After the slump most of the customers returned to their legitimate
business—sadder, but it is to be feared, not much wiser men. Gilmartin,
after the first numbing shock, tried to learn of fresh opportunities in
the drug business. But his heart was not in his search. There was the
shame of confessing defeat in Wall Street so soon after leaving Maiden
Lane; but far stronger than this was the effect of the poison of
gambling. If it was bad enough to be obliged to begin lower than he had
been at Maxwell & Kip’s, it was worse to condemn himself to long weary
years of work in the drug business when his reward, if he remained
strong and healthy, would consist merely in being able to save a few
thousands. But a few lucky weeks in the stock market would win him back
all he had lost—and more!
He should have begun in a small way while he was learning to speculate.
He saw it now very clearly. Every one of his mistakes had been due to
inexperience. He had imagined he knew the market. But it was only now
that he really knew it and therefore it was only now, after the slump
had taught him so much, that he could reasonably hope to succeed. His
mind, brooding over his losses, definitely dismissed as futile the
resumption of the purchase and sale of drugs, and dwelt persistently on
the sudden acquisition of stock market wisdom. Properly applied, this
wisdom ought to mean much to him. In a few weeks he was again spending
his days before the quotation board, gossiping with those customers who
had survived, giving and receiving advice. And as time passed the grip
of Wall Street on his soul grew stronger until it strangled all other
aspirations. He could talk, think, dream of nothing but stocks. He could
not read the newspapers without thinking how the market would “take” the
news contained therein. If a huge refinery burnt down, with a loss to
the “Trust” of $4,000,000, he sighed because he had not foreseen the
catastrophe and had sold Sugar short. If a strike by the men of the
Suburban Trolley Company led to violence and destruction of life and
property, he cursed an unrelenting Fate because he had not had the
prescience to “put out” a thousand shares of Trolley. And he constantly
calculated to the last fraction of a point how much money he would have
made if he had sold short just before the calamity at the very top
prices and had covered his stock at the bottom. Had he only known! The
atmosphere of the Street, the odor of speculation surrounded him on all
sides, enveloped him like a fog, from which the things of the outside
world appeared as though seen through a veil. He lived in the district
where men do not say “Good-morning” on meeting one another, but “How’s
the market?” or, when one asks: “How do you feel?” receives for an
answer: “Bullish!” or “Bearish!” instead of a reply regarding the state
of health.
At first, after the fatal slump, Gilmartin importuned his brokers to let
him speculate on credit, in a small way. They did. They were kindly
enough men and sincerely wished to help him. But luck ran against him.
With the obstinacy of unsuperstitious gamblers he insisted on fighting
Fate. He was a bull in a bear market; and the more he lost the more he
thought the inevitable “rally” in prices was due. He bought in
expectation of it and lost again and again, until he owed the brokers a
greater sum than he could possibly pay; and they refused point blank to
give him credit for another cent, disregarding his vehement entreaties
to buy a last hundred, just one more chance, the last, because he would
be sure to win. And, of course, the long-expected happened and the
market went up with a rapidity that made the Street blink; and Gilmartin
figured that had not the brokers refused his last order, he would have
made enough to pay off the indebtedness and have left, in addition,
$2,950; for he would have “pyramided” on the way up. He showed the
brokers his figures, accusingly, and they had some words about it and he
left the office, almost tempted to sue the firm for conspiracy with
intent to defraud; but decided that it was “another of Luck’s
sockdolagers” and let it go at that, gambler-like.
When he returned to the brokers’ office—the next day—he began to
speculate in the only way he could—vicariously. Smith, for instance, who
was long of 500 St. Paul at 125, took less interest in the deal than did
Gilmartin who thenceforth assiduously studied the news-slips and sought
information on St. Paul all over the Street, listening thrillingly to
tips and rumors regarding the stock, suffering keenly when the price
declined, laughing and chirruping blithely if the quotations moved
upward, exactly as though it were his own stock. In a measure it was as
an anodyne to his ticker-fever. Indeed, in some cases his interest was
so poignant and his advice so frequent—he would speak of _our_ deal—that
the lucky winner gave him a small share of his spoils, which Gilmartin
accepted without hesitation—he was beyond pride-wounding by now—and
promptly used to back some miniature deal of his own on the Consolidated
Exchange or even in “Percy’s”—a dingy little bucket-shop, where they
took orders for two shares of stock on a margin of one per cent.; that
is, where a man could bet as little as two dollars.
Later, it often came to pass that Gilmartin would borrow a few dollars,
when the customers were not trading actively. The amounts he borrowed
diminished by reason of the increasing frequency of their refusals.
Finally, he was asked to stay away from the office where once he had
been an honored and pampered customer.
He became a Wall Street “has been” and could be seen daily on New
Street, back of the Consolidated Exchange, where the “put” and “call”
brokers congregate. The tickers in the saloons nearby fed his gambler’s
appetite. From time to time luckier men took him into the same
be-tickered saloons, where he ate at the free lunch counters and drank
beer and talked stocks and listened to the lucky winners’ narratives
with lips tremulous with readiness to smile and grimace. At times the
gambler in him would assert itself and he would tell the lucky winners,
wrathfully, how the stock he wished to buy but couldn’t the week before,
had risen 18 points. But they, saturated with their own ticker-fever,
would nod absently, their soul’s eyes fixed on some quotation-to-be; or
they would not nod at all but in their eagerness to look at the tape
from which they had been absent two long minutes, would leave him
without a single word of consolation or even of farewell.