Adventure, December 1914 — page 161: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Come-On Charley Tries Out Wall Street IV MR. DREW was hobnobbing with Mr. Teddy Ball of the Evening Scream. They were in Mr. Carter’s sitting-room, and the hour was eight o’clock of a Monday evening. It was the Monday following that on which this truthful tale began. Mr. Carter and his secretary were at din- ner and his friends were waiting for him. _ They had the run of his rooms, as had any one with a passport to Mr. Carter’s confi- dence. The lawyer and the newspaper man had come to know each other well in the past week. They were expecting Mr. Joseph Link, one time middleweight champion of the fistic arena, to join them. Mr. Link had not missed a night in Charley’s rooms since Wednesday. Neither had Mr. Drew nor Mr. Ball. They were drawn there by the irresistible magnet of an overwhelming curlosity, and on Mr. Ball’s part by the fur- ther drag of an insatiable thirst for “‘copy.”’ A stock-ticker in the corner was one of the poles of this magnet, and Charley him- self was the other. Between the two there had been the dickens to pay since the day Boston Copper closed at 10744 and then tobogganed down to 98, where it still re- mained, or thereabouts, as if a nail had been driven through it. Charley had cleaned up on that deal nine thousand dollars, less a trifle of two hundred and seventy odd dollars, commission and in- terest, retained by the fatherly Mr. Gott. The next day the ticker was installed in his apartments and things began to happen. The newspapers shrieked the news abroad, and soon they were calling him ‘‘Cash-In Charley” instead of ““Come-On.”’ Miss King, it should be mentioned, de- parted from the Rirebien when she received her check from Gitt & Gott. She told Char- ley she had been invited to stay with friends, but gave him no address. She would, she had said, send it to him later if by any happy chance she should get another tip. So, tipless and alone, Charley ran amuck in Wall Street. The market was strong and he plunged into it like a bucking bronco. Rumor had it that he played a system. He dealt in five-thousand-share lots at first, and he picked only one security a day, clos- ing it out with the market. Some he bought and some he sold; it didn’t seem to make 159 any difference. Luck walked with a pro- tecting arm around him and slept with him overnight. In three days he kicked loose from a like number of securities $95,000, and what is more, brought it home with him. On Satur- day, a short day, he pulled down $20,000. On this present day—Monday—he had raised his limit to ten thousand shares, and he gathered in $70,000. He was playing on velvet and was to the good something like $188,000 of Wall Street money. As they sat companionably together Mr. Drew and Mr. Ball were casting back over these events. “T can’t understand it,’’ complained the first. “It has got on my nerves. I’m losing flesh over it. How can a mere boy who doesn’t know a debenture bond from an > Irish dividend size up the market? It’s un- canny, Ball, I tell you!”’ Mr. Ball pulled fretfully on the fat cigar Mr. Drew had passed to him and observed: ““‘He’s got my nanny all right. There’s a corking story lying around these premises somewhere and I can’t put my hand on it. T crabbed the job from Miller—he’s our fi- nancial man—and he’s getting sore because I don’t clean up. But if Charley won’t talk to me, he won’t to Miller; and as for that wire-drawn skeleton, Teeters, he wouldn’t know the house was afire till it singed his whiskers.” “It can’t go on,” declared the lawyer. “It’s bound to get him. It always does. I’ve begged him to get out and salt his profits, but he only _ “Grins!” supplied Mr. Ball. “I know— may the devil take him! I’d like some one to tell me how he picked out C. D. & Q. to win today. The White House spiel boosted things, of course, but that stock, Miller says, hasn’t budged two points either way since the late J. P. pumped it full of Croton juice. And look at Richmond Rails last Friday: you’d have thought somebody kick- ed it, the way it jumped!’’ ‘“‘He went short on Panama Gas,” Mr. Drew reminded him. “Sure! And some one stuck a pin in it and let it out.” “Find the girl. Maybe she can tell how he does it.” It was Mr. Link who spoke. He had stepped in quietly and was contemplating the pair with earnest eyes. “Bosh!” flung back the Scream man at NOOK C©