"It's a swindle, pure and simple," he said in confidence to Nickerson, "and while Weston is willing to dupe the confiding investors he has persuaded to buy the stock, the real end and aim of his scheme is to get the street short of it and, by some sort of scare, start the bears to bidding against each other, and when the right time comes Simmons will appear on the scene and unload Rockhaven at top price. How soon that time will come and how far up they will push the stock before the shorts take fright, is a guess. It is now steady at six and not much interest in it. Then again it's an open question how much stock is owned on the street and how great a short interest has been created. No one has any confidence in it, and yet many are ready to take a flyer in it for a turn. My idea is to handle it as one would a hot horseshoe. I am long a thousand or two, you are ditto for five hundred, and we hold fifteen hundred in trust for your friend Hardy and this islander, Hutton. Whether to unload now and make four points or hold for a big stake, is the question. It's a gamble either way." And this, be it said, fairly represented the situation. But Simmons, who really held the key to this well-set trap, knew very well that he had the street all guessing, and more than that, was just the man to keep them at it. He sold and he bought a little stock each day, just to keep it active and quoted. He could have bought every share on the street if necessary, but that was not his game. What he did want was to aid the bull pool that had been formed, for every share they bought meant one more short of that share, and when the time came, one more scared bear to bid it up. It was an unscrupulous scheme, but one continually being worked in one way or another by these legalized gamblers. Then, as if the devil came to Simmons's aid, Rockhaven began to be quoted in the bucket shops, and the crowd there, as usual, were all bulls. It is a strange fact, but true, that every lamb who goes into one of these wool-shearing offices is always sure to buy, expecting an advance. With him, stocks are bound to advance--never go down. If they do, he feels it's only for the time being, and they must go up again, and so he foolishly puts up more margins, and still more, and the crafty thief who manages this robber's den assures him he is right; they are bound to go up, and in privacy smiles at the innocence of his victim. And so the shearing goes on.