“We heard it just after you rang off,” was his reply. “We've been trying to get you ever since. I've gone everywhere after Textile stock. Very few will sell, or even lend, and they ask--the best price was ten points above to-day's closing. A strong tip's out that Textiles are to be rocketed.” Ten points up already--on the mere rumor! Already ten dollars to pay on every share I was “short”--and I short more than two hundred thousand! I felt the claws of the fiend Ruin sink into the flesh of my shoulders. “Ball doesn't know how I'm fixed,” I remember I thought, “and he mustn't know.” I lit a cigar with a steady hand and waited for Joe's next words. “I went to see Jenkins at once,” he went on. Jenkins was then first vice-president of the Textile Trust. “He's all cut up because the news got out--says Langdon and he were the only ones who knew, so he supposed--says the announcement wasn't to have been made for a month--not till Langdon returned. He has had to confirm it, though. That was the only way to free his crowd from suspicion of intending to rig the market.” “All right,” said I. “Have you seen the afternoon paper?” he asked. As he held it out to me, my eye caught big Textile head-lines, then flashed to some others--something about my going to marry Miss Ellersly. “All right,” said I, and with the paper in my hand, went to my outside office. I kept on toward my inner office, saying over my shoulder--to the stenographer: “Don't let anybody interrupt me.” Behind the closed and locked door my body ventured to come to life again and my face to reflect as much as it could of the chaos that was heaving in me like ten thousand warring devils. Three months before, in the same situation, my gambler's instinct would probably have helped me out. For I had not been gambling in the great American Monte Carlo all those years without getting used to the downs as well as to the ups. I had not--and have not--anything of the business man in my composition. To me, it was wholly finance, wholly a game, with excitement the chief factor and the sure winning, whether the little ball rolled my way or not. I was the financier, the gambler and adventurer; and that had been my principal asset. For, the man who wins in the long run at any of the great games of life--and they are all alike--is the man with the cool head; and the only man whose head is cool is he who plays for the game's sake, not caring greatly whether he wins or loses on any one play, because he feels that if he wins to-day, he will lose to-morrow; if he loses to-day, he will win to-morrow. But now a new factor had come into the game. I spread out the paper and stared at the head-lines: “Black Matt To Wed Society Belle--The Bucket-Shop King Will Lead Anita Ellersly To The Altar.” I tried to read the vulgar article under these vulgar lines, but I could not. I was sick, sick in body and in mind. My “nerve” was gone. I was no longer the free lance; I had responsibilities.