official notice no one really knew
for certain that he had been allotted any stock, and until the
Amalgamated shares were listed on the Stock Exchange, there could be no
reliable market, although they could be traded in on the curb.

At the Holland House, I quickly outlined to my chief brokers my plans
for the day. Then together we started for Wall Street.

The hours that followed were busy ones, and confusing as well. Wall
Street was a-buzz with curiosity and from all sides poured questions.
"The Street," it was evident, had awakened to the fact that the
situation in Amalgamated disclosed a different line-up of conditions
from that which it had anticipated. As to whether the change was good or
bad no one dared hazard a guess. For the first time in my experience,
Wall Street was completely at sea. The shrewdest plungers and
manipulators, men to whom the tape yields up its secrets as the penitent
to the priest; to whom the ticker babbles the inner mysteries of
directors' meetings and deep-down deals--these men whose eyes, ears, and
noses decades of stock-play had trained to supernatural acuteness were
as impotent to track the truth as the veriest tyro. All admitted that
the conditions were unusual, that the subscriptions had far exceeded
expectation, that time would be required to get them straightened out.
Because of this it was natural that the market should be slow and in the
absence of definite facts it might easily look one price and be another.
If the subscription really were 412 millions and if each subscriber
would have a fifth of his allotment, then there was the usual chance for
trick playing and "Standard Oil" might be scheming to gather in this
valuable stock at 110 when its proper price mayhap was 140 to 160 or
more.

In Wall Street the best brains of all the Western world centre. Fortunes
are there waiting for brains to carve and take; stacked up there are
millions which he who has brains can pocket without a "by-your-leave."
Wall Street is the millionnaire's checker-board, but brains direct the
moves and make the plays. And with all its mordant wisdom, cynical
cunning, cold suspicion, Wall Street was baffled.

There was nothing to do but to continue my campaign of smiles and
cheerfulness, repeat my 110 bid in every quarter possible, and so keep
up the delusion. Late that afternoon I saw Mr. Rogers, who eagerly
interrogated me.

"Well, Lawson, what do you make out?"

"It is the most mixed-up mess 'th