Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; Didactic fiction; Domestic fiction; Married people -- Fiction; Psychological fiction; Wheat trade -- Fiction
Friday night, in Jadwin's room in the Grand Pacific, a conference was
held between Gretry, Landry Court, two of Gretry's most trusted
lieutenants, and Jadwin himself. Two results issued from this
conference. One took the form of a cipher cable to Jadwin's Liverpool
agent, which, translated, read: "Buy all wheat that is offered till
market advances one penny." The other was the general order issued to
Landry Court and the four other Pit traders for the Gretry-Converse
house, to the effect that in the morning they were to go into the Pit
and, making no demonstration, begin to buy back the wheat they had been
selling all the week. Each of them was to buy one million bushels.
Jadwin had, as Gretry put it, "timed Crookes to a split second,"
foreseeing the exact moment when he would make his supreme effort. Sure
enough, on that very Saturday Crookes was selling more freely than
ever, confident of breaking the Bull ere the closing gong should ring.
But before the end of the morning wheat was up two cents. Buying orders
had poured in upon the market. The price had stiffened almost of
itself. Above the indicator upon the great dial there seemed to be an
invisible, inexplicable magnet that lifted it higher and higher, for
all the strenuous efforts of the Bears to drag it down.
A feeling of nervousness began to prevail. The small traders, who had
been wild to sell short during the first days of the movement, began on
Monday to cover a little here and there.
"Now," declared Jadwin that night, "now's the time to open up all along
the line hard. If we start her with a rush to-morrow morning, she'll go
to a dollar all by herself."
Tuesday morning, therefore, the Gretry-Converse traders bought another
five million bushels. The price under this stimulus went up with the
buoyancy of a feather. The little shorts, more and more uneasy, and
beginning to cover by the scores, forced it up even higher.
The nervousness of the "crowd" increased. Perhaps, after all, Crookes
was not so omnipotent. Perhaps, after all, the Unknown Bull had another
fight in him. Then the "outsiders" came into the market. All in a
moment all the traders were talking "higher prices." Everybody now was
as eager to buy as, a week before, they had been eager to sell. The
price went up by convulsive bounds. Crookes dared not buy, dared not
purchase the wheat to make good his promises of delivery, for fear of
putting up the price on himself higher still. Dismayed, chagrined, and
humiliated, he and his clique sat back inert, watching the tremendous
reaction, hoping against hope that the market would break again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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