proceedings, but I knew that Omega was bounding upward.

The call closed amid animation; but the excitement was nothing compared
to the scene that had followed the fall in the morning. Omega stood at
eighty asked, and seventy-eight bid, and the ship of the stock gamblers
was again sailing on an even keel. Some hundreds had been washed
overboard, but there were thousands left, and nobody foresaw the day
when the market would take the fashion of a storm-swept hulk, with only
a chance survivor clinging here and there to the wreckage and
exchanging tales of the magnificence that once existed.

The session was over at last, and Wallbridge and Eppner handed me their
memoranda of purchases.

"You couldn't pick Omega off the bushes this afternoon, Mr. Wilton,"
said Wallbridge, wiping his bald head vigorously. "There's fools at all
times, and some of 'em were here and ready to drop what they had; but
not many. I gathered in six hundred for you, but I had to fight for
it."

I thanked the merry broker, and gave him a check for his balance.

Eppner had done some better with a wider margin, but all told I had
added but three thousand one hundred shares to my list. I wondered how
much of this had been sold to me by my employer. Plainly, if Doddridge
Knapp was needing Omega stock he would have to pay for it.

There was no one to be seen as I reached Room 15. The connecting door
was closed and locked, and no sound came from behind it. I turned to
arrange the books, to keep from a bad habit of thinking over the