All Story Magazine, December 1913 — page 65: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A THIEVES’ up at Rollins’s friend, who jerked his head round and seemed to hesitate. Then he grinned—his lips curling back from his teeth. “Two hundred and fifty for fifty thousand! ** he bellowed, and there followed a moment's awful hush. “Sold the lot!” The answer came from underneath the gallery—a thunderbolt that wiped the smile from the big man’s lips in a twinkling. Every eye turned toward a tall, dark member of the exchange who emerged from obscurity and approached Rol- lins’s friend with a terrible calm. The latter went white—then gray. Leaning far over the rail, gaping at him foolishly, I saw his lips twitch and his glance go fearfully about him. Fifty thousand sold at 250! And there were not five thousand shares of Rand Island out of Rollins’s hands within five hundred miles of New York at that moment! I couldn’t move. My knees felt wabbly, and my mind struggled vainly through a fog. Dark shapes of men raced about below, screeching at one another—pandemonium. What happened in the succeeding few minutes was simply a jumble of incoherent things I did not understand ; but I waited to#see what the result would be. I could see Rollins’s friend looking about him dazedly, as ii the shock had numbed his faculties quite as much as mine; and then out of the flurry and above the tumult a clarion voice asked : “Want twenty-five thousand more at the price, Bailey?” Rollins’s friend threw his head back as if avoiding a blow and swung upon his tormentor like a wildcat. “ You heard me buy fifty thousand,” he snarled. I was far, far at sea. Something was all wrong somewhere. The “ cor- ner’? was a fizzle, and my head felt rather light as I groped my way toward the exit, praying that I might reach a telephone before the crash came. COMEDY. 775 F.ven the door was too far. * All right,” the twenty-five thousand man shouted amicably before I had gone three steps; “here goes. Ten thousand at 240!” It was like a straight right between the eyes. An uppercut, delivered by a * little * fellow anxious to unload, fol- lowed it a second later. * Five hundred at 225!” Just a moment's pause—then: ‘** \ thousand at 200!” I reached the door and took one look backward. Rollins’s friend was totter- ing across the floor toward the tele- phones. Riot had come. “Ten thousand at 175!” “ Fifteen hundred at 160!” “A thousand at 150!” “Twenty-five thousand at par!” My throat clogged up and there was a sort of mist before my eyes. I don’t know what the doorkeeper thought of me, but I staggered toward the elevator like a drunken man, feel- ing that I had been betrayed. CHAPTER XIX. JUST AN ACCIDENT. WueEn I reached the street I did not stop to study the crowd or the seething torment of the curb-market half a square further down, but raced madly to Smith & Nelson's office. There was a mob of fanatics there, too, crowding about the ticker, while some one in a deadly monotone read off the returns, and another worn-out- looking chap chalked them on a black- board for all the world to see. I had just buttonholed some one whom I[ thought I recognized as an employee, and was gulping out an order to sell when that lifeless voice chanted: ‘Rand Island—80—77—75—”’ It went lower than that — twenty- five points lower—almost quicker than the chap at the blackboard could write it down. 2 : comlicloooks.com