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 shop keepers 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.