Slowly the price began to yield. All that was needed was a leader. Whereupon Mr. Sharpe took the first lot of pool stock, 40,000 shares, and hurled it full at the market. The impact was terrible; the execution appalling. The market reeled crazily. The stock, which after selling up to 72¾ had “closed” on the previous day at 71⅞, dropped twenty points and closed at 54. The newspapers said that the corner was “busted”; that the “squeeze” was over. Hundreds of people slept ill that night. Scores did not sleep at all.
On the next day he fired by volleys 50,000 shares more at the market. The stock sank to 41¼. Such a break was almost unprecedented.
The Street asked itself if it were not on the eve of a crash that would become historic in a district whose chronology is reckoned by big market movements.
Greenbaum rushed to Sharpe’s office. The terrible break gave him courage to do anything. A Wall Street worm will turn when the market misbehaves itself.
“What’s the matter?” he asked angrily. “What are you doing to Turpentine?”
Sharpe looked him full in the face, but his voice was even and emotionless as he replied: “Somebody has been selling on us. I don’t know who. I wish I did. I was afraid I might have to take 100,000 shares more, so I just sold as much as I could. I’ve marketed most of the pool’s stock. If it had not been for the jag of stock I struck around 60 and 62, Turpentine would be selling at 85 or 90 to-day. Come again next week, Greenbaum; and keep cool. Did you ever know me to fail? Good-by, Greenbaum; and don’t raise your voice when you speak to me.”
“This has gone too far,” said Greenbaum, hotly. “You must give me an explanation or by Heaven I’ll——”
“Greenbaum,” said Mr. Sharpe, in a listless voice, “don’t get excited. Good-by, Greenbaum. Be virtuous and you will be happy.” And he resumed his caged-tiger pacing up and down his office. As by magic, Mr. Sharpe’s burly private secretary appeared, and said: “This way, Mr. Greenbaum,” and led the dazed Trust-maker from the office. On his return Sharpe told him: “There is no need to accuse those fellows of breach of faith. They’d deny it.”
The next day Mr. Sharpe simply poured the remaining 25,000 shares of the pool’s stock on the market as one pours water from a pitcher into a cup. The bears had it all their own way. The loquacious tape said, ever so plainly: “This is nothing but inside liquidation, all the more dangerous and ominous since it is at such low figures and is so urgent in its character. Heaven alone can tell where it will end; and there is no telephone communication thither.”
Everybody was selling because somebody had started a rumor that the courts had dissolved the company for gross violation of the Anti-Trust law, and that a receiver had been appointed. Having sold out the last of the pool’s stock, Mr. Sharpe “took in” at $22 a share the 2,800 shares which he had put out at $72, a total profit on his small “line” of $140,000.