He led Abe into an adjoining room where a tall youth was taking green cardboard numbers from a girdle which he wore, and sticking them on the quotation board.

“Hello!” Fiedler exclaimed as the youth affixed a new number.  “Interstate Copper has advanced a whole point since two days ago.  It’s now two and an eighth.”

Simultaneously, a young man in the back of the room exclaimed aloud in woeful profanity.

“What’s the matter with him?” Abe asked.

“They play ’em both ways—­a-hem!” Fiedler corrected himself in time.  “Occasionally we have a customer who sells short of the market, and then, of course, if the market goes up he gets stung—­er—­he sustains a loss.”

Here the door opened and Sol Klinger entered.  His bulging eyes fell on the quotation board, and at once his face spread into a broad smile.

“Hello, Sol!” Abe cried.  “You look like you sold a big bill of goods.”

“I hope I look better than that, Abe,” Sol replied.  “I make it more on that Interstate Copper in two days what I could make it on ten big bills of goods.  That’s a great property, Abe.”

“I think Mr. Klinger will have reason to congratulate himself still more by to-morrow, Mr. Potash,” Fiedler broke in.  “Interstate Copper is a stock with an immediate future.”

“You bet,” Sol agreed.  “I’m going to hold on to mine.  It’ll go up to five inside of a week.”

The young man from the rear of the room took the two rows of chairs at a jump.

“Fiedler,” he said, “I’m going to cover right away.  Buy me a thousand Interstate at the market.”

Sol nudged Abe, and after the young man and Fiedler had disappeared into the latter’s private office Sol imparted in hoarse whispers to Abe that the young man was reported to have information from the ground-floor crowd about Interstate Copper.

“Well, if that’s so,” Abe replied, “why does he lose money on it?”

“Because,” Sol explained, “he’s got an idee that if you act just contrariwise to the inside information what you get it, why then you come out right.”

Abe shook his head hopelessly.

“Pinochle, I understand it,” he said, “and skat a little also.  But this here stocks from stock exchanges is worser than chest what they play it in coffee-houses.”

“You don’t need to understand it, Abe,” Sol replied.  “All you do is to buy a thousand Interstate Copper to-day or to-morrow at any price up to two and a half, Abe, and I give you a guarantee that you make twenty-five hundred dollars by next week.”

When Abe returned to his place of business that day he had developed a typical case of stock-gambling fever, with which he proceeded to inoculate Morris as soon as the latter came back from lunch.  Abe at once recounted all his experiences of the morning and dwelt particularly on the phenomenal rise of Interstate Copper.

“Sol says he guarantees that we double our money in a week,” he concluded.