“Now this is what our friend Curry has been doing, in a nutshell. For months and months he has been the acknowledged bull leader of the Exchange. Point by point, week by week and day by day, he has managed to send cotton up. Where it was at first 11 and 12 and perhaps 13 cents, he has shouldered, say, August cotton up to 16.55, and July up to 17.30 and May up to 17.20. Day before yesterday July cotton advanced to 17.65 in New Orleans. Some time, and some time mighty soon—if not tomorrow, then the next day, or perhaps even the next—every option is going to go still higher. And this man Curry is the imperial dictator of it all. He is known to have interests behind him that amount to millions now. And this is the point I’m coming to: this present week is to see the rocket go up and burst.” Durkin was on his feet by this time pacing up and down the room. “The first, but not the final, climax of all this plotting is twenty-cent cotton.” “Has it ever been that before?” “Never! It has not been above seventeen cents, not since 1873!” declared Durkin, excitedly. “But here is the important part of it all, the second climax, as it were. When it strikes nineteen his old home pool are going to abdicate. They are going to turn traitor on him, I mean, and suddenly stand from under. Then here is the third and last climax: Curry knows this fact; he knows they’re making ready to crush him. And when they get ready he’s going to turn and smash ’em, smash ’em and sling ’em down, even though he goes with them in the crash. Which he won’t, if he’s the Curry I take him to be. In other words, Frank, at the right moment he is going to abdicate from the bull movement absolutely, before it is publicly realized.” “It all seems vague and misty to me—but I suppose you know.” “Know? Why, I’ve been rioting through his holy of holies for two days now. I’ve been cutting in and reading his own private wire. He firmly intends to forsake this bull movement, which, apparently, he has spent so much time and toil in building up. But in reality, out of the crash that comes with a collapsing market—and it must collapse when he stands from under!—he is to sit and see a million or two rain down into his lap.” “But can he, one solitary man, do all this—I mean do it unmistakably, inevitably?”