ward Valley in. This will be of inestimableadvantage to us, while you and all of us will profit by it as well.And as Mr. Letton has pointed out, the thing is legitimate and square.On the eighteenth the directors meet, and, instead of the customarydividend, a double dividend will be declared."

  "And where will the shorts be then?" Leon Guggenhammer cried excitedly.

  "The shorts will be the speculators," Nathaniel Letton explained, "thegamblers, the froth of Wall Street--you understand. The genuineinvestors will not be hurt. Furthermore, they will have learned forthe thousandth time to have confidence in Ward Valley. And with theirconfidence we can carry through the large developments we have outlinedto you."

  "There will be all sorts of rumors on the street," Dowsett warnedDaylight, "but do not let them frighten you. These rumors may evenoriginate with us. You can see how and why clearly. But rumors are tobe no concern of yours. You are on the inside. All you have to do isbuy, buy, buy, and keep on buying to the last stroke, when thedirectors declare the double dividend. Ward Valley will jump so that itwon't be feasible to buy after that."

  "What we want," Letton took up the strain, pausing significantly to siphis mineral water, "what we want is to take large blocks of Ward Valleyoff the hands of the public. We could do this easily enough bydepressing the market and frightening the holders. And we could do itmore cheaply in such fashion. But we are absolute masters of thesituation, and we are fair en
ough to buy Ward Valley on a risingmarket. Not that we are philanthropists, but that we need theinvestors in our big development scheme. Nor do we lose directly bythe transaction. The instant the action of the directors becomes known,Ward Valley will rush heavenward. In addition, and outside thelegitimate field of the transaction, we will pinch the shorts for avery large sum. But that is only incidental, you understand, and in away, unavoidable. On the other hand, we shall not turn up our noses atthat phase of it. The shorts shall be the veriest gamblers, of course,and they will get no more than they deserve."

  "And one other thing, Mr. Harnish," Guggenhammer said, "if you exceedyour available cash, or the amount you care to invest in the venture,don't fail immediately to call on us. Remember, we are behind you."

  "Yes, we are behind you," Dowsett repeated.

  Nathaniel Letton nodded his head in affirmation.

  "Now about that double dividend on the eighteenth--" John Dowsett drewa slip of paper from his note-book and adjusted his glasses.

  "Let me show you the figures. Here, you see..."

  And thereupon he entered into a long technical and historicalexplanation of the earnings and dividends of Ward Valley from the dayof its organization.

  The whole conference lasted not more than an hour, during which timeDaylight lived at the topmost of the highest peak of life that he hadever scaled. These men were big players. They were powers. True, ashe knew himself, they were not the real inner circle. They did notrank with the Morgans and Harrimans. And yet they were in touch withthose giants and were themselves lesser giants. He was pleased, too,with their attitude toward him. They met him deferentially, but notpatronizingly. It was the deference of equality, and Daylight couldnot escape the subtle flattery of it; for he was fully aware that inexperience as well as wealth they were far and away beyond him.

  "We'll shake up the speculating crowd," Leon Guggenhammer proclaimedjubilantly, as they rose to go. "And you are the man to do it, Mr.Harnish. They are bound to think you are on your own, and their shearsare all sharpened for the trimming of newcomers like you."

  "They will certainly be misled," Letton agreed, his eerie gray eyesblazing out from the voluminous folds of the huge Mueller with which hewas swathing his neck to the ears. "Their minds run in ruts. It isthe unexpected that upsets their stereotyped calculations--any newcombination, any strange factor, any fresh variant. And you will beall that to them, Mr. Harnish. And I repeat, they are gamblers, andthey will deserve all that befalls them. They clog and cumber alllegitimate enterprise. You have no idea of the trouble they cause menlike us--sometimes, by their gambling tactics, upsetting the soundestplans, even overturning the stablest institutions."

  Dowsett and young Guggenhammer went away in one motor-car, and Lettonby himself in another. Daylight, with still in the forefront of hisconsciousness all that had occurred in the preceding hour, was deeplyimpressed by the scene at the moment of departure. The three machinesstood like weird night monsters at the gravelled foot of the widestairway under the unlighted porte-cochere. It was a dark night, andthe lights of the motor-cars cut as sharply through the blackness asknives would cut through solid substance. The obsequious lackey--theautomatic genie of the house which belonged to none of the threemen,--stood like a graven statue after having helped them in. Thefur-coated chauffeurs bulked dimly in their seats. One after theother, like spurred steeds, the cars leaped into the blackness, tookthe curve of the driveway, and were gone.

  Daylight's car was the last, and, peering out, he caught a glimpse ofthe unlighted house that loomed hugely through the darkness like amountain. Whose was it? he wondered. How came they to use it fortheir secret conference? Would the lackey talk? How about thechauffeurs? Were they trusted men like "our" Mr. Howison? Mystery?The affair was alive with it. And hand in hand with mystery walkedPower. He leaned back and inhaled his cigarette. Big things wereafoot. The cards were shuffled even then for a mighty deal, and he wasin on it. He remembered back to his poker games with Jack Kearns, andlaughed aloud. He had played for thousands in those days on the turnof a card; but now he was playing for millions. And on the eighteenth,when that dividend was declared, he chuckled at the confusion thatwould inevitably descend upon the men with the sharpened shears waitingto trim him--him, Burning Daylight.