The doctor hurried down town to the office of a friend on Pine Street, an old-fashioned banker and broker whose name had always stood for honesty and fair dealing and conservative business. It was half an hour before the Stock Exchange opened but the dingy little office was packed with an excited crowd of customers. They all talked in low tones as if fearing the spirits of the air that hovered near. An eager group leaned over the bulletin from the London market. London was up half a point. The credulous were pleased. It was a good omen. The pessimists scoffed.
"Rigged from New York!" sneered a fat German the office boy had nicknamed the "Judge."
The doctor was struck with the curiously mottled crowd that jostled one another, waiting for the first cry of the opening quotations. Every walk and profession of life had its representative there--merchants, lawyers, doctors, clerks, clergymen, barbers, boot-blacks, retired capitalists and capitalists about to retire permanently.
The saddest group of all was in the adjoining room reserved for ladies. An opening through the partition wall allowed them to see the quotations as they were placed on the board around which the throng of jostling, smoking, perspiring men moved and stood. Most of these pale excited women with their hats awry and their hair disordered were the wives of solid business and professional men who wouldn't allow their husbands to know of their little venture into stocks for the world. They peeped through the opening occasionally and turned their backs quickly to avoid the gaze of the men.
But the most ominous figures were two or three "vultures" who stood grim and silent on the outer fringe of the moving crowd. Only one or two of the older ones recognized them.
"Ach, Gott, look at dem!" he exclaimed. "They never come except for carrion; they've scented the dead. It's all over with us, poys!"
One of the most curious things in the history of Wall Street is the appearance of these vultures in a panic. They scent the final death-struggle with unerring accuracy. They never buy stocks except in those awful moments of ruin. They hold them grimly until the next tidal-wave of prosperity, sell out at the top, and wait patiently for the next killing. They are the only outsiders who ever make a dollar in Wall Street.