“You listen to me, Wolff. You knew that the two hundred thousand shares you and Gordon and Kane held were tied up, and that there wouldn’t be an awful lot of floating stock to come on the market if I put up the price, as I’d have to do for two reasons: The first to make a market for the stock; and the second to make a profit out of the call at 40. But you weren’t satisfied to get 40 for the sixty thousand shares you’d been lugging for months or with your share of the syndicate profits, if any; so you decided to take on a lot of stock under 40 to unload on me when I put the price up with the syndicate’s money, as you were sure I meant to do. You’d buy before I did and you’d unload before I did; in all probability I’d be the one to unload on. I suspect you figured on my having to put the price up to 60. It was such a cinch that you probably bought ten thousand shares strictly for unloading purposes, and to make sure somebody held the bag if I didn’t, you tipped off everybody in the United States, Canada and Mexico without thinking of my added difficulties. All your friends knew what I was supposed to do. Between their buying and mine you were going to be all hunky. Well, your intimate friends to whom you gave the tip passed it on to their friends after they had bought their lines, and the third stratum of tip-takers planned to supply the fourth, fifth and possibly sixth strata of suckers, so that when I finally came to do some selling I’d find myself anticipated by a few thousands of wise speculators. It was a friendly thought, that notion of yours, Wolff. You can’t imagine how surprised I was when Consolidated Stove began to go up before I even thought of buying a single share; or how grateful, either, when the underwriting syndicate sold one hundred thousand shares around 40 to the people who were going to sell those same shares to me at 50 or 60. I sure was a sucker not to use the four millions to make money for them, wasn’t I? The cash was supplied to buy stock with, but only if I thought it necessary to do so. Well, I didn’t.” Joshua had been in Wall Street long enough not to let anger interfere with business. He cooled off as he heard me, and when I was through talking he said in a friendly tone of voice, “Look here, Larry, old chap, what shall we do?” “Do whatever you please.” “Aw, be a sport. What would you do if you were in our place?” “If I were in your place,” I said solemnly, “do you know what I’d do?” “What?” “I’d sell out!” I told him. He looked at me a moment, and without another word turned on his heel and walked out of my office. He’s never been in it since.