chair. "For weeks I have suspected him. They have been too clever for
me. Constance, while I have been going around laying myself open to
discovery, Sybil has played a cool and careful game."

He was pacing the floor.

"So--that's the plan. Hold back, keep the stock up until they get
started. Then let it go down until I'm forced to sell out at a loss,
buy it back cheap, and control the reorganization. Well, I haven't
control now, alone. I wish I did have. But neither have they. The
public owns the stock now. I need it. Who'll get it first--that's the
question!"

He was thinking rapidly.

"If you could do a little bear manipulation yourself," she suggested.
"That might get the public scared. You could get enough to control,
perhaps, then. They wouldn't dare sell--or if they did they would
weaken their own control. Either way, you get them, going or coming."

"Exactly what I was thinking. Play their own game--ahead of
them--accelerate it."

It was just after the lunch hour that Constance resumed her place at
her desk with the receiver at her ear.

There were voices again in the board room.

"My God, Sheppard, what do you think? Someone is selling Motors--five
points off and still going down."

"Who is it? What shall we do?"

"Who! Brainard, of course. Some one has peached. What are you going to
do?"

"Wait. Let's call up the News Agency. Hello--yes--what? Unofficial
rumor of prosecution of Motors by the government--large selling orders
placed in advance. The deuce--say, we'll have to meet this or--"

"Meet nothing. It's Brainard. He's going down in a big crash. We pour
our money into his pockets now and let him sell at the top and grab
back control with OUR money? Not much. I sell, too."

Already boys were on the street with extras crying the great crash in
Motors. It was only a matter of minutes before all the news reading
public were thoroughly scared at the apparently bursting bubble. Shares
were dug up in small lots, in huge blocks and slammed on the market for
what they would bring. All day the pounding went on. Thousands of
shares were poured out until Motors which had been climbing toward par
in the neighborhood of 79 had declined forty points. Brainard had
jumped in first and had realized the top price for his holdings.

Yet during all the wild scenes when the telephone was ringing
insistently for him, Brainard, having set the machinery in motion and
having been ostentatiously in the office when