And as a manipulator of stock-values he had no equal. On the bull side he rushed a stock upward so steadily, so boldly and brilliantly, but, above all, so persuasively, that lesser gamblers almost fought to be allowed to take it off his hands at incredibly high prices. And when in the conduct of one of his masterly bear campaigns he saw fit to “hammer” the market, values melted away as by magic—Satanic magic, the poor lambs thought. All stocks looked “sick,” looked as though prices would go much lower; murmurs of worse things to come were in the air, vague, disquieting, ruin-breeding. The atmosphere of the Street was supersaturated with apprehension, and the black shadow of Panic brooded over the Stock Exchange, chilling the little gamblers’ hearts, wiping out the last of the little gamblers’ margins. And even the presidents of the solid, conservative banks studied the ticker uneasily in their offices. Greenbaum was promptly admitted to Sharpe’s private office. It was a half-darkened room, the windows having wire-screens, summer and winter, in order that prying eyes across the street might not see his visitors or his confidential brokers, whose identity it was advisable should remain unknown to the Street. He was walking up and down the room, pausing from time to time to look at the tape. The ticker is the only telescope the stock-market general has; it tells him what his forces are doing and how the enemy is meeting his attacks. Every inch of the tape is so much ground; every quotation represents so many shots. There was something feline in Sharpe’s stealthy, soundless steps, in his mustaches, in the conformation of his face—broad of forehead and triangulating chin-ward. In his eyes, too, there was something tigerish—unmelodramatically cold hearted and coldly curious as they looked upon Mr. Jacob Greenbaum. Unconsciously the unfanciful Trust-maker asked himself whether Sharpe’s heart-beats were not ticker ticks, impassively indicating the pulse of the stock-market. “Hallo, Greenbaum.” “How do you do, Mr. Sharpe?” quoth the millionaire senior partner of the firm of Greenbaum, Lazarus & Co. “I hope you are well?” He bent his head to one side, his eyes full of a caressing scrutiny, as though to ascertain the exact condition of Sharpe’s health. “Yes, you must be. I haven’t seen you look so fine in a long time.” “You didn’t come up here just to tell me this, Greenbaum, did you? How’s your Turpentine? Oh!”—with a long whistle—“I see. You want me to go into it, hey?” And he laughed—a sort of half-chuckle, half-snarl. Greenbaum looked at him admiringly; then, with a tentative smile, he said: “I am discovered!” Nearly every American may be met as an equal on the field of Humor. To jest in business matters of the greatest importance bespoke the national trait. Moreover, if Sharpe declined, Greenbaum could treat the entire affair—the proposal and the rejection—as parts of a joke. “Well?” said Sharpe, unhumorously.