“Oh, that’s all right, Greenbaum. I know you. That’s why I’m particular. We’ve all been in Wall Street more than a month or two. I simply said, ‘No shenanigan.’ And, Greenbaum,” he added, very distinctly, while his eyes took on that curious, cold, menacing look, “I mean it, every d——d word of it. I want the numbers of all your stock-certificates. Excuse me, gentlemen. I am very busy. Good-afternoon.” And that is how the famous bull pool in Turpentine came to be formed. They thought he might have been nicer, more diplomatic; but as they had sought him, not he them, they bore with his eccentricities. Each pool manager had his way, just as there are various kinds of pools. “Sam is not half a bad fellow,” Greenbaum told them, as if apologizing for a dear friend’s weaknesses. “He wants to make out he is a devil of a cynic, but he’s all right. If you humor him you can make him do anything. _I_ always let him have his way.” On the very next day began the historical advance in Turpentine. It opened up at 30. The specialists—brokers who made a specialty of dealing in it—took 16,000 shares, causing an advance to 32⅛. Everybody who had been “landed” with the shares at higher figures, and had bitterly regretted it ever since, now began to feel hopeful. As never before a stock had been manipulated, with intent to deceive and malice prepense, so did Sharpe manipulate Turpentine stock. The tape told the most wonderful stories in the world, not the less wonderful because utterly untrue. Thus, one day the leading commission houses in the Street were the buyers, which inevitably led to talk of “important developments”; and the next day brokers identified with certain prominent financiers took calmly, deliberately, nonchalantly, all the offerings; which clearly indicated that the aforementioned financiers had acquired a “controlling interest”—the majority of the stock—of the American Turpentine Company. And on another day there was a long string of purchases of “odd” lots—amounts less than 100 shares—by brokers that usually did business for the Greenbaum syndicate, meaning that friends of the syndicate had received a “tip” straight from “the inside” and were buying for investment.