For many years Daniel Dittenhoeffer had desired the ruin of John F. Greener. “Dutch Dan,” as the Street called Dittenhoeffer was a burly man with very blonde hair, a very red nose and a very loud voice. Greener was a sallow, swarthy bit of a man, with black hair and a squeaky voice. He had furtive brown eyes and a very high forehead; while Dittenhoeffer had frank blue eyes and the pugnacious chin and thick neck of a prize fighter. Both were members of the New York Stock Exchange but Greener was never seen on the “floor” after one of his victims lifted him bodily by the collar and dropped him fifteen feet into a coal cellar on Exchange Place. He would plan the wrecks of railroad systems as a measure preliminary to their absorption, just as a boa constrictor crushes its victims into pulp the more easily to swallow them. But the practice, unchecked for years, had made him nervous and soul-fidgetty.

Dan spent his days from 10 to 3 on the Stock Exchange and his nights from 10 to 3 at the roulette tables or before a faro lay-out. Restless as the quivering sea and suffering from chronic 164insomnia, he had perforce to satisfy his constitutional craving for powerful stimulants, but as he hated delirium tremens he gave himself ceaselessly big doses of the wine of gambling—it does as much for the nerves as the very best whiskey. He would buy or sell 50,000 shares of a stock and he would bet $50,000 on the turn of a card. On an occasion he offered to wager a fortune that he could guess which of two flies that had alit on a table would be the first to fly away. Greener found, in the Stock Exchange, the means to a desired end. Despite innumerable bits of stock jobbing, he had no exalted opinion, in his heart of hearts, of stock operations. But Dittenhoeffer thought the stock market was the court of last resort, whither financiers should go, when they were in the right, to get their deserts; and when they were in the wrong to overcome their deserts by the brute force of dollars. It was natural that in their operations in the market the two men should be as dissimilar as they were in their physical and temperamental characteristics—Machiavelli and Richard C?ur-de-Lion.

Nobody knew exactly how the enmity between Greener and Dittenhoeffer began. The “Little Napoleon of Railroading” had felt toward Dutch Dan a certain passive hostility for interference 165with sundry stock market deals. But Dan hated Greener madly, probably for the same reason that a hawk may have for hating a snake: the instinctive antipathy of the utterly dissimilar.

Scores of men had tried to “bust” Greener, but Greener had grown the richer by their efforts, the growth of his fortune being proportionate to the contraction of theirs. Sam Sharpe had come from Arizona with $12,000,000 avowedly to show the effete East how to crush “financial skunks of the Greener class.” And the financial skunk learned no new lesson, though the privilege of imagining he was giving one cost Sharpe a half-million a month for nearly one year. Then, after Sharpe had learned more of the game—and of Greener—he joined hands with Dittenhoeffer and together they attacked Greener. They were skilful stock operators, very rich and utterly without financial fear. And they loathed Greener. In a more gorgeous age they would have cut the Little Napoleon to pieces and passed his roasted heart on a platter around the festive board. In the colorless XIX century they were fain to content themselves with endeavoring to despoil him of his tear-stained millions; to do which they united their own smile-wreathed millions—some seven or eight of them—and opened fire. Their combined fortune 166was divided into ten projectiles and one after another hurled at the little man with the squeaky voice and the high forehead. The little man dodged the first and the second and the third, but the fourth broke his leg and the fifth knocked the wind out of him. The Street cheered and showed its confidence in the artillerists by going short of the Greener stocks. But just before the sixth shot Greener called to his assistance old Wilbur Wise, the man with the skin-flinty heart and thirty millions in cash. A protecting rampart, man-high, of government bonds was raised about the prostrate Napoleon and the financial cannoneers ceased firing precious projectiles. The new fortifications were impregnable and they knew it; so they contented themselves with gathering up their own shot and a small railroad or two dropped by Greener in his haste to seek shelter. Then Sharpe went to England to win the Derby and Dittenhoeffer went to Long Branch to amuse himself playing a no-limit faro game that cost him on an average $10,000 a night for a month.

There was a period of peace in Wall Street following the last encounter between the diminutive Napoleon and Dutch Dan. But after a few months the fight resumed. Greener was desirous of “bulling” his stocks generally and his pet, Federal 167Telegraph Company, particularly. Just to show there was no need to hurry the “bull” or upward movement Dan sold the stock “short” every time Greener tried to advance the price. Four times did Greener try and four times Dittenhoeffer sold him a few thousand shares—just enough to check the advance. Up to a certain point a manipulator of stocks is successful. His manipulation may comprise many ingenious and complex actions and devices, but the elemental fact in bull manipulation is to buy more than the other fellow can or wishes to sell. Greener was willing to buy, but Dan was even more willing to sell.

Greener really was in desperate straits. He was committed to many important enterprises. To carry them out he needed cash and the banks, fearful of stock market possibilities, were loath to lend him enough. Besides which, there was the desire on the part of the banks’ directors to pick up fine bargains should their refusal to lend Greener money force him to throw overboard the greater part of his load. Greener had despoiled innumerable widows and orphans in his railroad wrecking schemes. The money lenders should avenge the widows and orphans. It was a good deed. There was not a doubt of it in their minds.

168Federal Telegraph, in which Greener’s commitments were heaviest, had been slowly sinking. Successful in other quarters of the market, Dutch Dan decided to “whack the everlasting daylights out of Fed. Tel.” He went about it calmly, just as he played roulette—selling it methodically, ceaselessly, depressingly. And the price wilted. Greener, unsuccessful in other quarters of the Street, decided it was time to do something to save himself. He needed only $5,000,000. At a pinch $3,000,000 might do; or, for the moment, even $2,500,000. But he must have the money at once. Delay meant danger and danger meant Dittenhoeffer and Dittenhoeffer might mean death.

Of a sudden, rising from nowhere, fathered by no one, the rumo............