Ruin.
All the moisture of his body seemed to be on the outside; inside, he
was dry and hot as a desert. If the price went no higher, if it did
not come down, nearly all he had in the world would be needed to settle
his "short" contracts. For he would have to deliver at one hundred and
seven, more than two hundred thousand shares which he had contracted to
sell; and to get them for delivery he would have to pay one hundred and
thirty-eight dollars a share. A net loss of more than six millions!

"You must get that price down--you must! You MUST!" quavered James.

"Hell!" exclaimed Zabriskie--he was the youngest member of the firm, a
son of James' oldest sister. "Tell me how, and I'll do it."

"You're there--you know what to do," pleaded James. "And I order you
to get that price down!"

"Don't keep me here, talking rot. I've been fighting--and I'm going to
keep on."

James shivered. Fighting! There was no fight in him--all his life he
had got everything without fighting. "Do your best," he said. "I'm
very ill to-day. I'm--"

"Good-by--" Zabriskie had hung up the receiver.

James sat staring at the tape like a paralytic staring at death. The
minutes lengthened into an hour--into two hours. No one disturbed
him--when the battle is on who thinks of the "honorary commander"? At
one o'clock he shook himself, brushed his hand over his
eyes--quotations of Woolens were reeling off the tape, alternating with
quotations of Great Lakes.

"Zabriskie is selling our Woolens," he thought. Then, with a blinding
flash the truth struck through his brain. He gave a loud cry between a
sob and a shriek and, flinging his arms at full length upon his desk,
buried his face between them and burst into tears.

"Ruined! Ruined! Ruined!" And his shoulders, his whole body, shook
like a child in a paroxysm.

A long, long ring at the telephone. Fanning-Smith, irritated by the
insistent jingling so close to his ear, lifted himself and
answered--the tears were guttering his swollen face; his lips and
eyelids were twitching.

"Well?" he said feebly.

"We've got 'em on the run," came the reply in Zabriskie's voice,
jubilant now.

"Who?"

"Don't know who--whoever was trying to squeeze us. I had to throw over
some Woolens--but I'll pick it up again--maybe to-day."

Fanning-Smith could hear the roar of the Exchange--wilder, fiercer than
three hours before, but music to him now. He looked sheepishly at the
portrait of