“Oh, hell, no. I’ve got a lot more to buy. It’s all right. Go ahead, Joe.”
And Joe went ahead. He bought the 5,000 shares. The stock rose to 119½, and Hayward, warned by his experience with Hartley and Thompson, did not ask either friend or foe to buy another 5,000 shares for him. What he did was to distribute buying orders for 10,000 shares in lots of 500. Brokers now accepted his orders, for they were not so large as to be dangerous. And the stock rose to 122¾. A few shorts were frightened. He might win out after all; he might make Pike’s Peak. He began to bid up the stock. He even bought “cash” stock, that is, stock for which he paid cash, had to pay cash outright, receiving the certificates forthwith, presumably to hand over to some investor of millions. Everybody on the “floor” was talking about Hayward. The entire market had risen in sympathy with Sugar.
But at 124 it seemed as if the entire capital stock was for sale. He ceased buying. He had accumulated 38,000 shares. To pay for the stock necessitated about six and one-half millions! But if he could unload on an average of only 122 he might “come out even” in his other troubles.
He gave an order to sell 10,000 shares to a broker to whom he had always been a good friend. It was a fatal mistake. The broker, Louis W. Wechsler, had previously sold 1,000 shares to Hayward for “cash” at 122. He suspected what was coming, and declining the order, he himself went to Hayward’s office and asked for a check. The cashier sought to put him off with excuses, and Wechsler now being certain of the true state of affairs, returned to the Board and began to sell Sugar short for his own account. If a crash came he would make instead of losing it. Hayward was sure to be ruined, and Wechsler told himself sophistically that he was only profiting by the inevitable. In the meantime Sally had sold the 10,000 shares through another broker, and the price had declined to 121¾. But Wechsler’s 5,000 shares put it down to 120½. And somebody else sold more, and the shorts recovered from their fright, and the fatal hour was approaching when Hayward would have to settle. Pike’s Peak or bust! He did, indeed, need a veritable Pike’s Peak of dollars to pay for the 28,000 Sugar he had on hand. So he busted.
He threw up his hands. He acknowledged defeat to himself. The tension was over. He was no longer excited, but cool, almost cynical. On one of the little slips of paper on which brokers jot down memoranda of their transactions he scribbled a message in lead pencil. It was his last official lie, and would cost Hartley and Thompson and other friends, as well as his customers, many thousands of dollars. It was as follows:
“Owing to the refusal of their bank to extend the usual facilities to them, Hayward & Co. are compelled to announce their suspension.”
“Boy!” he yelled. And he gave the bit of paper to one of the Exchange messenger boys in gray. “Take this to the Chairman.”
And he walked slowly, almost swaggeringly, out of the New York Stock Exchange—for the last time—as the Chairman pounded with his gavel until the usual crowd gathered about the rostrum, and listened to the announcement of the failure of “Sally” Hayward, who began as a nice little telephone-boy and ended as a stock-gambler.
A THEOLOGICAL TIPSTER
At first Wall Street thought that Silas Shaw’s “religiousness” was an affectation. What purpose the Old Man desired to serve by the calculated notoriety of his church affiliations no one could tell. It is true that many ingenious theories were advanced, some going so far as to hint at repentance. But deep in the hearts of his fellow-brokers, and of his friends and his victims alike, was the belief that old Shaw, in some not generally known way, made practical use of his ostentatious enthusiasm for things churchly as politicians resort to more or less obvious devices to “capture the German vote” or to “please the Irish element.”