Aynesworth moved towards the door.
Once more Wingrave called him back. He was leaning a little forward across the table. His face was very set and cold.
“There is a question which I wish to ask you, Aynesworth,” he said. “It concerns another matter altogether. Do you know who sent the Marconigram to Dr. Travers, which brought him to New York to meet his wife?”
“I do not,” Aynesworth answered.
“It was sent by someone on board the ship,” Wingrave continued. “You have no suspicion as to whom it could have been?”
“None!” Aynesworth answered firmly. “At the same time, I do not mind telling you this. If I had thought of it, I would have sent it myself.”
Wingrave shrugged his shoulders.
“It is perhaps fortunate for the continuation of our mutual relations that you did not think of it,” he remarked quietly. “I accept your denial. I shall expect you back at one o’clock.”
At a few minutes after that hour the two men sat down to luncheon. Wingrave at that time was the possessor of six thousand shares in the Royal Hardwell Copper Mine, which had cost him, on an average, two dollars twenty-five. The news of the dealing, however, had got about, and although derision was the chief sentiment amongst the brokers, the price steadily mounted. A dozen telegrams were sent out to the mine, and on receipt of the replies, the dealing became the joke of the day. The mine was still deserted, and no fresh inspection had been made. The price dropped a little. Then Wingrave bought a thousand more by telephone, and it rose again to four. A few minutes before closing time, he threw every share of which he was possessed upon the market, and the next morning Royal Hardwells stood at one dollar seventy-five.
For a week Wingrave pursued the same tactics, and at the end of that time he had made twenty thousand dollars. The brokers, however, now understood, or thought they understood, the situation. No one bought for the rise; they were all sellers. Wingrave at once changed his tactics. He bought five thousand shares in one block, and sold none. Even then, the market was only mildly amused. In a fortnight he was the nominal owner of sixteen thousand shares in a company of which only ten thousand actually existed. Then he sat still, and the panic began. The shares in a company which everyone believed to be worthless stood at thirty dollars, and not a share was offered.