“And that is the reason, Mr. Livingston,” he concluded pleasantly, “why we wish to do business with you.” “Do business how?” I asked him. “Be your brokers,” he said. “My firm would like to do your stock business.” “I’d like to give it to you,” I said, “but I can’t.” “Why not?” he asked. “I haven’t any money,” I answered. “That part is all right,” he said with a friendly smile. “I’ll furnish it.” He took out a pocket checkbook, wrote out a check for twenty-five thousand dollars to my order, and gave it to me. “What’s this for?” I asked. “For you to deposit in your own bank. You will draw your own checks. I want you to do your trading in our office. I don’t care whether you win or lose. If that money goes I will give you another personal check. So you don’t have to be so very careful with this one. See?” I knew that the firm was too rich and prosperous to need anybody’s business, much less to give a fellow the money to put up as margin. And then he was so nice about it! Instead of giving me a credit with the house he gave me the actual cash, so that he alone knew where it came from, the only string being that if I traded I should do so through his firm. And then the promise that there would be more if that went! Still, there must be a reason. “What’s the idea?” I asked him. “The idea is simply that we want to have a customer in this office who is known as a big active trader. Everybody knows that you swing a big line on the short side, which is what I particularly like about you. You are known as a plunger.” “I still don’t get it,” I said. “I’ll be frank with you, Mr. Livingston. We have two or three very wealthy customers who buy and sell stocks in a big way. I don’t want the Street to suspect them of selling long stock every time we sell ten or twenty thousand shares of any stock. If the Street knows that you are trading in our office it will not know whether it is your short selling or the other customers’ long stock that is coming on the market.” I understood at once. He wanted to cover up his brother-in-law’s operations with my reputation as a plunger! It so happened that I had made my biggest killing on the bear side a year and a half before, and, of course, the Street gossips and the stupid rumor-mongers had acquired the habit of blaming me for every decline in prices. To this day when the market is very weak they say I am raiding it. I didn’t have to reflect. I saw at a glance that Dan Williamson was offering me a chance to come back and come back quickly. I took the check, banked it, opened an account with his firm and began trading. It was a good active market, broad enough for a man not to have to stick to one or two specialties. I had begun to fear, as I told you, that I had lost the knack of hitting it right. But it seems I hadn’t. In three weeks’ time I had made a profit of one hundred and twelve thousand dollars out of the twenty-five thousand that Dan Williamson lent me.