For some time the quotations vibrated nervously about the seventy mark. I was about to start for Mr. Harding's office when a man with a loud voice read a bulletin just received.
"_One forty-five p.m._," he began. "_Robert L. Harding authorises the announcement that in conjunction with John Henry Smith he has purchased a majority of the stock of the N.O. & G. railroad, and that it will be operated as a part of the system with which Mr. Harding is identified_."
"Who in thunder is John Henry Smith?" asked a veteran stock gambler.
In the inner offices of Mr. Harding's headquarters I found Mrs. and Miss Harding.
"We have heard the news!" exclaimed Miss Harding. "Isn't it splendid? I congratulate you, Mr. Smith!"
Mr. Harding appeared at this moment, a broad smile on his face.
"Not so bad, eh Smith!" he said, shaking hands. The fierce light of battle was in his eyes. "They're headed for the tall timber, but we still have their range! Did you hear the last quotation?"
"The last figure I saw was seventy-three," I said.
"Seventy-three?" he laughed. "I just bought a thousand shares for ninety-one. Take the folks over to the visitor's gallery and let them watch the animals. I'm going to begin to feed them raw meat in about half an hour."
As we walked toward the Exchange, Mrs. Harding said to me: "I think it's perfectly wicked the way you men gamble!"
Bless her dear heart, so do I, but what could I say except to utter some commonplace?
The huge box of marble and gold where this gambling is done already was seething with maniacs who had reached a stage of delirium pitiful to those who witness such scenes for the first time. It was as if a thousand human rats had been hurled into a pit, with heaven and earth offered as prizes to those who survived.
The swaying forms, the tossing arms, the frantic uplifted faces of aged men, the football rush of impetuous youths, the shrieks, howlings and bellowings of the combatants, the tramp of feet on the paper-strewn floor, the clatter of innumerable instruments, the tinkle of myriads of bells; and through the opened windows God's pure sunlight illumining this hell on earth--such was the scene they looked down upon.
I knew the signs which told when Harding threw the first bits of "raw meat" into this gilded corral. I knew that he long since had cornered N.O. & G., and that he would whet the appetites of his victims as only he knew how, but I did not know that it was his day of reckoning for other "conspirators" equally as grasping as those with whom I had measured my puny sword.