"I've nothing to buy," came the answer. "That will show you how square I have been in my tip, and how confident I am. I haven't sold a share outside the list, so I have nothing to deliver. I am still selling short and hammering down the list, and the list only. There's my killing, and you can share in it by as much as you continue to sell short."
"There you are!" Bascom, in despair in his private office, cried to Francis at ten-thirty. "Here's the whole market rising, except your lines. Regan's out for blood. I never dreamed he could show such strength. We can't stand this. We're finished. We're smashed now you, me, all of us everything."
Never had Francis been cooler. Since all was lost, why worry? was his attitude; and, a mere layman in the game, he caught a glimpse of possibilities that were veiled to Bascom who too thoroughly knew too much about the game.
"Take it easy," Francis counseled, his new vision assuming form and substance with each tick of a second. "Let's have a smoke and talk it over for a few minutes."
Bascom made a gesture of infinite impatience.
"But wait," Francis urged. "Stop! Look! Listen! I'm finished, you say?"
His broker nodded.
"You're finished?"
Again the nod.
"Which means that we're busted, flat busted," Francis went on to the exposition of his new idea. "Now it is perfectly clear, then, to your mind and mine, that a man can never be worse than a complete, perfect, hundred-percent., entire, total bust."