Chapter 2

Shortly after he left Smithers he buttonholed another acquaintance, a young man who thought he knew Wall Street, and therefore had a hobby--manipulation. No one could induce him to buy stocks by telling him how well the companies were doing, how bright the prospects, etc. That was bait for “suckers,” not for clever young stock operators. But any one, even a stranger, who said that “they”--the perennially mysterious “they,” the “big men,” the mighty “manipulators” whose life was one prolonged conspiracy to pull the wool over the public’s eyes--“they” were going to “jack up” these or the other shares, was welcomed and his advice acted upon. Young Freeman believed in nothing but “their” wickedness and “their” power to advance or depress stock values at will. Thinking of his wisdom had given him a chronic sneer.

“You’re just the man I was looking for,” said Gilmartin, who hadn’t thought of the young man at all.

“Are you a deputy sheriff?”

“No.” A slight pause for oratorical effect. “I had a long talk with Sam to-day.”

“What Sam?”

“Sharpe. The old boy sent for me. He was in mighty good humor too. Tickled to death. He might well be--he’s got 60,000 shares of Pennsylvania Central. And there’s going to be from 50 to 60 points profit in it.”

“H’m!” sniffed Freeman, sceptically, yet impressed by the change In Gilmartin’s attitude from the money-borrowing humility of the previous week to the confident tone of a man with a straight tip. Sharpe was notoriously kind to his old friends--rich or poor.

“I was there when the papers were signed,” Gilmartin said, hotly. “I was going to leave the room, but Sam told me I needn’t. I can’t tell you what it is about; really I can’t. But he’s simply going to put the stock above par. It’s 64 1/2 now, and you know and I know that by the time it is 75 the newspapers will all be talking about inside buying; and at 85 everybody will want to buy it on account of important developments; and at 95 there will be millions of bull tips on it and rumors of increased dividends, and people who would not look at it thirty points lower will rush in and buy it by the bushel. Let me know who is manipulating a stock, and to h--l with dividends and earnings. Them’s _my_ sentiments,” with a final hammering nod, as if driving in a profound truth.

“Same here,” assented Freeman, cordially. He was attacked on his vulnerable side.

Strange things happen in Wall Street. Sometimes tips come true. It so proved in this case. Sharpe started the stock upward brilliantly--the movement became historic in the Street--and Pa. Cent, soared dizzily and all the newspapers talked of it and the public went mad over it and it touched 80 and 85 and 88 and higher, and then Gilmartin made his brother-in-law sell out and Smithers and Freeman. Their profits were: Griggs, $8,000; Smithers, $15,100; Freeman, $2,750. Gilmartin made them give him a good percentage. He had no trouble with his brother-in-law. Gilmartin told him it was an inviolable Wall Street custom and so Griggs paid, with an air of much experience in such matters. Freeman was more or less grateful. But Smithers met Gilmartin, and full of his good luck repeated what he had told a dozen men within the hour: “I did a dandy stroke the other day. Pa. Cent. looked to me like higher prices and I bought a wad of it. I’ve cleaned up a tidy sum,” and he looked proud of his own penetration. He really had forgotten that it was Gilmartin who had given him the tip. But not so Gilmartin, who retorted, witheringly:

“Well, I’ve often heard of folks that you put into good things and they make money and afterward they come to you and tell how damned smart they were to hit it right. But you can’t work that on me. I’ve got witnesses.”

“Witnesses?” echoed Smithers, looking cheap. He remembered.

“Yes, wit-ness-es,” mimicked Gilmartin, scornfully, “I all but had to get on my knees to make you buy it. And I told you when to sell it, too. The information came to me straight from headquarters and you got the use of it, and now the least you can do is to give me twenty-five hundred dollars.”

In the end he accepted eight hundred dollars. He told mutual friends that Smithers had cheated him.

VI

It seemed as though the regeneration of Gilmartin had been achieved when he changed his shabby raiment for expensive clothes. He paid his tradesmen’s bills and moved into better quarters. He spent his money as though he had made millions. One week after he had closed out the deal his friends would have sworn Gilmartin had always been prosperous. That was his exterior. His inner self remained the same--a gambler. He began to speculate again, in the office of Freeman’s brokers.

