Breen had preceded him with but a nod to his clerks, and had disappeared into his private office--another erection of ground glass and mahogany. Here the senior member of the firm shut the door carefully, and turning his back fished up a tiny key attached to a chain leading to the rear pocket of his trousers. With this he opened a small closet near his desk--a mere box of a closet--took from it a squatty-shaped decanter labelled “Rye, 1840,” poured out half a glass, emptied it into his person with one gulp, and with the remark in a low voice to himself that he was now “copper fastened inside and out”--removed all traces of the incident and took up his morning's mail. By this time the circle of chairs facing the huge blackboard in the spacious outer office had begun to fill up. Some of the customers, before taking their seats, hurried anxiously to the ticker, chattering away in its glass case; others turned abruptly and left the room without a word. Now and then a customer would dive into Breen's private room, remain a moment and burst out again, his face an index of the condition of his bank account. When the chatter of the ticker had shifted from the London quotations to the opening sales on the Exchange, a sallow-faced clerk mounted a low step-ladder and swept a scurry of chalk marks over the huge blackboard, its margin lettered with the initials of the principal stocks. The appearance of this nimble-fingered young man with his piece of chalk always impressed Jack as a sort of vaudeville performance. On ordinary days, with the market lifeless, but half of the orchestra seats would be occupied. In whirl-times, with the ticker spelling ruin, not only were the chairs full, but standing room only was available in the offices. Their occupants came from all classes; clerks from up-town dry-goods houses, who had run down during lunch time to see whether U.P. or Erie, or St. Paul had moved up an eighth, or down a quarter, since they had devoured the morning papers on their way to town; old speculators who had spent their lives waiting buzzard-like for some calamity, enabling them to swoop down and make off with what fragments they could pick up; well-dressed, well-fed club men, who had had a run of luck and who never carried less than a thousand shares to keep their hands in; gray-haired novices nervously rolling little wads of paper between their fingers and thumbs--up every few minutes to listen to the talk of the ticker, too anxious to wait until the sallow-faced young man with the piece of chalk could make his record on the board. Some of them had gathered together their last dollar. Two per cent. or one percent, or even one-half of one per cent. rise or fall was all that stood between them and ruin.