Harris, and before many days were out even get rid of the name itself. When he saw I was not to be shaken in my decision he stopped arguing and got down to other matters he had to straighten out, chiefly concerning the large balance I was carrying with him and what he was to do with it.
However, we were interrupted by the entrance of the secretary, who told him Mrs. Jerome was waiting to see him, and he excused himself a minute. When he came back he was laughing. “Baby, are you a sensation! When that woman found out you were in here she just camped down, and a fat chance I can get rid of her until she shakes your money-clutching paw.”
“I don’t want to meet her.”
“You did meet her, at my house.”
“Oh — yes, I remember her. I can’t see her! I’m not in the humor! I... this thing has upset me and I don’t want to see anybody!”
“Carrie! Just for a minute — then I’ll ride you uptown in the car and we’ll wind up our business at lunch. Listen! This woman means dough to me.”
So he brought her in. She was a big fat woman with gray hair and I remembered her from Mrs. Hunt’s cocktail party. She began gushing over me and inviting me to spend the weekend at her place on Long Island. I said I had made engagements for the weekend. She became so insistent that, to get her out of there, Mr. Hunt said he wanted to show us his shop as he called it. I said I had to go, but he reminded me he was driving uptown and there was nothing I could do but tag along with them, though what there would be to see I couldn’t for the life of me imagine. As he went out the glass door I looked toward Grant’s desk but he was gone.
There was a big electrical board in the place but that was an old story to me now and I sat on the edge of a desk while he explained it to her. It was a desk belonging to a “customer’s man,” as they call it in the brokerage offices. The board is a great big affair which occupies one whole wall and has all the stocks listed, with the numbers winking on and off in lights as the sales are made. Some distance out from the board are chairs where people sit and watch the quotations, but directly in front of it is the battery of customers’ men, each with a separate desk on which are two telephones, one for incoming calls and the other direct to the floor of the Exchange. As the orders come in these men accept them, then phone them to the floor man at the Exchange, who executes them. There were four desks in front of this board and at three of them men were busy at their phones. However, the man on whose desk I was sitting had gone off somewhere. A secretary came up, looked around, then tucked a yellow slip into the blotting pad. I don’t remember being curious about it and must have glanced at it mechanically. But I felt my mouth go hot from fury at what I saw.
It was a “sell” order — a printed blank with spaces for name, date, stock, number of shares, etc. In lead pencil at the top was the name “Mrs. Harwood Harris,” and the Harwood was underscored three times. That was evidently to keep Mrs. Harwood Harris separate from the other Mrs. Harris, who was myself. The order was for 1,000 shares of Penn-Duquesne, and off on the side in compliance with the SEC rule was written the word “Short.”
Anybody could see that what Mr. Hunt had done was tip Mrs. Harris off to what I was doing in stocks, for it was only yesterday morning that I had phoned him from Pittsburgh to sell a small block of this stock for me. And while I was really a sort of friendly enemy with him, I couldn’t help feeling that this was a pretty dirty trick. So when he drifted over for a minute while Mrs. Jerome was examining one of the tickers I pointed to the “sell” order and said: “I don’t think that was very nice of you.”
“Listen, baby, her affairs had got to a certain point. Do you know what I mean? Something had to be done.”
“I would think you could have found some other way to do it.”
“I’d been trying for a year to find other ways and there weren’t any... I certainly hope you’re riding a winner again. She’s in deep. That’s only one little hunk of it.”
He went back to Mrs. Jerome. And then suddenly a perfectly fiendish idea entered my mind to get back at Mrs. Harris. If there were some way I could persuade Mr. Holden to leave Penn-Duquesne alone instead of calling a strike the stock wouldn’t go down. It would go up — and my lovely mother-in-law would be ruined.
Suddenly I became very sweet and interested in everything, particularly Mrs. Jerome. I joined her at the ticker and said: “I’ve been thinking over my engagements, Mrs. Jerome, and I believe I could fit you in. If the invitation is still open I’d love to spend the weekend with you.” For I thought: If everything goes the way I hope, a weekend with Society is exactly the way I’ll want to celebrate.
She was delighted, gave me directions for getting down to Great Neck, and said she would meet me at the train and that I was to bring “rough, outdoorsy” things. She went then, and Mr. Hunt took me around to his bank and introduced me. I signed the necessary cards and they started an account in my name with the credit I had with him. We then went to lunch at a little restaurant down near the Battery and then he drove me uptown. He kept laughing over my social eminence. “Carrie, I’m proud of you! Monday you’ll be on the Society page. She always consents — graciously, of course, and only after the newspapers call her — to reveal her week-end activities. Are you a success!”
But all I could think of was that I had to get hold of Mr. Holden.
I didn’t even wait to take off my mink coat and hang it up before I called him at his hotel in Pittsburgh. The report came back that he was out. I left word that he was to call me and gave the hotel number. Then I sat there and waited. Then I sent down for some magazines, to get my mind off it, but when they came up I threw them aside and began walking around, for I still didn’t know what I was going to say to him, even when he called. Then after awhile I realized that I did know what I was going to say to him, and had known all along. I was going to say I was lonesome for him, and try to entice him away from Pittsburgh by practically promising myself to him. For I knew the labor situation very well by then, and I was pretty sure if he didn’t conduct the Penn-Duquesne strike there was no other leader who would be able to. As soon as I admitted this to myself a struggle began inside of me. I kept telling myself I would be starting something I might be sorry for afterwards and that the ruination of Mrs. Harris, after all, was hardly a sufficient reason and certainly not a very creditable reason, for taking a step which might affect my whole life. It didn’t do any good. She had become a mania with me now, and now that she was so nearly within my grasp there was nothing I would stop at to satisfy what I felt against her.
The phone rang and I fairly leaped for it. It was the Pittsburgh operator to tell me that on the call to a Mr. Evan Holden, Mr. Holden had not yet returned to his hotel but that they would keep after him. That went on all afternoon and part of the night. Then along toward midnight I realized it had been a couple of hours since the last report. I picked up the phone and put the call in again. I had hardly begun to march around when the phone rang and it was the Pittsburgh operator. “On that call to Mr. Evan Holden, Mr. Holden has checked out of the hotel without leaving any address where he can be reached.”
It was nearly ten o’clock when I woke up the next morning. I hurriedly bathed and dressed, and then to save time I ordered my breakfast sent up. But just as it arrived the desk called to say Mr. Hunt was downstairs. I had the waiter wheel it in the bedroom and leave it there, so I would not have to ask Mr. Hunt to sit there and watch while I gulped down coffee and eggs. Besides, I suddenly didn’t feel like eating anything.