The Tipster | Page 8

share within three months. Am in position to keep informed as to developments and the operations of a pool. Parties who will carry for me 100 shares with a New York Stock Exchange house will receive the full benefit of information. Investment safe and sure. Highest references given.
He prospered amazingly. Answers came to him from furniture dealers on Fourth Avenue and dairymen up the State and fruit growers in Delaware and factory workers in Massachusetts and electricians in New Jersey and coal miners in Pennsylvania and shopkeepers and physicians and plumbers and undertakers in towns and cities near and far. Every morning Gilmartin telegraphed to scores of people--at their expense--to sell, and to scores of others to buy the same stocks. And he claimed his commissions from the winners.
Little by little his savings grew; and with them grew his desire to speculate on his own account. It made him irritable not to gamble.
He met Freeman one day in one of his dissatisfied moods. Out of politeness he asked the young cynic the universal query of the Street:
"What do you think of 'em?" He meant stocks.
"What difference does it make what I think?" sneered Freeman, with proud humility. "I'm nobody." But he looked as if he did not agree with himself.
"What do you know?" pursued Gilmartin mollifyingly.
"I know enough to be long of Gotham Gas. I just bought a thousand shares at 180." He really had bought a hundred only.
"What on?"
"On information. I got it straight from a director of the company. Look here, Gilmartin, I'm pledged to secrecy. But, for your own benefit, I'll just tell you to buy all the Gas you possibly can carry. The deal is on. I know that certain papers were signed last night, and they are almost ready to spring it on the public. They haven't got all the stock they want. When they get it, look out for fireworks."
Gilmartin did not perceive any resemblance between Freeman's tips and his own.
He said, hesitatingly, as though ashamed of his timidity:
"The stock seems pretty high at 180."
"You won't think so when it sells at 250. Gilmartin, I don't hear this; I don't think it; I know it!"
"All right; I'm in," quoth Gilmartin, jovially. He felt a sense of emancipation now that he had made up his mind to resume his speculating. He took every cent of the nine hundred dollars he had made from telling people the same things that Freeman told him now, and bought a hundred Gotham Gas at $185 a share. Also he telegraphed to all his clients to plunge in the stock.
It fluctuated between 184 and 186 for a fortnight. Freeman daily asseverated that "they" were accumulating the stock. But, one fine day, the directors met, agreed that business was bad, and having sold out most of their own holdings, decided to reduce the dividend rate from 8 to 6 per cent. Gotham Gas broke seventeen points in ten short minutes. Gilmartin lost all he had. He found it impossible to pay for his advertisements. The telegraph companies refused to accept any more "collect" messages. This deprived Gilmartin of his income as a tipster. Griggs had kept on speculating and had lost all his money and his wife's in a little deal in Iowa Midland. All that Gilmartin could hope to get from him was an occasional invitation to dinner. Mrs. Gilmartin, after they were dispossessed for non-payment of rent, left her husband, and went to live with a sister in Newark who did not like Gilmartin.
His clothes became shabby and his meals irregular. But always in his heart, as abiding as an inventor's faith in himself, there dwelt the hope that some day, somehow, he would "strike it rich" in the stock market.
One day he borrowed five dollars from a man who had made five thousand in Cosmopolitan Traction. The stock, the man said, had only begun to go up, and Gilmartin believed it and bought five shares in "Percy's," his favorite bucket shop. The stock began to rise slowly but steadily. The next afternoon "Percy's" was raided, the proprietor having disagreed with the police as to price.
Gilmartin lingered about New Street, talking with other customers of the raided bucket shop, discussing whether or not 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