There are honest and honorable stock brokers, and Page, a friend of Nickerson's and acting broker for him, was one of them. He knew Simmons well, and had at one time or another come in sharp conflict with the latter in some stock deal. He had watched the bubble, Rockhaven, ever since its inception, and accustomed as he was to the endless variety of tricks resorted to by others of his class, had an intuitive conception of how the general partnership of Weston & Hill and Simmons would be carried to its culmination.

"It's a swindle, pure and simple," he said in confidence to Nickerson, "and while Weston is willing to dupe the confiding investors he has persuaded to buy the stock, the real end and aim of his scheme is to get the street short of it and, by some sort of scare, start the bears to bidding against each other, and when the right time comes Simmons will appear on the scene and unload Rockhaven at top price. How soon that time will come and how far up they will push the stock before the shorts take fright, is a guess. It is now steady at six and not much interest in it. Then again it's an open question how much stock is owned on the street and how great a short interest has been created. No one has any confidence in it, and yet many are ready to take a flyer in it for a turn. My idea is to handle it as one would a hot horseshoe. I am long a thousand or two, you are ditto for five hundred, and we hold fifteen hundred in trust for your friend Hardy and this islander, Hutton. Whether to unload now and make four points or hold for a big stake, is the question. It's a gamble either way."

And this, be it said, fairly represented the situation.

But Simmons, who really held the key to this well-set trap, knew very well that he had the street all guessing, and more than that, was just the man to keep them at it. He sold and he bought a little stock each day, just to keep it active and quoted. He could have bought every share on the street if necessary, but that was not his game. What he did want was to aid the bull pool that had been formed, for every share they bought meant one more short of that share, and when the time came, one more scared bear to bid it up. It was an unscrupulous scheme, but one continually being worked in one way or another by these legalized gamblers.

Then, as if the devil came to Simmons's aid, Rockhaven began to be quoted in the bucket shops, and the crowd there, as usual, were all bulls. It is a strange fact, but true, that every lamb who goes into one of these wool-shearing offices is always sure to buy, expecting an advance. With him, stocks are bound to advance—never go down. If they do, he feels it's only for the time being, and they must go up again, and so he foolishly puts up more margins, and still more, and the crafty thief who manages this robber's den assures him he is right; they are bound to go up, and in privacy smiles at the innocence of his victim. And so the shearing goes on.

In this case it helped the arch-plotter, Simmons, and his backer, Weston, for as the stock held firm, those who were short of it at two, three, and four, had no chance to cover. Then as it began to creep up a little, to even up their shortage they sold still more, and every few days a paid item in the Market News helped matters on. What they were need not be stated. They were all to the same purpose, and that to create confidence in Rockhaven, and as usual every bear on the street discounted these statements and felt more certain that Rockhavens were without substantial value.

And they were right.

Meanwhile Weston, the great financier, as he now felt himself to be, rubbed his hands with satisfaction and concocted more news items; and Simmons hobnobbed with the street, assuring one and all of the other speculative liars what a safe investment Rockhavens were, and how sure to advance.

"We have not sold much stock and do not care to," he said, "we know a good thing when we see it, and in this quarry we have a certain money-maker. It costs us a mere nothing to quarry the stone, the market absorbs all our product at a good price, and the ledge we own is limitless. Then we have an excellent manager in whom the firm trusts implicitly."

He always used "we" in speaking of the stock, that pronoun carrying a certain assurance, as he well knew, for Simmons, who had grown old and gray on the street, was a shrewd money-maker and well known to be worth a million or more.

But while Weston was happy in his prospective success, Hill was not. He was too greedy, and, narrow-minded as he was, could not wait content until the Rockhaven plum was ripe. He wanted to grasp it at once, even to ruin its fruition entirely. He railed and groaned whenever a dollar was put out, and had from the start. In his narrow vision it was so much thrown away. Every item in the press that called for outlay, the use of the thousands held by Simmons to manipulate the market, and especially the hundred or more that each week had to be sent to the island, each and all added to Hill's misery. Weston, the liberal rascal, had for a long time felt disgusted with his partner's miserly instincts; now he positively hated him and longed for the day when he could deal him a crushing blow. Both were unscrupulous schemers and thieves at heart, but of the two Hill was the worse. Not only did Weston come to hate Hill more and more each day, but he grew tired of the sight of his pinched and hypocritical face, his sunken eyes and clammy handshake—for shake hands with him occasionally he must. Then Hill was so unlike Weston in other ways it added to the feeling of disgust; he never used tobacco or drank, and held up his hands in holy horror at any lapse from the code of morality, and worse than that, if Weston let slip any word of profanity, as he occasionally did, Hill exclaimed against it.

To have one's small vices made a daily text for short sermons is unpleasant, even to the best of us.

But while Weston's hate and disgust grew apace, no hint of it leaked out, and since he was the master spirit in the Rockhaven Granite Company and in that scheme held the reins, it moved on to culmination, unaffected by Hill's whining.