Justin Bolton’s eyes were gleaming. Most of the color had left his cheeks. His breath was coming in quick, short gasps. It was near the moment when he hoped to reap millions from his operations, and also to become the largest owner of P. & Y. Yet this schemer, knowing full well that the sales below were being made mainly on his own account, realized also that the Delavan-Moddridge stock had not been sprung.
“Does Delavan think he’s at a moving-picture show?” whispered Joe Dawson, in Tom Halstead’s ear. “Is he going to do nothing but sit here and smile?”
“Perhaps there’s nothing he can do here yet,” was Halstead’s answer. “I am wondering whether he’s going down to ruin, or whether he hopes to find the way out yet.”
A messenger from one of the brokers on the floor now darted through the gallery, handing a sheet of paper to Justin Bolton.
That worthy, after glancing over the sheet, penciled a few words upon it. The messenger hastened back to one of the brokers below.
Bolton’s own face, after the messenger had gone, was of a ghastly pallor. He looked unsteady, worried—or else as though he were about to take the most daring plunge of all.
“Watch out for what’s going to happen,” nudged Mr. Coggswell. That broker had now a pad on his own knee, a fountain pen in hand, as though prepared to dash off written orders in a hurry.
“Look out for a thunderclap,” whispered Coggswell, as one of the Bolton brokers on the floor hurried forward.
Then it came:
“Forty thousand P. & Y. at 60!”