“No, no,” Oliver added.  “I have never put up a dollar for anything of Evans’s, and I never shall.—­They are simply a side issue, anyway,” he added carelessly.

A couple of mornings later, while Montague was at breakfast, his brother called him up and said that he was coming round, and would go down town with him.  Montague knew at once that that meant something serious, for he had never before known his brother to be awake so early.

They took a cab; and then Oliver explained.  The moment had arrived—­the time to take the plunge, and come up with a fortune.  He could not tell much about it, for it was a matter upon which he stood pledged to absolute secrecy.  There were but four people in the country who knew about it.  It was the chance of a lifetime—­and in four or five hours it would be gone.  Three times before it had come to Oliver, and each time he had multiplied his capital several times; that he had not made millions was simply because he did not have enough money.  His brother must take his word for this and simply put himself into his hands.

“What is it you want me to do?” asked Montague, gravely.

“I want you to take every dollar you have, or that you can lay your hands on this morning, and turn it over to me to buy stocks with.”

“To buy on margin, you mean?”

“Of course I mean that,” said Oliver.  Then, as he saw his brother frown, he added, “Understand me, I have absolutely certain information as to how a certain stock will behave to-day.”

“The best judges of a stock often make mistakes in such matters,” said Montague.

“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?”