The Tipster | Page 9

it was a "put up job"
of old Percy himself, who, it was known, had been losing money to the
crowd for weeks past. One by one the victims went away and at length
Gilmartin left the ticker district. He walked slowly down Wall Street,
then turned up William Street, thinking of his luck. Cosmopolitan
Traction had certainly looked like higher prices. Indeed, it seemed to
him that he could almost hear the stock shouting, articulately: "I'm
going up, right away, right away!" If somebody would buy a thousand
shares and agree to give him the profits on a hundred, on ten, on one!
But he had not even his carfare. Then he remembered that he had not
eaten since breakfast. It did him no good to remember it now. He
would have to get his dinner from Griggs in Brooklyn.
"Why," Gilmartin told himself with a burst of curious self-contempt, "I

can't even buy a cup of coffee!"
He raised his head and looked about him to find how insignificant a
restaurant it was in which he could not buy even a cup of coffee. He
had reached Maiden Lane. As his glance ran up and down the north
side of that street, it was arrested by the sign:
MAXWELL & KIP
At first he felt but vaguely what it meant. It had grown unfamiliar with
absence. The clerks were coming out. Jameson, looking crustier than
ever, as though he were forever thinking how much better than Jenkins
he could run the business; Danny, some inches taller, no longer an
office boy, but spick and span in a blue serge suit and a necktie of the
latest style, exhaling health and correctness; Williamson, grown very
gray and showing on his face thirty years of routine; Baldwin, happy as
of yore at the ending of the day's work, and smiling at the words of
Jenkins--Gilmartin's successor, who wore an air of authority, of the
habit of command which he had not known in the old days.
Of a sudden Gilmartin was in the midst of his old life. He saw all that
he had been, all that he might still be. And he was overwhelmed. He
longed to rush to his old associates, to speak to them, to shake hands
with them, to be the old Gilmartin. He was about to step toward Jenkins,
but stopped abruptly. His clothes were shabby, and he felt ashamed.
But, he apologized to himself, he could tell them how he had made a
hundred thousand and had lost it. And he even might borrow a few
dollars from Jenkins.
Gilmartin turned on his heel with a sudden impulse and walked away
from Maiden Lane quickly. All that he thought now was that he would
not have them see him in his plight. He felt the shabbiness of his
clothes without looking at them. As he walked, a great sense of
loneliness came over him.
He was back in Wall Street. At the head of the Street was old Trinity;
to the right the Sub-Treasury; to the left the Stock Exchange.

From Maiden Lane to the Lane of the Ticker--such had been his life.
"If I could only buy some Cosmopolitan Traction!" he said. Then he
walked forlornly northward, to the great bridge, on his way to Brooklyn,
to eat with Griggs, the ruined grocery man.

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