At the end of the second month he had lost not only the $1,200 he had deposited with the firm, but an additional $250 he had given his wife and had been obliged to “borrow” back from her, despite her assurances that he would lose it. This time the slump was really unexpected by all, even by the magnates--the mysterious and all-powerful “they” of Freeman’s--so that the loss of the second fortune did not reflect on Gilmartin’s ability as a speculator, but on his luck. As a matter of fact, he had been too careful and had sinned from over-timidity at first, only to plunge later and lose all.

As the result of much thought about his losses Gilmartin became a professional tipster. To let others speculate for him seemed the only sure way of winning. He began by advising ten victims--he learned in time to call them clients--to sell Steel Rod preferred, each man 100 shares; and to a second ten he urged the purchase of the same quantity of the same stock. To all he advised taking four points’ profit. Not all followed his advice, but the seven clients who sold it made between them nearly $3,000 overnight. His percentage amounted to $287.50. Six bought, and when they lost he told them confidentially how the treachery of a leading member of the pool had obliged the pool managers to withdraw their support from the stock temporarily, whence the decline. They grumbled; but he assured them that he himself had lost nearly $1,600 of his own on account of the traitor.

For some months Gilmartin made a fair living, but business became very dull. People learned to fight shy of his tips. The persuasiveness was gone from his inside news and from his confidential advice from Sharpe and from his beholding with his own eyes the signing of epoch-making documents. Had he been able to make his customers alternate their winnings and losses he might have kept his trade. But, for example, “Dave” Rossiter, in Stuart & Stern’s office, stupidly received the wrong tip six times in succession. It wasn’t Gilmartin’s fault, but Rossiter’s bad luck.

At length, failing to get enough clients in the ticker district itself, Gilmartin was forced to advertise in an afternoon paper, six times a week, and in the Sunday edition of one of the leading morning dailies. They ran like this:

WE MAKE MONEY

for our Investors by the best system ever devised. Deal with genuine experts. Two methods of operating; one speculative, the other ensures absolute safety.

NOW

is the time to invest in a certain stock for ten points sure profit Three points margin will carry it. Remember how correct we have been on other stocks. Take advantage of this move.

IOWA MIDLAND.

Big movement coming in this stock. If s very near at hand. Am waiting daily for word. Will get it in time. Splendid opportunity to make big money. It costs only a 2-cent stamp to write to me.

CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION.

Private secretary of banker and stock operator of world-wide reputation has valuable information. I don’t wish your money. Use your own broker. All I want is a share of what you will surely make if you follow my advice.

WILL ADVANCE $40 PER SHARE.

A fortune to be made in a railroad stock. Deal pending which will advance same $40 per share within three months. Am in position to keep informed as to developments and the operations of a pool. Parties who will carry for me 100 shares with a New York Stock Exchange house will receive the full benefit of information. Investment safe and sure. Highest references given.

He prospered amazingly. Answers came to him from furniture dealers on Fourth Avenue and dairymen up the State and fruit growers in Delaware and factory workers in Massachusetts and electricians in New Jersey and coal miners in Pennsylvania and shopkeepers and physicians and plumbers and undertakers in towns and cities near and far. Every morning Gilmartin telegraphed to scores of people--at their expense--to sell, and to scores of others to buy the same stocks. And he claimed his commissions from the winners.

Little by little his savings grew; and with them grew his desire to speculate on his own account. It made him irritable not to gamble.

He met Freeman one day in one of his dissatisfied moods. Out of politeness he asked the young cynic the universal query of the Street:

“What do you think of ‘em?” He meant stocks.

“What difference does it make what I think?” sneered Freeman, with proud humility. “I’m nobody.” But he looked as if he did not agree with himself.

“What do you _know?_” pursued Gilmartin mollifyingly.

“I know enough to be long of Gotham Gas. I just bought a thousand shares at 180.” He really had bought a hundred only.

“What on?”

“On information. I got it straight from a director of the company. Look here, Gilmartin, I’m pledged to secrecy. But, for your own benefit, I’ll just tell you to buy all the Gas you possibly can carry. The deal is on. I know that certain papers were signed last night, and they are almost ready to spring it on the public. They haven’t got all the stock they want. When they get it, look out for fireworks.”

Gilmartin did not perceive any resemblance between Freeman’s tips and his own.

He said, hesitatingly, as though ashamed of his timidity:

“The stock seems pretty high at 180.”

“You won’t think so when it sells at 250. Gilmartin, I don’t _hear_ this; I don’t _think_ it; I _know_ it!”

