ome miniature deal
of his own on the Consolidated Exchange or even in "Percy's"--a dingy
little bucket shop, where they took orders for two shares of stock on
a margin of 1 per cent; that is, where a man could bet as little as two
dollars.

Later, it often came to pass that Gilmartin would borrow a few dollars
when the customers were not trading actively. The amounts he borrowed
diminished by reason of the increasing frequency of their refusals.
Finally, he was asked to stay away from the office where once he had
been an honored and pampered customer.

He became a Wall Street "has been" and could be seen daily on New
Street, back of the Consolidated Exchange, where the "put" and "call"
brokers congregate. The tickers in the saloons nearby fed his gambler's
appetite. From time to time luckier men took him into the same
be-tickered saloons, where he ate at the free lunch counters and drank
beer and talked stocks and listened to the lucky winners' narratives
with lips tremulous with readiness to smile and grimace. At times the
gambler in him would assert itself and he would tell the lucky winners,
wrathfully, how the stock he wished to buy but couldn't the week before
had risen 18 points. But they, saturated with their own ticker fever,
would nod absently, their soul's eyes fixed on some quotation-to-be; or
they would not nod at all, but in their eagerness to look at the tape,
from which they had been absent two long minutes, would leave him
without a single word of consolation or even of farewell.

V

One day, in New Street, he overheard a very well-known broker tell
another that Mr. Sharpe was "going to move up Pennsylvania Central right
away." The overhearing of the conversation was a bit of rare good luck
that raised Gil-martin from his sodden apathy and made him hasten to his
brother-in-law, who kept a grocery store in Brooklyn. He implored Griggs
to go to a broker and buy as much Pennsylvania Central as he could--that
is, if he wished to live in luxury the rest of his life. Sam Sharpe was
going to put it up. Also, he borrowed ten dollars.

Griggs was tempted. He debated with himself many hours, and at length
yielded with misgivings. He took his savings and bought one hundred
shares of Pennsylvania Central at 64, and began to neglect his business
in order to study the financial pages of the newspapers. Little by
little Gilmartin's whisper set in motion within him the wheels of a
ticker that printed on his