“Thanks,” said John. “When I want to be amused I’ll look you up. Tell Mr. Bullguard I’ve been eaten up so often that I like it. Sometimes I fairly hunger for it. Why did you change your mind?”
“How could I have changed my mind?” Sabath injuredly asked. “How can you say that? It had never been made up.”
“Why did you change your mind?” John insisted.
“You would be betrayed,” said Sabath. “I should be betrayed, too, of course; but I’m used to it and you’re not. The only man you don’t suspect is always the one who betrays you.”
“Did Mr. Bullguard call you off?” John asked.
“You might never get used to it,” Sabath continued, vaguely, ignoring the question. “You wouldn’t know what to do. I’ve been betrayed so much that I know it before it happens. And I know what to do. You never get through a deal like this without being betrayed.”
He turned sadly and walked back to the ticker. The interview was closed.
John reacted to this experience with thoughtful curiosity. He was baffled and chagrined and at the same time deeply interested, for he perceived that here was a province of the dynamic mind in which subtlety was carried to its ultimate point. After long reflection he was still of the opinion that underlying Sabath’s diabolism lay a vein of well meaning; also of the opinion still that the puissant Bullguard had interfered. But why? What could his motive be? This was presently to be discovered. John explored the matter adroitly and learned that Bullguard was about to do for the Carmichael crowd what John lone-handed had attempted to do for his crowd,—that is to say, capitalize the steel business and introduce it to the public. Naturally Bullguard desired the field to himself and took a high-handed way against the interloper.
Nevertheless, John resolved to go on. He would be his own manipulator. Why not? The stock market was nobody’s private preserve. He had as much right there as Bullguard or Sabath. Besides, where was the risk? He controlled all the shares of the American Steel Company.
So he engaged a broker, who engaged other brokers, and buying and selling orders, both issuing from John, began to be executed in American Steel. For a while he was delighted. It was so easy to make the shares active, to make them go up and down, to create the illusion of excited bargaining, that he began to wonder why anyone should pay manipulators large fees to do this simple trick. He wondered, too, what Sabath was thinking of his performance. He could almost feel Sabath watching him. He imagined him at the ticker, tweaking his beard, sneering at the amateur quotations that were appearing on the tape for American Steel.