"And we'll lose everything! People always do in panics, don't they?"
I nodded gloomily.
"A good many do. That is, unless——"
"But the stop-loss!" she remembered joyfully, "we've got a stop-loss!"
"That's so!" I assented, "the stop-loss! Our stock is already sold—that is if the stop-loss worked."
"But you know you said it worked automatically."
"So it does—automatically, if—if it holds! It must have worked! I'll telephone at once, and see."
There was a telephone in the Apollo and I hurried to it. Five women and three men were waiting ahead of me, and every one tried to telephone about stocks. Some got replies and became hysterical. One elderly woman with a juvenile make-up and a great many rings fainted and was borne away unconscious. A good many got nothing whatever.
I was one of the latter. The line to my brokers was busy. It was busy all that day, during which we bought extras and suffered. By night-fall we would have rejoiced to know that even the original fragment of the Sum had been saved out of the general wreck of things on the Street.
It was. Even a little more, for the stop-loss that had failed to hold against the first sudden and overwhelming pressure, had caught somewhere about twenty, and our brokers next morning advised us of the sale.