“I can hardly believe it, and if it is true, it doesn’t help us much. It’s a small house, you know, and very conservative. I haven’t the slightest idea who would operate through them. I am as much in the dark as the rest of you about our opponents, but you may depend upon it they are much stronger than we credit them with being. Their apparent foolhardiness in risking almost certain ruin is proof of their great resources. They have spent, we’ll say, fifteen millions in supporting an almost panic-stricken market in the face of the most discouraging circumstances. If they are able to do that they have the power to carry out the rest of the game, whatever it may be. My advice, gentlemen, is to go slow. It is time to act on the defensive and save what we can.” “I don’t agree with you,” broke in a sharp-featured, nervous little man whose agility on the floor of the Exchange was a by-word in Wall Street. “I tell you it is a desperate game that is being played against us and we have only to sit tight a little longer to win. Some of the Clearing House crowd are in it and so are two or three moss-backed old houses that you would never suspect, but which couldn’t stand up for a day in a storm. They are loaded up and I predict that they’ll begin to unload within three days. The minute they do, things will go our way without our lifting a finger. There’s nobody to buy stocks. Let’s give them a little more rope. I’ll stand my proportion of 50,000 shares to break the market day after to-morrow. Once turn the scale and the battle is won. It would be suicide for us to try to cover now. The least sign of weakness from us will only encourage them to keep up the fight.” “Do you see any sign of their ammunition giving out?” asked the chairman. “I think there were signs of it in the last half-hour to-day,” replied the nervous broker. “There was no buying to speak of after two o’clock, and the market became so heavy that if we had had the courage to throw in a few thousand-share lots I believe the collapse would have begun then and there. We should start a selling movement in London before the New York market opens Wednesday morning and follow it with a sharp raid all along the line the moment business begins here.”