Still, they didn’t mend their ways, and so I worked that trick on them several times. I did not dare punish them as severely as they deserved, seldom more than a point or two on a hundred shares. But it helped to swell my little hoard that I was saving for my next Wall Street venture. I sometimes varied the process by selling some stock short, without overdoing it. I was satisfied with my six or eight hundred clear for each crack. One day the stunt worked so well that it went far beyond all calculations for a ten-point swing. I wasn’t looking for it. As a matter of fact it so happened that I had two hundred shares instead of my usual hundred at one broker’s, though only a hundred in the four other shops. That was too much of a good thing--for them. They were sore as pups about it and they began to say things over the wires. So I went and saw the manager, the same man who had been so anxious to get my account, and so forgiving every time I caught him trying to put something over on me. He talked pretty big for a man in his position. “That was a fictitious market for that stock, and we won’t pay you a damned cent!” he swore. “It wasn’t a fictitious market when you accepted my order to buy. You let me in then, all right, and now you’ve got to let me out. You can’t get around that for fairness, can you?” “Yes, I can!” he yelled. “I can prove that somebody put up a job.” “Who put up a job?” I asked. “Somebody!” “Who did they put it up on?” I asked. “Some friends of yours were in it as sure as pop,” he said. But I told him, “You know very well that I play a lone hand. Everybody in this town knows that. They’ve known it ever since I started trading in stocks. Now I want to give you some friendly advice: you just send and get that money for me. I don’t want to be disagreeable. Just do what I tell you.” “I won’t pay it. It was a rigged-up transaction,” he yelled. I got tired of his talk. So I told him: “You’ll pay it to me right now and here.” Well, he blustered a little more and accused me flatly of being the guilty thimblerigger; but he finally forked over the cash. The others were not so rambunctious. In one office the manager had been studying these inactive-stock plays of mine and when he got my order he actually bought the stock for me and then some for himself in the Little Board, and he made some money. These fellows didn’t mind being sued by customers on charges of fraud, as they generally had a good technical legal defense ready. But they were afraid I’d attach the furniture--the money in the bank I couldn’t because they took care not to have any funds exposed to that danger. It would not hurt them to be known as pretty sharp, but to get a reputation for welshing was fatal. For a customer to lose money at his broker’s is no rare event. But for a customer to make money and then not get it is the worst crime on the speculators’ statute books.