ow the ebb and
flow of the currents, the great forces were silently at work reshaping
the "situation." Millions of dollars were beginning to be set in motion
to govern the millions of bushels of wheat. At the end of the third
week of the month Freye reported to Crookes that Cressler was "in," and
promptly negotiations were opened between the clique and the great
banking house of the Stires. But meanwhile Jadwin and Gretry,
foreseeing no opposition, realising the incalculable advantage that
their knowledge of the possibility of a "corner" gave them, were,
quietly enough, gathering in the grain. As early as the end of March
Jadwin, as incidental to his contemplated corner of May wheat, had
bought up a full half of the small supply of cash wheat in Duluth,
Chicago, Liverpool and Paris--some twenty million bushels; and against
this had sold short an equal amount of the July option. Having the
actual wheat in hand he could not lose. If wheat went up, his twenty
million bushels were all the more valuable; if it went down, he covered
his short sales at a profit. And all the while, steadily, persistently,
he bought May wheat, till Gretry's book showed him to be possessed of
over twenty million bushels of the grain deliverable for that month.

But all this took not only his every minute of time, but his every
thought, his every consideration. He who had only so short a while
before considered the amount of five million bushels burdensome,
demanding careful attention, was now called upon to watch, govern, and
control the tremendous forces latent in a line of forty million. At
times he remembered the Curtis Jadwin of the spring before his
marriage, the Curtis Jadwin who had sold a pitiful million on the
strength of the news of the French import duty, and had considered the
deal "big." Well, he was a different man since that time. Then he had
been suspicious of speculation, had feared it even. Now he had
discovered that there were in him powers, capabilities, and a breadth
of grasp hitherto unsuspected. He could control the Chicago wheat
market, and the man who could do that might well call himself "great,"
without presumption. He knew that he overtopped them all--Gretry, the
Crookes gang, the arrogant, sneering Bears, all the men of the world of
the Board of Trade. He was stronger, bigger, shrewder than them all. A
few days now would show, when they would all wake to the fact that
wheat, which they had promised to deliver before t