“All right; I’m in,” quoth Gilmartin, jovially. He felt a sense of emancipation now that he had made up his mind to resume his speculating. He took every cent of the nine hundred dollars he had made from telling people the same things that Freeman told him now, and bought a hundred Gotham Gas at $185 a share. Also he telegraphed to all his clients to plunge in the stock.

It fluctuated between 184 and 186 for a fortnight. Freeman daily asseverated that “they” were accumulating the stock. But, one fine day, the directors met, agreed that business was bad, and having sold out most of their own holdings, decided to reduce the dividend rate from 8 to 6 per cent. Gotham Gas broke seventeen points in ten short minutes. Gilmartin lost all he had. He found it impossible to pay for his advertisements. The telegraph companies refused to accept any more “collect” messages. This deprived Gilmartin of his income as a tipster. Griggs had kept on speculating and had lost all his money and his wife’s in a little deal in Iowa Midland. All that Gilmartin could hope to get from him was an occasional invitation to dinner. Mrs. Gilmartin, after they were dispossessed for non-payment of rent, left her husband, and went to live with a sister in Newark who did not like Gilmartin.

His clothes became shabby and his meals irregular. But always in his heart, as abiding as an inventor’s faith in himself, there dwelt the hope that some day, somehow, he would “strike it rich” in the stock market.

One day he borrowed five dollars from a man who had made five thousand in Cosmopolitan Traction. The stock, the man said, had only begun to go up, and Gilmartin believed it and bought five shares in “Percy’s,” his favorite bucket shop. The stock began to rise slowly but steadily. The next afternoon “Percy’s” was raided, the proprietor having disagreed with the police as to price.

Gilmartin lingered about New Street, talking with other customers of the raided bucket shop, discussing whether or not it was a “put up job” of old Percy himself, who, it was known, had been losing money to the crowd for weeks past. One by one the victims went away and at length Gilmartin left the ticker district. He walked slowly down Wall Street, then turned up William Street, thinking of his luck. Cosmopolitan Traction had certainly looked like higher prices. Indeed, it seemed to him that he could almost hear the stock shouting, articulately: “_I’m going up, right away, right away!_” If somebody would buy a thousand shares and agree to give him the profits on a hundred, on ten, on one!

But he had not even his carfare. Then he remembered that he had not eaten since breakfast. It did him no good to remember it now. He would have to get his dinner from Griggs in Brooklyn.

“Why,” Gilmartin told himself with a burst of curious self-contempt, “I can’t even buy a cup of coffee!”

He raised his head and looked about him to find how insignificant a restaurant it was in which he could not buy even a cup of coffee. He had reached Maiden Lane. As his glance ran up and down the north side of that street, it was arrested by the sign:

MAXWELL & KIP

At first he felt but vaguely what it meant. It had grown unfamiliar with absence. The clerks were coming out. Jameson, looking crustier than ever, as though he were forever thinking how much better than Jenkins he could run the business; Danny, some inches taller, no longer an office boy, but spick and span in a blue serge suit and a necktie of the latest style, exhaling health and correctness; Williamson, grown very gray and showing on his face thirty years of routine; Baldwin, happy as of yore at the ending of the day’s work, and smiling at the words of Jenkins--Gilmartin’s successor, who wore an air of authority, of the habit of command which he had not known in the old days.

Of a sudden Gilmartin was in the midst of his old life. He saw all that he had been, all that he might still be. And he was overwhelmed. He longed to rush to his old associates, to speak to them, to shake hands with them, to be the old Gilmartin. He was about to step toward Jenkins, but stopped abruptly. His clothes were shabby, and he felt ashamed. But, he apologized to himself, he could tell them how he had made a hundred thousand and had lost it. And he even might borrow a few dollars from Jenkins.

Gilmartin turned on his heel with a sudden impulse and walked away from Maiden Lane quickly. All that he thought now was that he would not have them see him in his plight. He felt the shabbiness of his clothes without looking at them. As he walked, a great sense of loneliness came over him.

He was back in Wall Street. At the head of the Street was old Trinity; to the right the Sub-Treasury; to the left the Stock Exchange.

From Maiden Lane to the Lane of the Ticker--such had been his life.

“If I could only buy some Cosmopolitan Traction!” he said. Then he walked forlornly northward, to the great bridge, on his way to Brooklyn, to eat with Griggs, the ruined grocery man.