The ticker began its sharp metallic click.

The crowd stirred as if the electric shock had swept every nerve. A moment of breathless silence and the board boy leaning over the ticker shouted:

"Atch--92-1/2!"

A groan, low, half-stifled, half-articulate came from the room and then a moment of silence followed.

"There, Gott," muttered the "Judge." "I knew London was rigged--I told you so!"

In quick, sharp, startling tones the man at the ticker called out the quotations as the market rapidly sank.

For half an hour the downward movement never paused for a moment. The silence of the crowded room became more and more suffocating. Men stood in their tracks with staring eyes and dry lips as they watched the last hope of a morning rally fade into despair.

The doctor's breath came quicker and his eyes began to sparkle intense excitement.

Now and then old Dugro's stolid face appeared at the door and summoned another man to his inner office--"the chamber of horrors"--where the lambs are sheared. The story was always the same. The customer squirmed and asked for a little more time to watch the market. The old man was adamant.

"I've got to have more money to margin your stock or I'll sell it in five minutes. This firm is sound as a dollar and it's going to stay sound as long as I'm at the helm. If I carry weak accounts I imperil the money of every man who has put his faith in my bank."

If the squirming victim had more money he always put it up. If he had drawn his last dollar he just wiped the cold sweat from his brow and gasped:

"You'll have to sell out."

Quick as a flash the old man's hand was on the telephone and his broker on the floor of the Exchange was executing the order.

As the noon hour drew near the doctor's heart was beating like a sledge hammer. Bivens's programme had been carried out to the letter. Stocks had declined for the first hour a point, and in the second hour suddenly smashed down two more points amid the wildest excitement on the Exchange.

There was a momentary lull and the market hesitated. For ten minutes the sales dragged with only fractional changes--first up, then down.

The moment to buy had come. The doctor was sure of it. Stocks had touched bottom. The big bear pool would turn bull in a moment and the whole market would rise by leaps and bounds.

He called old Dugro.

"Buy for me now, Amalgamated Copper, the market leader, for all I'm worth!"

The broker glared at him.

"Buy! Buy in this market? Man, are you mad?"

"I said buy!" was the firm answer. "What's the limit?"

"Not a share without a stop loss order under it."

"Well, with the stop?"

"I'll buy you 400 shares on a four-point stop."

"And when it goes up five points?" the doctor asked eagerly.

"I'll double your purchase and raise your stop, and every five points up I'll keep on until you are a millionaire!"

The old broker smiled contemptuously, but it was all lost on the doctor.

"Do it quick."

The order was scarcely given before it was executed. Dugro handed the memorandum to Woodman with a grunt.

"It don't take long to get 'em to-day!"

The words had scarcely left his lips when a hoarse cry rose from the crowd hanging over the ticker.

Copper had leaped upward a whole point between sales. A wild cheer swept the room. For ten minutes every stock on the list responded and began to climb.

The doctor's face was wreathed in smiles. Men began to talk and laugh and feel human for the first moment in two weeks.

Dugro grasped the doctor's hand and his deep voice rang above the roar:

"You're a mascot! You've broken the spell! For God's sake stay with us!"

Suddenly another cry came from the crowd at the ticker. The boy at the board sprang to the instrument with a single bound, his eyes blazing with excitement. His cry pierced every ear in the room with horror.

"The hell you say! Down a whole point! No!"

There was a moment's hush, every breath was held. Only the sharp click of the ticker broke the stillness.

"It was one point," groaned the Judge, "now, Gott, it's two--now it's three!"

The last words ended in a scream. Hell had broken loose at last.

The panic had come!

In ten minutes stocks tumbled five points and the doctor's last dollar was swept into space while the whole market plunged down, down, down into the abyss of ruin and despair.

Men no longer tried to conceal their emotion. Some wept, some cursed, some laughed; but the most pitiful sight of all was the man who could do neither, the man with white lips and the strange hunted expression in his eyes who was looking Death in the face for the first time.

A full quarter of an hour of the panic had spent itself before the dazed crowds in the broker's offices read the startling news that caused the big break. The ticker shrieked its message above the storm's din like a little laughing demon:

"_The Van Dam Trust Company Has Closed Its Doors and Asked for the Appointment of a Receiver!_"

"Impossible!"

"A fake!"

"Hell--it's a joke!"

From all who read it at first came these muttered exclamations. It was beyond belief.

The "Judge" was particularly emphatic.