“You have been selling wheat again?”
Hawtrey looked embarrassed, for her manner was not conciliatory. “Well,” he admitted, “I have sold some.”
“Wheat you haven’t got?”
Hawtrey did not answer, and Sally sat down. Her manner suggested that she meant thoroughly to investigate the matter, and Edmonds, who would have greatly preferred to get rid of her, decided that as it appeared impossible he would appeal to her cupidity. The Creightons were grasping folk, and he had heard of her engagement to Hawtrey.
“If you will permit me I’ll try to explain,” he said. “We’ll say that you have reason for believing that wheat will go down and you tell a broker to sell it forward at a price a little below the actual one. If other people do the same it drops faster, and before you have to deliver you can buy it in at less than you sold it at. A great deal of money can be picked up that way.”
“It looks easy,” Sally agreed, with something in her manner which led him to fancy he might win her over. “Of course, prices have been falling. Gregory has been selling down?”
“He has. In fact, there’s already a big margin to his credit,” declared Edmonds unsuspectingly.
“That is, if he bought in now he’d have cleared—several thousand dollars?”
Edmonds told her exactly how much, and then started in sudden consternation with rage in his heart, for she turned to Hawtrey imperiously.
“Then you’ll write your broker to buy in right away,” she said.