Curtis Jadwin is the central figure of “The Pit.” A wealthy speculator in the grain pits of the Board of Trade in Chicago, he attempts to corner the wheat market by bidding up the price of the grain and controlling enough shares to manipulate the price of it. His assistant is Landry Court, a broker’s clerk who sees the action on the trading floor with the eyes of a narrator. The third character in the excerpt is Gretry, a broker allied with Jadwin until the final trading hours, when it is clear that a bumper crop of wheat has flooded the grain markets and the bull market “corner” on wheat attempted by Jadwin will be broken.
And all the while above the din upon the floor, above the tramplings and the shoutings in the Pit, there seemed to thrill and swell that appalling roar of the Wheat itself coming in, coming on like a tidal wave, bursting through, dashing barriers aside, rolling like a measureless, almighty river, from the farms of Iowa and the ranches of California, on to the East to the bakeshops and hungry mouths of Europe.
Landry caught one of the Gretry traders by the arm.
“What shall we do?” he shouted. “I’ve bought up to my limit. No more orders have come in. The market has gone from under us. What’s to be done?”
“I don’t know,” the other shouted back, “I don’t know. We’re all gone to hell; looks like the last smash. There are no more supporting orders-something’s gone wrong. Gretry hasn’t sent any word.”
Then, Landry, beside himself with excitement and with actual terror, hardly knowing even yet what he did, turned sharply about. He fought his way out of the Pit; he ran hatless and panting across the floor, in and out between the groups of spectators, down the stairs to the corridor below, and into the Gretry-Converse offices.
In the outer office a group of reporters and the representatives of a great commercial agency were besieging one of the heads of the firm. They assaulted him with questions.
“Just tell us where you are at, that’s all we want to know.” And: “Just what is the price of July wheat?”
“Is Jadwin winning or losing?”
But the other threw out an arm in a wild gesture of helplessness.
“We don’t know ourselves,” he cried. “The market has run clean away from everybody. You know as much about it as I do. It’s simply hell broken loose, that’s all. We can’t tell where we are at for days to come.”
Landry rushed on. He swung open the door of the private office and entered, slamming it behind him and crying out:
“Mr. Gretry, what are we to do? We’ve had no orders.”
But no one listened to him. Of the group that gathered around Gretry’s desk, no one so much as turned a head.
Jadwin stood there in the center of the others, hatless, his face pale, his eyes congested with blood. Gretry fronted him, one hand upon his arm. In the remainder of the group Landry recognized the senior clerk of the office, one of the heads of a great banking house and a couple of other men-confidential agents who had helped to manipulate the great corner.
“But you can’t,” Gretry was exclaiming. “You can’t; don’t you see we can’t meet our margin calls? It’s the end of the game. You’ve got no more money.”
“It’s a lie!” Never so long as he lived did Landry forget the voice in which Jadwin cried the words: “It’s a lie! Keep on buying, I tell you. Take all they’ll offer. I tell you we’ll touch the two dollar mark before noon.”
“Not another order goes up to that floor,” retorted Gretry. “Why, J., ask any of these gentlemen here. They’ll tell you.”
“It’s useless, Mr. Jadwin,” said the banker, quietly. “You were practically beaten two days ago.”
“Mr. Jadwin,” pleaded the senior clerk, “for God’s sake listen to reason. Our firm-“
But Jadwin was beyond all appeal. He threw off Gretry’s hand.
“Your firm, your firm-you’ve been cowards from the start. I know you, I know you. You have sold me out. Crookes has bought you. Get out of my way!” he shouted. “Get out of my way! Do you hear? I’ll play my hand alone from now on.”
“J., old man-why-see here, man,” Gretry implored, still holding him by the arm; “here, where are you going?”
Jadwin’s voice rang like a trumpet call: “Into the Pit.”
“Look here-wait-here. Hold him back, gentlemen. He don’t know what he’s about.”
“If you won’t execute my orders, I’ll act myself. I’m going into the Pit, I tell you.”
“J., you’re mad, old fellow. You’re ruined-don’t you understand?-you’re ruined.”
“Then God curse you, Sam Gretry, for the man who failed me in a crisis.” And as he spoke Curtis Jadwin struck the broker full in the face.
Gretry staggered back from the blow, catching at the edge of his desk. His pale face flashed to crimson for an instant, his fists clenched; then his hands fell to his sides.
“No,” he said, “let him go, let him go. The man is merely mad.”
But, Jadwin, struggling for a second in the midst of the group that tried to hold him, suddenly flung off the restraining clasps, thrust the men to one side, and rushed from the room.
Gretry dropped into his chair before his desk.
“It’s the end,” he said, simply.
He drew a sheet of note paper to him, and in a shaking hand wrote a couple of lines.
“Take that,” he said, handing the note to the senior clerk, “take that to the secretary of the Board at once.”
And straight into the turmoil and confusion of the Pit, to the scene of so many of his victories, the battle ground whereon again and again, his enemies routed, he had remained the victor undisputed, undismayed came the “Great Bull.” No sooner had he set foot within the entrance to the Floor, than the news went flashing and flying from lip to lip. The galleries knew it, the public room, and the Western Union knew it, the telephone booths knew it, and lastly even the Wheat Pit, torn and tossed and rent asunder by the force this man himself had unchained, knew it, and knowing stood dismayed.
For even then, so great had been his power, so complete his dominion and so well-rooted the fear which he had inspired, that this last move in the great game he had been playing, this unexpected, direct personal assumption of control struck a sense of consternation into the heart of the hardiest of his enemies.
Jadwin himself, the great man, the “Great Bull” in the Pit! What was about to happen? Had they been too premature in their hope of his defeat? Had he been preparing some secret, unexpected maneuver? For a second they hesitated, then moved by a common impulse, feeling the push of the wonderful new harvest behind them, they gathered themselves together for the final assault, and again offered the wheat for sale; offered it by thousands upon thousands of bushels; poured, as it were, the reapings of entire principalities out upon the floor of the Board of Trade.
Jadwin was in the thick of the confusion by now. And the avalanche, the undiked Ocean of the Wheat, leaping to the lash of the hurricane, struck him fairly in the face.
He heard it now, he heard nothing else. The Wheat had broken from his control. . . .
And then under the stress and violence of the hour, something snapped in his brain. The murk behind his eyes had been suddenly pierced by a white flash. The strange qualms and tiny nervous paroxysms of the last few months all at once culminated in some indefinite, indefinable crisis, and the wheels and cogs of all activities save one lapsed away and ceased. Only one function of the complicated machine persisted; but it moved with a rapidity of vibration that seemed to be tearing the tissues of being to shreds, while its rhythm beat out the old and terrible cadence:
“Wheat-wheat-wheat, wheat-wheat-wheat.”
Blind and insensate, Jadwin strove against the torrent of the Wheat. There in the middle of the Pit, surrounded and assaulted by herd after herd of wolves yelping for his destruction, he stood braced, rigid upon his feet, his head up, his hand, the great bony hand that once had held the whole Pit in its grip, flung high in the air, in a gesture of defiance, while his voice like the clangor of bugles sounding to the charge of the forlorn hope, rang out again and again, over the din of his enemies:
“Give a dollar for July-give a dollar for July!”
With one accord they leaped upon him. The little group of his traders was swept aside. Landry alone, Landry who had never left his side since his rush from out Gretry’s office, Landry Court, loyal to the last, his one remaining soldier, white, shaking, the sobs strangling in his throat, clung to him desperately. Another billow of wheat was preparing. They too-the beaten general and his young armor bearer-heard it coming; hissing, raging, bellowing, it swept down upon them.
