第110章

If the Pit thought Mr.Jadwin was beaten, I guess they found out how they were mistaken.For a time there, we were just _driving_ them.But then Mr.Gretry sent word to us in the Pit to sell, and we couldn't hold them.They came back at us like wolves; they beat the price down five cents, in as many minutes.We had to quit selling, and buy again.But then Mr.Jadwin went at them with a rush._Oh, it was grand!_ We steadied the price at a dollar and fifteen, stiffened it up to eighteen and a half, and then sent it up again, three cents at a time, till we'd hammered it back to a dollar and a quarter.""But Curtis himself," inquired Laura, "is he all right, is he well?""I only saw him once," answered Landry."He was in Mr.

Gretry's office.Yes, he looked all right.He's nervous, of course.But Mr.Gretry looks like the sick man.He looks all frazzled out.""I guess, we'd better be going," said Page, getting up from the table."Have you had your breakfast, Landry?

Won't you have some coffee?"

"Oh, I breakfasted hours ago," he answered."But you are right.We had better be moving.If you are going to get a seat in the gallery, you must be there half an hour ahead of time, to say the least.Shall I take any word to your husband from you, Mrs.Jadwin?""Tell him that I wish him good luck," she answered, "and--yes, ask him, if he remembers what day of the month this is--or no, don't ask him that.Say nothing about it.Just tell him I send him my very best love, and that I wish him all the success in the world."It was about nine o'clock, when Landry and Page reached the foot of La Salle Street.The morning was fine and cool.The sky over the Board of Trade sparkled with sunlight, and the air was full of fluttering wings of the multitude of pigeons that lived upon the leakage of grain around the Board of Trade building.

"Mr.Cressler used to feed them regularly," said Landry, as they paused on the street corner opposite the Board."Poor--poor Mr.Cressler--the funeral is to-morrow, you know."Page shut her eyes.

"Oh," she murmured, "think, _think_ of Laura finding him there like that.Oh, it would have killed me, it would have killed me.""Somehow," observed Landry, a puzzled expression in his eyes, "somehow, by George! she don't seem to mind very much.You'd have thought a shock like that would have made her sick.""Oh! Laura," cried Page."I don't know her any more these days, she is just like stone--just as though she were crowding down every emotion or any feeling she ever had.She seems to be holding herself in with all her strength--for something--and afraid to let go a finger, for fear she would give way altogether.When she told me about that morning at the Cresslers' house, her voice was just like ice; she said, 'Mr.Cressler has shot himself.I found him dead in his library.'

She never shed a tear, and she spoke, oh, in such a terrible monotone.Oh! _dear,_" cried Page, "I wish all this was over, and we could all get away from Chicago, and take Mr.Jadwin with us, and get him back to be as he used to be, always so light-hearted, and thoughtful and kindly.He used to be making jokes from morning till night.Oh, I loved him just as if he were my father."They crossed the street, and Landry, taking her by the arm, ushered her into the corridor on the ground floor of the Board.

"Now, keep close to me," he said, "and see if we can get through somewhere here."The stairs leading up to the main floor were already crowded with visitors, some standing in line close to the wall, others aimlessly wandering up and down, looking and listening, their heads in the air.One of these, a gentleman with a tall white hat, shook his head at Landry and Page, as they pressed by him.

"You can't get up there," he said, "even if they let you in.They're packed in like sardines already."But Landry reassured Page with a knowing nod of his head.

"I told the guide up in the gallery to reserve a seat for you.I guess we'll manage."But when they reached the staircase that connected the main floor with the visitors' gallery, it became a question as to whether or not they could even get to the seat.The crowd was packed solidly upon the stairs, between the wall and the balustrades.There were men in top hats, and women in silks; rough fellows of the poorer streets, and gaudily dressed queens of obscure neighborhoods, while mixed with these one saw the faded and shabby wrecks that perennially drifted about the Board of Trade, the failures who sat on the chairs of the customers' rooms day in and day out, reading old newspapers, smoking vile cigars.And there were young men of the type of clerks and bookkeepers, young men with drawn, worn faces, and hot, tired eyes, who pressed upward, silent, their lips compressed, listening intently to the indefinite echoing murmur that was filling the building.

For on this morning of the thirteenth of June, the Board of Trade, its halls, corridors, offices, and stairways were already thrilling with a vague and terrible sound.It was only a little after nine o'clock.The trading would not begin for another half hour, but, even now, the mutter of the whirlpool, the growl of the Pit was making itself felt.The eddies were gathering; the thousands of subsidiary torrents that fed the cloaca were moving.From all over the immediate neighborhood they came, from the offices of hundreds of commission houses, from brokers' offices, from banks, from the tall, grey buildings of La Salle Street, from the street itself.And even from greater distances they came; auxiliary currents set in from all the reach of the Great Northwest, from Minneapolis, Duluth, and Milwaukee.From the Southwest, St.Louis, Omaha, and Kansas City contributed to the volume.The Atlantic Seaboard, New York, and Boston and Philadelphia sent out their tributary streams; London, Liverpool, Paris, and Odessa merged their influences with the vast world-wide flowing that bore down upon Chicago, and that now began slowly, slowly to centre and circle about the Wheat Pit of the Board of Trade.