To be sure, the secret of our meetings was whispered in right quarters, and every day found fresh buyers for Blackberry. Meanwhile, the shares climbed high and ever higher, until one bland April morning they stood at one hundred and thirty-seven.
Throughout my series of meetings with the president of Blackberry, I had seen no trace of Morton. For that I cared nothing, but played my part slowly so as to give him time, having confidence in his loyalty, and knowing that my interest was his interest, and I in no sort to be worsted. On that day when Blackberry showed at one hundred and thirty-seven, Morton appeared. He laid down a check for an even million of dollars.
“I've been getting out of Blackberry for a week,” said he, with his air of delicate lassitude. “I found that it was tiring me, don't y' know; I did really! Besides, we've done enough: No gentlemen ever makes more than one million on a single turn; it's not good form.” That check, drawn to my order, was the biggest of its kind I'd ever handled. I took it up, and I could feel a pringling to my finger-ends with the contact of so much wealth all mine. I envied my languid friend his genius for coolness and aplomb. He selected a cigarette, and lighted it as though a million here and there, on a twist of the market, was a commonest of affairs. When I could command my voice, I said:
“And now I suppose we may give Blackberry its franchises?”
“No, not yet,” returned Morton. “Really, we're not half through. I've not only gotten rid of our holdings, but I've sold thirty-five thousand shares the other way. It was a deuced hard thing to do without sending the stock off—the market is always so beastly ready to tumble, don't y' know. But I managed it; we're now short about thirty-five thousand shares at one hundred and thirty-seven.”
“What then?” said I.
“On the whole,” continued Morton, with just a gleam of triumph behind his eyeglass, “on the whole, I think I should refuse Blackberry, don't y' know. The public interest would be thrown away; and gad! the people are prodigiously moved over it already, they are, really! It would be neither right nor safe. I'd come out in an interview declaring that a grant of what Blackberry asks for would be to pillage the town. Here, I've the interview prepared. What do you say? Shall we send it to the Daily Tory?”
The interview appeared; Blackberry fell with a crash. It slumped fifty points, and Morton and I were each the better by fairly another million. Blackberry grazed the reef of a receivership so closely that it rubbed the paint from its side.