But there was the boy with the one hundred shares, the pleasant little clerk from up-the-State, who had brought in his entire fortune, his accumulated savings of two hundred and ten dollars. He was a stranger to Wall Street. But supposing he should tell that he had been advised to sell? There would be the deuce to pay!
The colonel took chances. Out of one corner of his mouth, so that he did not even turn his head toward the boy and so that the watching customers could not suspect what he was doing, he shot a quick whisper—a lob-sided but philanthropic affair—at him: “Look at the color of your money, boy! Take your profits and say nothing!” And he walked into the room where the Suburban Trolley magnates awaited him impatiently.
Carey, thrilled but taciturn, gave his order to sell his Easton & Allentown, unsuspected by the mob. They sold it for him at 105⅛. Deducting commissions and interest charges the colonel’s whisper had put $1,050 in the young clerk’s pocket.
And the stock went a little higher and then declined slowly to about 99. The customers all made a great deal of money as it was, but not as much as they would have “taken out” of the Easton & Allentown “deal” if they had overheard that one of Colonel Treadwell’s many whispers—lob-sided but philanthropic affairs!
THE MAN WHO WON
“Brown,” said Mr. John P. Greener, as he turned away from the ticker in the corner, “I wish you would go over to the Board and see how the market is for Iowa Midland. Find out how much stock there is for sale and who has it. It ought to be pretty well distributed about the Street.”
“What’s up in it?” asked his partner, curiously.
“Nothing—yet,” answered Greener, quietly.
He sat down at his desk and took up a letter, headed “President’s Office, Keokuk & Northern Railway Company, Keokuk, Iowa.” When he had finished the entire sixteen closely written pages, he arose and paced slowly up and down his office.
He was a sallow-faced, black-bearded little man, slender—almost frail looking—with a high but rather narrow forehead. His eyes were furtive, shifty bits of brown light. He was thinking, and thinking to some purpose. Any one, even a stranger, seeing him, would have known that he was thinking of something big—the forehead was responsible for the impression; and also of something tricky, unscrupulous, cold-blooded—his eyes were to blame there. At length his brow cleared. He muttered: “I must have that road. Then, a consolidation with my Keokuk & Northern; and a new system that will endure as long as the country!”