A fortune to be made in a railroad stock. Deal pending which will
advance same $40 per 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 shop keepers 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 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: