"I am pretty sure," said Crocker solemnly.

"I thought so," said Forshay meditatively. "I'm rather tempted to try the thing myself. I've sort of a hunch about you. I liked you, Tom, from the first. Hope you hit it hard." He glanced in the direction of the senior partners and lowered his voice confidentially. "Then it's good to see one of our own kind make good--you understand?"

In five minutes Bojo had told him in the strictest confidence all he knew. Forshay received the news with thoughtful deliberation.

"I'd like it better if Dan Drake had said it direct to you," he said, frowning. "Still, it's valuable. There may be a good deal in it. I think I can get a line on it myself. Jimmie Boskirk is a good pal of mine and he'll know. You keep me informed and I'll let you know what I find out.

Go a little slow. Dan Drake is up to a good many tricks. He's fooled the talent many a time before. Suppose we say Friday night for our little confab. Good."

The mention of Jimmie Boskirk cast a damper over the delights the interview had brought Bojo. He did not at once realize how easily Forshay had played him for the information he desired and how really valuable he believed it. He was lost in a new irritation. Young Boskirk had been conspicuously a.s.siduous in his attentions to Doris; and, while this fact aroused in him no jealousy, he had an uncomfortable feeling that Boskirk was in fact the source of her information.

But the opening of the market completely drove all other thoughts out of his mind. For the first time he came under the poignant tyranny of the flowing tape. Do what he would he could not keep away from it. Indiana Smelter opened at 104-1/2, went off the fraction, and then advanced to 106 on moderate strength in buying orders.

"A point and a half--$1500--I've made $1500--just like that," he said to himself, stupefied. He went to his desk, but ten minutes later on the pretext of getting a gla.s.s of water he returned to the tape to make sure that his eyes had not deceived him. There it was again and no mistake--200 Indiana Smelter, 106. He sat down at his desk in a turmoil.

Fifteen hundred dollars! Five times what he had made in three months. If he had bought two thousand shares, as he could have easily, at a safe twenty per cent. margin, he would have made three thousand. He felt angry at himself, defrauded, and, drawing a paper before him, he began to figure out his profits if the stock should go to 140 or 150, as every one said it must if the combination went through.

Then, in order to realize himself his colossal earnings, he called up Doris on the telephone to hear the sound of such figures. At one, when he went out to s.n.a.t.c.h a mouthful at a standing lunch, he consulted three tickers, impatient that no further sales had been recorded. When Ricketts, who was still on the sheets, came up to him with his daily budget of gossip, he listened avidly. Every tip interested him, fraught with a new dramatic significance. He felt like taking him aside and whispering in his ear:

"Listen, Ricketts, if you want a good thing buy Indiana Smelter: it'll go to 140. I've made fifteen hundred dollars on it in a couple of hours."

But he did nothing of the sort. He looked very wise and bored, feeling immensely superior as a capitalist and future member of the firm of Hauk, Flaspoller and Forshay, over Ricketts, who had started when he had started and was still on the sheets at fifteen dollars a week.

"Whispering Bill" Golightly, who had the hypnotic art of inducing clients to buy and sell and buy again all in the same day, on artfully fluctuating rumors (to no disparagement of his commission account), came sidling up, and he hailed him regally.

"h.e.l.lo, Bill, what do you know?"

"Buy Redding," said Golightly softly, with a confidential flutter of the near eyelid.

"You're 'way behind. I know something better than that. Come around next week."

He left Golightly smiling incredulously and ambled slowly through the motley group of New Street, that tragic anteroom to Wall Street, where fallen kings of finance retell the glories of the past and wager a few miserable dollars on a fugitive whisper.

"If they only knew what I know," he said to himself, smiling as he pa.s.sed on in confident youth, through these wearied old men who in their misfortune still preferred to be last in the Street if only to be near Rome. At the offices, high on Exchange Place, looking down on the huddled group of the curb below in sheepskins and m.u.f.flers, flinging fingered signals in the air to waiting figures in windows above, he found a new order from Roscoe Marsh and hurriedly had it executed. He felt like calling up all his friends and asking them to follow his lead blindly.

He wanted every one to be making money as easily as he could. Before the market closed Indiana Smelter receded to 105-1/4 and he felt as though some one had bodily lifted $500 from his pocket. Still he had made a thousand dollars for the day. He caught the subway with the crowd of stockbrokers who came romping out of the stock exchange like released schoolboys after the day's tension, pommeling and shoving each other with released glee. His first action was to turn to the financial columns of his newspaper, to make sure there had been no error, to see in cold print that he had actually made no mistake. During the week Indiana Smelter climbed irregularly to 111-1/4, broke three points, and ended at 109 amid a sudden concentration of public interest.

