第29章

The official reporter climbed to his perch in the little cage on the edge of the Pit, shutting the door after him.By now the chanting of the messenger boys was an uninterrupted chorus.From all sides of the building, and in every direction they crossed and recrossed each other, always running, their hands full of yellow envelopes.From the telephone alcoves came the prolonged, musical rasp of the call bells.In the Western Union booths the keys of the multitude of instruments raged incessantly.Bare-headed young men hurried up to one another, conferred an instant comparing despatches, then separated, darting away at top speed.Men called to each other half-way across the building.Over by the bulletin boards clerks and agents made careful memoranda of primary receipts, and noted down the amount of wheat on passage, the exports and the imports.

And all these sounds, the chatter of the telegraph, the intoning of the messenger boys, the shouts and cries of clerks and traders, the shuffle and trampling of hundreds of feet, the whirring of telephone signals rose into the troubled air, and mingled overhead to form a vast note, prolonged, sustained, that reverberated from vault to vault of the airy roof, and issued from every doorway, every opened window in one long roll of uninterrupted thunder.In the Wheat Pit the bids, no longer obedient of restraint, began one by one to burst out, like the first isolated shots of a skirmish line.Grossmann had flung out an arm crying:

"'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and an eighth,"while Kelly and Semple had almost simultaneously shouted, "'Give seven-eighths for May!"The official reporter had been leaning far over to catch the first quotations, one eye upon the clock at the end of the room.The hour and minute hands were at right angles.

Then suddenly, cutting squarely athwart the vague crescendo of the floor came the single incisive stroke of a great gong.Instantly a tumult was unchained.

Arms were flung upward in strenuous gestures, and from above the crowding heads in the Wheat Pit a multitude of hands, eager, the fingers extended, leaped into the air.All articulate expression was lost in the single explosion of sound as the traders surged downwards to the centre of the Pit, grabbing each other, struggling towards each other, tramping, stamping, charging through with might and main.Promptly the hand on the great dial above the clock stirred and trembled, and as though driven by the tempest breath of the Pit moved upward through the degrees of its circle.It paused, wavered, stopped at length, and on the instant the hundreds of telegraph keys scattered throughout the building began clicking off the news to the whole country, from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from Mackinac to Mexico, that the Chicago market had made a slight advance and that May wheat, which had closed the day before at ninety-three and three-eighths, had opened that morning at ninety-four and a half.

But the advance brought out no profit-taking sales.

The redoubtable Leaycraft and the Porteous trio, Fairchild, Paterson, and Goodlock, shook their heads when the Pit offered ninety-four for parts of their holdings.The price held firm.Goodlock even began to offer ninety-four.At every suspicion of a flurry Grossmann, always with the same gesture as though hurling a javelin, always with the same lamentable wail of distress, cried out:

"'Sell twenty-five May at ninety-five and a fourth."He held his five fingers spread to indicate the number of "contracts," or lots of five thousand bushels, which he wished to sell, each finger representing one "contract."And it was at this moment that selling orders began suddenly to pour in upon the Gretry-Converse traders.

Even other houses--Teller and West, Burbank & Co., Mattieson and Knight--received their share.The movement was inexplicable, puzzling.With a powerful Bull clique dominating the trading and every prospect of a strong market, who was it who ventured to sell short?

Landry among others found himself commissioned to sell.

His orders were to unload three hundred thousand bushels on any advance over and above ninety-four.He kept his eye on Leaycraft, certain that he would force up the figure.But, as it happened, it was not Leaycraft but the Porteous trio who made the advance.

Standing in the centre of the Pit, Patterson suddenly flung up his hand and drew it towards him, clutching the air--the conventional gesture of the buyer.

"'Give an eighth for May."

Landry was at him in a second.Twenty voices shouted "sold," and as many traders sprang towards him with outstretched arms.Landry, however, was before them, and his rush carried Paterson half way across the middle space of the Pit.

"Sold, sold."

Paterson nodded, and as Landry noted down the transaction the hand on the dial advanced again, and again held firm.

But after this the activity of the Pit fell away.The trading languished.By degrees the tension of the opening was relaxed.Landry, however, had refrained from selling more than ten "contracts" to Paterson.He had a feeling that another advance would come later on.

Rapidly he made his plans.He would sell another fifty thousand bushels if the price went to ninety-four and a half, and would then "feel" the market, letting go small lots here and there, to test its strength, then, the instant he felt the market strong enough, throw a full hundred thousand upon it with a rush before it had time to break.He could feel--almost at his very finger tips--how this market moved, how it strengthened, how it weakened.He knew just when to nurse it, to humor it, to let it settle, and when to crowd it, when to hustle it, when it would stand rough handling.