Not long after that, Senator Gordon also called. He, too, was quite peevish and blamed me for their troubles. Then Kane joined the anvil chorus. They forgot that their stock had been unsalable in bulk when they formed the syndicate. All they could remember was that I didn’t sell their holdings when I had the syndicate’s millions and the stock was active at 44, and that now it was 30 and dull as dishwater. To their way of thinking I should have sold out at a good fat profit. Of course they also cooled down in due time. The syndicate wasn’t out a cent and the main problem remained unchanged: to sell their stock. A day or two later they came back and asked me to help them out. Gordon was particularly insistent, and in the end I made them put in their pooled stock at 25½. My fee for my services was to be one-half of whatever I got above that figure. The last sale had been at about 30. There I was with their stock to liquidate. Given general market conditions and specifically the behaviour of Consolidated Stove, there was only one way to do it, and that was, of course, to sell on the way down and without first trying to put up the price, and I certainly would have got stock by the ream on the way up. But on the way down I could reach those buyers who always argue that a stock is cheap when it sells fifteen or twenty points below the top of the movement, particularly when that top is a matter of recent history. A rally is due, in their opinion. After seeing Consolidated Stove sell up to close to 44 it sure looked like a good thing below 30. It worked out as always. Bargain hunters bought it in sufficient volume to enable me to liquidate the pool’s holdings. But do you think that Gordon or Wolff or Kane felt any gratitude? Not a bit of it. They are still sore at me, or so their friends tell me. They often tell people how I did them. They cannot forgive me for not putting up the price on myself, as they expected.