Tick--tick--tick--Commander-in-chief Fanning-Smith watched the crawling tape in fascinated horror--Great Lakes one hundred and thirty-eight. It had spelled out for him another letter of that hideous word, Ruin. All the moisture of his body seemed to be on the outside; inside, he was dry and hot as a desert. If the price went no higher, if it did not come down, nearly all he had in the world would be needed to settle his "short" contracts. For he would have to deliver at one hundred and seven, more than two hundred thousand shares which he had contracted to sell; and to get them for delivery he would have to pay one hundred and thirty-eight dollars a share. A net loss of more than six millions! "You must get that price down--you must! You MUST!" quavered James. "Hell!" exclaimed Zabriskie--he was the youngest member of the firm, a son of James' oldest sister. "Tell me how, and I'll do it." "You're there--you know what to do," pleaded James. "And I order you to get that price down!" "Don't keep me here, talking rot. I've been fighting--and I'm going to keep on." James shivered. Fighting! There was no fight in him--all his life he had got everything without fighting. "Do your best," he said. "I'm very ill to-day. I'm--" "Good-by--" Zabriskie had hung up the receiver. James sat staring at the tape like a paralytic staring at death. The minutes lengthened into an hour--into two hours. No one disturbed him--when the battle is on who thinks of the "honorary commander"? At one o'clock he shook himself, brushed his hand over his eyes--quotations of Woolens were reeling off the tape, alternating with quotations of Great Lakes. "Zabriskie is selling our Woolens," he thought. Then, with a blinding flash the truth struck through his brain. He gave a loud cry between a sob and a shriek and, flinging his arms at full length upon his desk, buried his face between them and burst into tears. "Ruined! Ruined! Ruined!" And his shoulders, his whole body, shook like a child in a paroxysm. A long, long ring at the telephone. Fanning-Smith, irritated by the insistent jingling so close to his ear, lifted himself and answered--the tears were guttering his swollen face; his lips and eyelids were twitching. "Well?" he said feebly. "We've got 'em on the run," came the reply in Zabriskie's voice, jubilant now. "Who?" "Don't know who--whoever was trying to squeeze us. I had to throw over some Woolens--but I'll pick it up again--maybe to-day." Fanning-Smith could hear the roar of the Exchange--wilder, fiercer than three hours before, but music to him now. He looked sheepishly at the portrait of his grandfather. When its eyes met his he flushed and shifted his gaze guiltily. "Must have been something I ate for breakfast," he muttered to the portrait and to himself in apologetic explanation of his breakdown.