“It is not a question of any person’s judgment,” was the reply. “It is a question of knowledge. The stock is to be MADE to behave so.”
“But how can you know that the person who intends to make it behave may not be lying to you?”
“My information does not come from that person, but from a person who has no such interest—who, on the contrary, is in on the deal with me, and gains only as I gain.”
“Then, in other words,” said Montague, “your information is stolen?”
“Everything in Wall Street is stolen,” was Oliver’s concise reply.
There was a long silence, while the cab rolled swiftly on its way. “Well?” Oliver asked at last.
“I can imagine,” said Montague, “how a man might intend to move a certain stock, and think that he had the power, and yet find that he was mistaken. There are so many forces, so many chances to be considered—it seems to me you must be taking a risk.”
Oliver laughed. “You talk like a child,” was his reply. “Suppose that I were in absolute control of a corporation, and that I chose to run it for purposes of market manipulation, don’t you think I might come pretty near knowing what its stock was going to do?”
“Yes,” said Montague, slowly, “if such a thing as that were conceivable.”
“If it were conceivable!” laughed his brother. “And now suppose that I had a confidential man—a secretary, we’ll say—and I paid him twenty thousand a year, and he saw chances to make a hundred thousand in an hour—don’t you think he might conceivably try it?”