On Sat.u.r.day, when he came back to his blazing windows in the mellow half-lights of the court, preparatory to dressing for a party in the wake of Fred DeLancy, he took the flight two steps at a time, bursting with the need of pouring out his tale of good fortune to responsive ears. He found only George Granning, snug in the big armchair, sunk in the beatific contemplation of an immense ledger.

"What the deuce are you grinning at, you old rhinoceros?" said Bojo, stopping surprised.

"I'm casting up accounts," said Granning. "I'm twelve hundred and forty-two dollars ahead of the game. To-morrow you can buy me my first bond and make me a capitalist. Bojo, congratulate me. I've got my raise--forty a week from now on--a.s.sistant superintendent! What do you think of that?"

"No!" exclaimed Bojo, who had been dreaming in hundreds of thousands. He shook hands with all the enthusiasm he could force. Then a genuine pity seized him for the inequalities of opportunity. He seized a chair and drew it excitedly near his friend. "Granny, listen to me. Do you know what I have made in ten days? Almost five thousand dollars! Now you know nothing in this world would let me get you in wrong, unless I knew.

Well, Granny, I know! I'll guarantee you--do you understand--that if you'll let me take your thousand and invest it as I want, I'll double your capital in a month."

"Thank you, no," said Granning in a way that admitted no discussion.

"The gilt-edged kind is my ambition. Look here, how much money have you put up?"

"Only twenty thousand."

"Then give me the rest and let me bury it for you."

"I tell you I can sell it now and make $4500. What do you say to that?"

"I'm d.a.m.ned sorry to hear it."

"You're a nice friend."

"Lecturing isn't my strong point," said Granning imperturbably, "but since you insist, the first lesson in life to my mind is a wholesome respect for the difficulty of making money."

"You act as though you think I've robbed some old widow, you anarchist!"

"Twelve times 30 is 360, add 12 times 150 times 30," said Granning, taking up his pencil.

"What the deuce are you figuring out?"

"I'm calculating that at the rate I'm living I can buy another bond in about ten and three quarter months," said Granning blissfully.

"Oh, go to the devil," said Bojo, retreating into his room.

As he started to dress for the evening he began to moralize, glancing out at Granning, who continued his figuring, a picture of rugged happiness.

"Suppose he's thinking of that forty-five dollar a year income now,"

thought Bojo, who began to indulge in many worldly speculations of which he would have been incapable three months before. After all, if some people only knew it, it was just as easy to make a hundred thousand as a thousand. All it required was to recognize that the world was unequal and always would remain unequal, and toward the top of society, when one had the opportunity of course, it was all a question of knowledge and influence.

"Poor old Granny," he said, shaking his head. "In four years I'll be worth a million and he'll be plodding on, working like a slave, gloating over a ten-dollar raise." But as he was withal honest in his values he added: "And the old fellow's worth ten times what I am too!"

He remembered his own raise in salary, but for certain reasons determined not to risk an ethical comparison.

"Well, Capitalist, good night," he said, arrayed in top hat, fur coat, and glowing linen.

Granning grunted complacently and called him back as he was disappearing.

"Hi, there!"

"What?"

"Come over to the factory with me some day and see what real work is."

Bojo slammed the door and went laughing down the stairs.

The buying orders multiplied in Indiana Smelter, the air was full of rumors, the financial columns accepted as a fact that the combination was decided, and the stock went soaring in the third week, despite one day of horrible uncertainty, when the report was spread that all negotiations were off and Indiana Smelter dropped twelve points. When 135 was reached, Bojo became bewildered. In less than a month he had cleared over thirty thousand dollars. He could not believe his own reason. Where had it come from? Did it actually exist or would he wake up some morning and find it evaporated?

The spinning tack-tack of the ticker was always in his ears. At night when he started to go to sleep, the room was always full of diabolical instruments, and great curling streams of thin paper fell over his bed and Indiana Smelter was kiting up into impossible figures or abruptly crumbling to nothing. One morning the necessity of actually holding in his own hands these enormous sums which he had been incredulously contemplating all these weeks was so imperious that he sold out as the stock reached 138-1/4.

For a day a feeling of sublime liberation came to him, as though the clicking tyranny were forever vanished from his ears. In his pocket was certainty, incredible but tangible, a check to his order for over thirty-three thousand dollars. When once this certainty had impressed itself upon him he had a quick revulsion. It seemed to him that what he had done was grossly immoral, as though he had thrown his money on a gambling table and won fabulously with a beginner's luck. Some providence must have protected him, but he resolved firmly never to repeat the test.

He informed Granny of this decision, admitting frankly all the appet.i.te for gain, the reckless, dangerous excitement it had roused in him. He spoke with such profound conviction, being for the moment convinced himself, that Granny's skepticism was conquered, and they shook hands upon Bojo's sudden enlightenment.

But the next day, when he had gone up to the Drakes and exhibited the check for the delectation of Doris, his good intentions began to waver in the flush of triumph.