d every moment of each morning's session of the Board of
Trade for four furious, never-to-be-forgotten days. Promptly at
half-past nine o'clock on Tuesday morning Crookes began to sell May
wheat short, and instantly, to the surprise of every Pit trader on the
floor, the price broke with his very first attack. In twenty minutes it
was down half a cent. Then came the really big surprise of the day.
Landry Court, the known representative of the firm which all along had
fostered and encouraged the rise in the price, appeared in the Pit, and
instead of buying, upset all precedent and all calculation by selling
as freely as the Crookes men themselves. For three days the battle went
on. But to the outside world--even to the Pit itself--it seemed less a
battle than a rout. The "Unknown Bull" was down, was beaten at last. He
had inflated the price of the wheat, he had backed a false, an
artificial, and unwarrantable boom, and now he was being broken. Ah
Crookes knew when to strike. Here was the great general--the real
leader who so long had held back.

By the end of the Friday session, Crookes and his clique had sold five
million bushels, "going short," promising to deliver wheat that they
did not own, but expected to buy at low prices. The market that day
closed at ninety-five.

Friday night, in Jadwin's room in the Grand Pacific, a conference was
held between Gretry, Landry Court, two of Gretry's most trusted
lieutenants, and Jadwin himself. Two results issued from this
conference. One took the form of a cipher cable to Jadwin's Liverpool
agent, which, translated, read: "Buy all wheat that is offered till
market advances one penny." The other was the general order issued to
Landry Court and the four other Pit traders for the Gretry-Converse
house, to the effect that in the morning they were to go into the Pit
and, making no demonstration, begin to buy back the wheat they had been
selling all the week. Each of them was to buy one million bushels.
Jadwin had, as Gretry put it, "timed Crookes to a split second,"
foreseeing the exact moment when he would make his supreme effort. Sure
enough, on that very Saturday Crookes was selling more freely than
ever, confident of breaking the Bull ere the closing gong should ring.

But before the end of the morning wheat was up two cents. Buying orders
had poured in upon the market. The price had stiffened almost of
itself. Above the indicator upon the great dial there seemed to be an
invi