II The facts concerning the founding and development of the fortune of the late J. H. Osterman, as developed by C. B. Cummings, quondam secretary to Mr. Osterman, special investigator for E. X. Bush, of counsel for the minority stockholders of the C. C. and Q. L., in their suit to compel the resale of the road to the original holders and the return of certain moneys alleged to have been illegally abstracted by J. H. Osterman and Frank O. Parm, of Parm-Baggott and Company, and by him set forth in his reminiscences of Mr. Bush and the Osterman-Parm-C. C. & Q. L. imbroglio. * * * * * 1. The details of the Osterman-De Malquit matter were, as near as I have been able to gather, or recall, since I was Mr. Osterman’s secretary until that time, as follows: De Malquit was one of the many curb brokers in New York dabbling in rubber and other things at the time Osterman returned from Honduras and executed his very dubious coup. The afternoon before De Malquit killed himself—and this fact was long held against Mr. Osterman in connection with his sudden rise—he had come to Osterman’s office in Broad Street, and there, amid rosewood and mahogany and an unnecessary show of luxury which Osterman appeared to relish even at that time, had pleaded for time in which to meet a demand for one hundred thousand dollars due for ten thousand shares of Calamita Rubber, which Osterman then entirely controlled and for which he was demanding the par or face value. And this in spite of the fact that it had been selling on “curb” only the day before for seven and one-fourth and seven and three-fourths. De Malquit was one of those curb brokers whom Osterman, upon coming to New York and launching Calamita (which was built on nothing more solid than air), had deliberately plotted to trap in this way. Unwitting of Osterman’s scheme, he had sold ten thousand shares of Calamita on margin at the above low price without troubling to have the same in his safe, as Osterman well knew. That was what Osterman had been counting on and it had pleased him to see De Malquit, along with many others just at that moment, in the very same difficult position. For up to that day Calamita, like many another of its kind, had been a wildcat stock. Only “wash sales” were traded in by brokers in order to entrap the unwary from the outside. They traded in it without ever buying any of it. It had to fluctuate so that the outsider might be induced to buy, and that was why it was traded in. But when it did fluctuate and the lamb approached, he was sold any quantity he wished, the same being entered upon their books as having been sold or bought on his order. When a quotation sufficiently low to wipe out the margin exacted had been engineered among friends, the lamb was notified that he must either post more money to cover the decline or retire. In quite all cases the lamb retired, leaving the broker with a neat profit.