Mr. Ault’s operations constantly enlarged, his schemes went beyond the business of registering other people’s bets and taking a commission on them; he was known as a daring but successful promoter, and he had a visible ownership in steamships and railways, and projected such vast operations as draining the Jersey marshes.  If he had been a citizen of Italy he would have attacked the Roman Campagna with the same confidence.  At any rate, he made himself so much felt and seemed to command so many resources that it was not long before he forced his way into the Stock Exchange and had a seat in the Board of Brokers.  He was at first an odd figure there.  There was something flash about his appearance, and his heavy double watch-chain and diamond shirt-studs gave him the look of an ephemeral adventurer.  But he soon took his cue, the diamonds disappeared, and the dress was toned down.  There seemed to be two models in the Board, the smart and neat, and the hayseed style adopted by some of the most wily old operators, who posed as honest dealers who retained their rural simplicity.  Mr. Ault adopted a middle course, and took the respectable yet fashionable, solid dress of a man of affairs.

There is no other place in the world where merit is so quickly recognized as in the Stock Exchange, especially if it is backed by brass and a good head.  Ault’s audacity made him feared; he was believed to be as unscrupulous as he was reckless, but this did not much injure his reputation when it was seen that he was marvelously successful.  That Ault would wreck the market, if he could and it was to his advantage, no one doubted; but still he had a quality that begot confidence.  He kept his word.  Though men might be shy of entering into a contract with Ault, they learned that what he said he would do he would do literally.  He was not a man of many words, but he was always decided and apparently open, and, as whatever he touched seemed to thrive, his associates got the habit of saying, “What Ault says goes.”

Murad Ault had married, so it was said, the daughter of a boarding-house keeper on the dock.  She was a pretty girl, had been educated in a convent (perhaps by his aid after he was engaged to marry her), and was a sweet mother to a little brood of charming children, and a devout member of her parish church.  Those who had seen Mrs. Ault when her carriage took her occasionally to Ault’s office in the city were much impressed by her graceful manner and sweet face, and her appearance gave Ault a sort of anchorage in the region of respectability.  No one would have accused Ault of being devoted to any special kind of religious worship; but he was equally tolerant of all religions, and report said was liberal in his wife’s church charities.  Besides the fact that he owned a somewhat pretentious house in Sixtieth Street, society had very little knowledge of him.