Reborn in America, I am a legendary short seller on Wall Street.

Chapter 238 Discovering the Conspiracy
Inside the hotel suite, the curtains were drawn, shutting out the hustle and bustle of New York.

Larry sat on the sofa with his hands on his knees, sweating nervously.

Logically speaking, such a big thing shouldn't happen in New York! In my previous life, I had never heard of any mass accidents that those wealthy people might have suffered.

Yes, this shouldn't have happened on the original timeline!

But the problem is the timeline has changed!

The fact that I am here is proof enough. Now, Henry Ford, John Browning, and Theodore Roosevelt, whom I had previously clung to so desperately, as well as J.P. Morgan and other prominent figures in American history are all around me. That is proof enough.

He's carrying a futuristic automatic pistol right now, and that's proof of that.

Okay! Let's put that aside for now. The most important thing now is, what should we do?
Larry sat under the lamp, his fingertips pressing against his throbbing temples. The men he had sent out, like sand scattered in the shadows, had not yet returned, but Larry could already sense that the messages they had sent were all carrying an ominous aura.

After a while, there was a knock on the door. Larry cautiously drew his pistol and remained silent until the other person called out his name, "It's Matthew, Larry, are you there?"

Larry then went over and opened the door.

Matthew stood at the door with two young Italian men. Seeing Larry's serious expression and noticing the pistol slung over his back, he nodded.

"We're back!"

"Come in, make yourself at home... Oh, by the way, have you eaten?" Larry put his pistol back into its holster and asked casually.

“You don’t need to worry about that!” Matthew told the two young men to move a chair and sit down next to him, while he sat with Larry and quietly gave Larry a brief report on his training that day.

Larry listened and nodded, then looked at the two young men who appeared to be older than him and smiled. "Well done, good job. I'll reward you for getting these things done."

The two had already received instructions from Mr. K, and knew that they had come to New York to risk their lives for this boss among bosses. Their faces unconsciously showed tension, and they nodded stiffly.

“Where is Mr. Dunbar?” Larry asked.

Matthew said softly, "He said he was going to find someone, as you instructed."

Larry nodded, remembering that person, and murmured, "Yes, that person is very important!"

About ten minutes later, there was another knock on the door, and Mr. K walked in with a follower in a flurry of activity.

He first looked around, then said, "Boss, I've completed the terrain survey you asked me to do. Besides that, I've also found something else!"

Larry tightened his grip on his knees, his face expressionless as he said, "Speak!"

Mr. K pulled the person behind him to the front, frowned and urged, "Quickly, repeat what you just said to me to the boss again."

The man was thin, but looked incredibly shrewd. He took a few steps forward, looked at Larry, and gave him a humble smile before speaking.
"I just came back from that cheap bar, full of dockworkers and low-level hotel staff, and I heard people at the Waldorf Hotel talking about this over and over again..."

The new guy in the boiler room—nobody knew anything about him. The foreman said he'd been put in directly from above, a man of few words, only interested in pressure valves and oil pipelines. The hotel staff tried to strike up a conversation, asking where he'd worked before. He vaguely said he'd worked on steam locomotives for the Western Railroad, but his accent was unmistakably Brooklyn streetwise.

"The boiler room?" Larry was taken aback and looked at Mr. K, who quickly replied, "Located on the basement floor of the hotel, they are responsible not only for the hot water in the kitchen but also for the heating of the entire hotel."

Larry nodded and remained silent.

Mr. K continued, "Boss, I've also carefully surveyed the terrain! Everything else is fine, but I'm worried about the hotel's fire safety."

Larry turned to him. "Tell me your reasons?"

“I’ve been trying to get on good terms with a friendly hotel executive. He said they recently got a shipment of kerosene, and I was curious, so I asked him, ‘You have both electric lights and gas lamps, what do you need kerosene for?’ Guess what he said? He said it was to clean up grease stains.”

These days, kerosene is indeed needed to clean oil stains.

Ali frowned and asked, "Did you buy a lot of kerosene?" "It's within an understandable range, just a big barrel that looks like a gasoline drum." As he spoke, Mr. K gestured with his hand.

Did you see it with your own eyes?

