In five minutes Bojo had told him in the strictest confidence all he knew. Forshay received the news with thoughtful deliberation.
"I'd like it better if Dan Drake had said it direct to you," he said, frowning. "Still, it's valuable. There may be a good deal in it. I think I can get a line on it myself. Jimmie Boskirk is a good pal of mine and he'll know. You keep me informed and I'll let you know what I find out. Go a little slow. Dan Drake is up to a good many tricks. He's fooled the talent many a time before. Suppose we say Friday night for our little confab. Good."
The mention of Jimmie Boskirk cast a damper over the delights the interview had brought Bojo. He did not at once realize how easily Forshay had played him for the information he desired and how really valuable he believed it. He was lost in a new irritation. Young Boskirk had been conspicuously assiduous in his attentions to Doris; and, while this fact aroused in him no jealousy, he had an uncomfortable feeling that Boskirk was in fact the source of her information.
But the opening of the market completely drove all other thoughts out of his mind. For the first time he came under the poignant tyranny of the flowing tape. Do what he would he could not keep away from it. Indiana Smelter opened at 104½, went off the fraction, and then advanced to 106 on moderate strength in buying orders.
"A point and a half—$1500—I've made $1500—just like that," he said to himself, stupefied. He went to his desk, but ten minutes later on the pretext of getting a glass of water he returned to the tape to make sure that his eyes had not deceived him. There it was again and no mistake—200 Indiana Smelter, 106. He sat down at his desk in a turmoil. Fifteen hundred dollars! Five times what he had made in three months. If he had bought two thousand shares, as he could have easily, at a safe twenty per cent. margin, he would have made three thousand. He felt angry at himself, defrauded, and, drawing a paper before him, he began to figure out his profits if the stock should go to 140 or 150, as every one said it must if the combination went through.
Then, in order to realize himself his colossal earnings, he called up Doris on the telephone to hear the sound of such figures. At one, when he went out to snatch a mouthful at a standing lunch, he consulted three tickers, impatient that no further sales had been recorded. When Ricketts, who was still on the sheets, came up to him with his daily budget of gossip, he listened avidly. Every tip interested him, fraught with a new dramatic significance. He felt like taking him aside and whispering in his ear:
"Listen, Ricketts, if you want a good thing buy Indiana Smelter: it'll go to 140. I've made fifteen hundred dollars on it in a couple of hours."
But he did nothing of the sort. He looked very wise and bored, feeling immensely superior as a capitalist and future member of the firm of Hauk, Flaspoller and Forshay, over Ricketts, who had started when he had started and was still on the sheets at fifteen dollars a week. "Whispering Bill" Golightly, who had the hypnotic art of inducing clients to buy and sell and buy again all in the same day, on artfully fluctuating rumors (to no disparagement of his commission account), came sidling up, and he hailed him regally.
"Hello, Bill, what do you know?"
"Buy Redding," said Golightly softly, with a confidential flutter of the near eyelid.