The Murder of Jim Fisk for the Love of Josie Mansfield Read Online Free PDF Page B

peals has faded, the arrow has plunged to the 130s.
    The bears, lately strangling on their fears, suddenly breathe the fresh air of salvation. Again they see the sun; once more they feel the earth beneath their feet.
    It is the bulls’ turn to panic. Great riches were in their grasp a moment ago; these have been snatched away. And because most of their purchases have been made with borrowed money, accepted at extortionate rates, the evaporation of their golden dream now threatens them with utter dissolution. As the new reality sets in, their groans of disappointment turn to howls of fear and rage.
    The bulls look to their leader, Fisk, for guidance. But Fisk has vanished. Some claim to have seen him dashing north toward the Opera House. A small herd of angry bulls give chase; they shout that if they catch Fisk, his carcass will swing from one of the lampposts that line Broadway.
    The mob reaches the Opera House, where they crash against a wall of thick men retained by Fisk and Gould for such emergencies. The jagged scars and flattened noses of the men suggest they have dealt with desperadoes more threatening than disappointed brokers. The mob mills around, wondering what to do.
    Inside the Opera House, behind the heavy doors of the Erie office, Fisk wipes the sweat from his face and reclaims his composure. Gould greets him in a calm, low voice, apparently oblivious to the uproar outside. But his fingers work with subtle fury, tearing odd sheets of paper into tiny bits. While Fisk mops his brow, Gould carpets the floor around his desk with confetti. Separately and silently they calculate how they’ll survive this latest debacle. “It was each man drag out his own corpse,” Fisk will say of the moment. “Get out of it as well as you can.”

Love makes the most careful man reckless. Nothing else can explain Jim Fisk’s decision to introduce Edward Stokes to Josie Mansfield. Ned Stokes is the ne’er-do-well son of a New York family that used to be rich but currently must send its sons to work. Stokes supervises a Brooklyn oil refinery that the family controls and that Fisk, on behalf of the Erie, acquires an interest in. Fisk takes a liking to Stokes, who is seven years younger than Fisk, seventy pounds lighter, and incomparably more handsome, in a darkly dangerous way. Any sensible man in Fisk’s position would keep Stokes as far from Josie as possible. But Fisk arranges a meeting between Stokes and Josie, and he later takes Stokes to Josie’s house to further the acquaintance.
    He seems not to notice the spark between the two—a spark that becomes an electrifying surge as soon as Fisk looks away. Stokes has a wife, a child, and a more regular domestic existence than Fisk, but thoughts of home and hearth fly out of his head when he sees Josie. She has stuck with Fisk from considerations of financial security and perhaps a mite of gratitude, but security has brought boredom, and any gratitude she feels toward Fisk melts away when Stokes kisses her hand and gazes deeply into her eyes.
    Fisk is busier than usual, these months after the gold panic. The brokers and investors who wanted to lynch him and Gould on the afternoon of what is being called Black Friday are burying the two in lawsuits; Fisk spends half his waking hours with attorneys. Congress wants to know how the gold conspiracy nearly succeeded and who in the Grant administration was involved; Fisk spends the other half of his time testifying before committees in Washington.
    He doesn’t realize that Stokes has become a regular visitor to Josie’s house. More fatigued than usual in the evenings, he doesn’t observe that Josie is happier than she has been for some while, but in a distracted, distant way.

Fisk grows busier all the time. After the Erie war and Black Friday, he reckons that his civic reputation can use some burnishing. When a delegation from the moribund Ninth Regiment of the New York National Guard approaches him about becoming their sponsor, he