“You feel that now?”
“I do,” Wannop admitted. “In fact, it’s hard to believe he will be beaten, though the rest of us are going back on him.”
Stirling nodded in a manner which might have meant anything.
“So your stock is being sold down?” he said. “As I pointed out to Mr. Weston, considering that you haven’t a great deal of it, that’s rather a dangerous game. Are any actual holders parting?”
They had spoken without reticence, in terse, sharp sentences, as men who recognized the advisability of coming straight to the point, which is, after all, a custom that usually saves trouble for everybody concerned. The men who shrink from candor, lest they should give themselves away, not infrequently waste a good deal of time wondering what the other person means, and then decide incorrectly.
“They are,” said Wannop. “Besides several small lots, one parcel of six hundred shares held in England changed hands, though that was when we stood near par and the stock was only beginning to break away. What we want is such a strike of ore as will startle mining investors.”
“Anything else?” Stirling asked suggestively.
“Well,” said Wannop, “we’re not likely to get it. If a good strong buyer, who could wait, were to take hold, it would help us as much as anything.”
“Quite sure?” asked Stirling very dryly.
“Isn’t it evident? It would stiffen prices and scare off the Hogarth brokers. What’s more, it would steady my colleagues’ nerves.”