oftener and longer than I said ‘Buy.’  He may have had money back of him, or he may only have had nerve.  God Almighty is the only one who can tell, for when Conant was through he was able to buy back at 90 the 50,000 shares he sold me at 175, the 50,000 that broke my back.  Jim, if I had known as much that day as I do now I would have stood in that crowd and bought all the stock he sold at 180 and I would have stood there buying until hell froze over or he quit; then I would have made him rebuy it at 280 or 2,080, and I would have broken him and all his Camemeyer and ‘Standard Oil’ backers; broken them to their last crime-covered dollar.”

“Bob, what are you talking about?  It is all Chinese to me.  I cannot get head or tail of what you are driving at.”

“I know you can’t, Jim, neither could Wall Street if it were listening to me.  But you will, and Wall Street will too, before many days go by.  Now I must be off.  I have work to do.”

He put on his hat and left me trying to puzzle out just what he meant.

Next day the Sugar bulls had the centre of the Stock Exchange stage.  All day long they tossed Sugar from one to another as though each thousand shares had been a wisp of hay instead of $200,000—­for soon after the opening it soared to 200.  The “System’s” cohorts were in absolute control, with Barry Conant never a minute away from the Sugar-pole, always on the alert to steer the course of prices when they threatened to run away on the up or the down side.  It was evident to the expert readers of the tape that the “System” was currying its steed for an exceptionally brilliant run.  Ike Bloomstein, the Average Fiend, who for forty years had kept close track of every movement on the floor, and who would bet anything, from his Fifth Avenue mansion to his overripe boardroom straw hat, that all stocks and movements were as strictly subject to the law of averages as are the tides to the moon and sun, remarked to Joe Barnes, the loan expert: 

“‘Cam’ unt de Keroseners are pudding up egstra dop rails to dot wool-pen deh haf ben pilding since deh took Pop Prownlee and deh Rantolphs into gamp.  Unless my topesheet goes pack on me, for deh first dime in forty years dere vill pe a record clip pefore a veek from to-tay.”

“I am with you there, Ike,” answered Joe.  “If Barry Conant’s knife-edged teeth ever spelt a killin’, they do to-day.  I just got orders from somewhere to drop call money from four to two and a half per cent., and they have given me ten millions to drop it with and the order is to favour Sugar as ‘collat.’  Some one is anxious to make it easy for the bleaters to get the coin to buy all the Sugar they want.  Ike, you and I might make turkey money for Thanksgiving if we only knew whether Barry and his bunch were going to shoot her up thirty or forty points before they turned the bag upside down, or whether they will bury them from 200 to 150.  What do you think?”