The Tipster | Page 3

They escorted him to his house. They wished to be with him to the last
possible minute.

III
Everybody in the drug trade seemed to think that Gilmartin was on the
highroad to Fortune. Those old business acquaintances and former
competitors whom he happened to meet in the street-cars or in the
theatre lobbies always spoke to him as to a millionaire-to-be, in what
they imagined was correct Wall Street jargon, to show him that they
too knew something of the great game. But their efforts made him
smile with a sense of superiority, at the same time that their admiration
for his cleverness and their good-natured envy for his luck made his
soul thrill joyously. Among his new friends in Wall Street also he
found much to enjoy. The other customers--some of them very wealthy
men--listened to his views regarding the market as attentively as he,
later, felt it his polite duty to listen to theirs. The brokers themselves
treated him as a "good fellow." They cajoled him into trading
often--every one hundred shares he bought or sold meant $12.50 to
them--and when he won, they praised his unerring discernment. When
he lost they soothed him by scolding him for his recklessness--just as a
mother will treat her three-year-old's fall as a great joke in order to
deceive the child into laughing at its misfortune. It was an average
office with an average clientèle.
From ten to three they stood before the quotation board and watched a
quick-witted boy chalk the price changes, which one or another of the
customers read aloud from the tape as it came from the ticker. The
higher stocks went the more numerous the customers became, being
allured in great flocks to the Street by the tales of their friends, who had
profited greatly by the rise. All were winning, for all were buying
stocks in a bull market. They resembled each other marvelously, these
men who differed so greatly in cast of features and complexion and age.
Life to all of them was full of joy. The very ticker sounded mirthful; its

clicking told of golden jokes. And Gilmartin and the other customers
laughed heartily at the mildest of stories without even waiting for the
point of the joke. At times their fingers clutched the air happily, as if
they actually felt the good money the ticker was presenting to them.
They were all neophytes at the great game--lambkins who were
bleating blithely to inform the world what clever and formidable
wolves they were. Some of them had sustained occasional losses; but
these were trifling compared with their winnings.
When the slump came all were heavily committed to the bull side. It
was a bad slump. It was so unexpected--by the lambs--that all of them
said, very gravely, it came like a thunderclap out of a clear sky. While
it lasted, that is, while the shearing of the flock was proceeding, it was
very uncomfortable. Those same joyous, winning stock-gamblers, with
beaming faces, of the week before, were fear-clutched, losing
stock-gamblers, with livid faces, on what they afterward called the day
of the panic. It really was only a slump; rather sharper than usual. Too
many lambs had been over-speculating. The wholesale dealers in
securities--and insecurities--held very little of their own wares, having
sold them to the lambs, and wanted them back now--cheaper. The
customers' eyes, as on happier days, were intent on the quotation board.
Their dreams were rudely shattered; the fast horses some had all but
bought joined the steam yachts others almost had chartered. The
beautiful homes they had been building were torn down in the
twinkling of an eye. And the demolisher of dreams and dwellings was
the ticker, that instead of golden jokes was now clicking financial death.
They could not take their eyes from the board before them. Their own
ruin, told in mournful numbers by the little machine, fascinated them.
To be sure, poor Gilmartin said: "I've changed my mind about Newport.
I guess I'll spend the summer on my own Hotel de Roof!" And he
grinned; but he grinned alone. Wilson, the dry goods man, who laughed
so joyously at everybody's jokes, was now watching, as if under a
hypnotic spell, the lips of the man who sat on the high stool beside the
ticker and called out the prices to the quotation boy. Now and again
Wilson's own lips made curious grimaces, as if speaking to himself.
Brown, the slender, pale-faced man, was outside in the hall, pacing to
and fro. All was lost, including honor. And he was afraid to look at the

ticker, afraid to hear the prices shouted, yet hoping--for a miracle!
Gil-martin came out from the office, saw Brown and said, with sickly
bravado: "I held out as long as I