"Yes, I took a look too. It's in the cleaning department on the basement level."

Upon hearing this, Larry tapped his knee with his fingers and muttered to himself, "If they really wanted to set a fire, how could one barrel of kerosene be enough?"

Just then, Mr. Dunbar returned. He knocked on the door, saw that the suite was full of people, and then silently walked over to Larry and casually found a seat to sit down.

Larry's fingers tapped unconsciously on the table. The unfamiliar faces in the boiler room, the kerosene of unknown origin... these clues drifted like ghosts, yet lacked a central thread to pin them down.

Mr. K continued,

"Hotel manager Mr. Porter has been under a lot of pressure these past few days. That's what the receptionist said during a casual chat," he then mimicked the receptionist's hushed voice.
"He repeatedly checked the fire inspection schedule and even personally checked the goods receipts for the past three months, especially the chemical products section... I don't know what he was worried about."

The young man added, “Yes, the old guy in the telegraph room complained that lately there have been several telegrams sent to the same Pittsburgh ‘mining equipment company,’ all in numbers and abbreviations that he couldn’t understand at all. He muttered, ‘These days, even coal miners are acting like spies.’”

Pittsburgh? Mining equipment?

Larry jumped to his feet and walked to the window, looking at the lights outside. His gaze swept across the densely packed streets nearby like a hawk's.

Kerosene... Pittsburgh... Mining equipment...

These words collided and rearranged wildly in his mind.

If they wanted to set fire to the place, then kerosene was obviously not enough. So what were they really thinking?
Mr. K had already told everyone he knew, and stood there with his hands hanging down, without saying a word.

Mr. Dunbar turned to Matthew beside him, learned the whole story, and then turned to Larry.

"Larry, is it possible that the barrel wasn't used for arson at all?"

Rally turned his head and stared at Mr. Dunbar. "Tell me what you think."

"It might be explosives! This kerosene isn't used as fuel, but as a diluent, such as nitroglycerin. Nitroglycerin stored in kerosene is both safe and easy to transport and store."

Explosives? Boiler room?
This thought, like a pale bolt of lightning, instantly cleaved through all the fog!
Larry whirled around, nearly knocking over his chair, and braced himself on the table, his breathing becoming heavy. In that instant, those seemingly disparate clues were forcibly welded together by a cruel logic!
An unusual kerosene purchase – not for fuel, but for diluent! Used to reduce the sensitivity of certain high explosives, facilitating transportation and storage!
A newcomer to the boiler room—not to maintain the boiler, but to survey the structure! The hotel boiler room is located on the ground floor of the building's core, a critical load-bearing node; damage to it would have devastating consequences!
The goal is not to create a simple fire! Fires can be extinguished, and the resulting panic and property damage are limited.

Their goal is... to blow it up!
A precise and ruthless demolition targeting the structure of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel! The aim was to create a complete and irreversible structural collapse.

This is the real scenario that could trigger a catastrophe! A collapse at a landmark building in the United States, a grand event that gathered the nation's financial elite...

The resulting market panic and chain reaction will far exceed that of a fire! It will completely destroy the stock prices of all insurance, real estate, and construction companies related to the hotel!

This will be a bloody and gruesome feast prepared for short sellers!

And they might not even need to detonate the explosives while the party is in full swing. They only need to place the explosives at key load-bearing points.

The result was equally devastating—the hotel was reduced to ruins, the next day's news would be hellish headlines, and the market would collapse.

And they can even perfectly avoid the unnecessary investigation efforts caused by large-scale casualties.

"Holy shit!" Larry cursed under his breath, a chill instantly running through his body, making his fingertips go numb.

His previous assumptions were all wrong! Terribly wrong! He thought his adversaries only wanted to set fires, create chaos and panic. He underestimated their ruthlessness and ambition, as well as their professionalism.

This wasn't arson by street thugs; it was engineer-style, cold-blooded demolition!
All his previous precautions—increasing fire patrols and monitoring kerosene—seemed so pale and ridiculous in the face of the possibility of an explosion!
Larry sat up abruptly and glanced at the brass clock on the fireplace. It was 8 p.m. on Saturday night; there should still be time.

(End of this chapter)