ps. Now it held, now it broke, now it
reformed again, rose again, then again in hideous cataclysms fell from
beneath their feet to lower depths than before. The official reporter
leaned back in his place, helpless. On the wall overhead, the indicator
on the dial was rocking back and forth, like the mast of a ship caught
in a monsoon. The price of July wheat no man could so much as
approximate. The fluctuations were no longer by fractions of a cent,
but by ten cents, fifteen cents twenty-five cents at a time. On one
side of the Pit wheat sold at ninety cents, on the other at a dollar
and a quarter.

And all the while above the din upon the floor, above the tramplings
and the shoutings in the Pit, there seemed to thrill and swell that
appalling roar of the Wheat itself coming in, coming on like a tidal
wave, bursting through, dashing barriers aside, rolling like a
measureless, almighty river, from the farms of Iowa and the ranches of
California, on to the East--to the bakeshops and hungry mouths of
Europe.

Landry caught one of the Gretry traders by the arm.

"What shall we do?" he shouted. "I've bought up to my limit. No more
orders have come in. The market has gone from under us. What's to be
done?"

"I don't know," the other shouted back, "I don't know. We're all gone
to hell; looks like the last smash. There are no more supporting
orders--something's gone wrong. Gretry hasn't sent any word."

Then, Landry, beside himself with excitement and with actual terror,
hardly knowing even yet what he did, turned sharply about. He fought
his way out of the Pit; he ran hatless and panting across the floor, in
and out between the groups of spectators, down the stairs to the
corridor below, and into the Gretry-Converse offices.

In the outer office a group of reporters and the representatives of a
great commercial agency were besieging one of the heads of the firm.
They assaulted him with questions.

"Just tell us where you are at--that's all we want to know."

"Just what is the price of July wheat?"

"Is Jadwin winning or losing?"

But the other threw out an arm in a wild gesture of helplessness.

"We don't know, ourselves," he cried. "The market has run clean away
from everybody. You know as much about it as I do. It's simply hell
broken loose, that's all. We can't tell where we are at for days to
come."

Landry rushed on. He swung open the door of the private office and
entered, slamming it behind him and crying