The wolf-face, seamed with hatred and anger, and hideous with evil passions, that had glowered for a moment out of the smoky frame of the Chinese den, was still haunting me as I forced myself once more to return to the office. Wednesday morning had come, and I was due to meet Doddridge Knapp. But as I unlocked the door, I took some comfort in the reflection that I could hardly be more unwilling to meet the Wolf than he must be to meet me.

I had scarcely settled myself in my chair when I heard the key turn in the lock. The door swung open, and in walked Doddridge Knapp.

I had thought to find at least some trace of the opium debauch through which I had gained the clue to his strange and contradictory acts—some mark of the evil passions that had written their story upon his face at the meeting in the passage. But the face before me was a mask that showed no sign of the experiences through which he had passed. For all that appeared, he might have employed the time since I had left here two days before in studying philosophy and cultivating peace and good-will with his neighbors.

“Ah, Wilton,” he said affably, rubbing his hands with a purring growl. “You're ready for a hard day's work, I hope.”

“Nothing would please me better,” I said cheerfully, my repugnance melting away with the magnetism of his presence. “Is the black flag up today?”

He looked at me in surprise for an instant and then growled, still in good humor:

“'No quarter' is the motto to-day.” And I listened closely as the King of the Street gave his orders for the morning.

I marveled at the openness and confidence with which he seemed to treat me. There was no trace nor suggestion in his demeanor to-day of the man who sought my life by night. And I shuddered at the power of the Black Smoke to change the nature of this man to that of a demon. He trusted me with secrets of his campaign that were worth millions to the market.

“You understand now,” he said at the end of his orders, “that you are to sell all the Crown Diamond that the market will take, and buy all the Omega that you can get below one hundred.”

“I understand.”

“We'll feed Decker about as big a dose as he can swallow, I reckon,” said the King of the Street grimly.

“One thing,” I said, “I'd like to know if I'm the only one operating for you.”

The King of the Street drew his bushy brows down over his eyes and scowled at me a moment.

“You're the only one in the big Board,” he said at last. “There are men in the other Boards, you understand.”

I thought I understood, and sallied forth for the battle. At Doddridge Knapp's suggestion I arranged to do my business through three brokers, and added Lattimer and Hobart to Wallbridge, and Bockstein and Eppner.

Bockstein greeted me affably:

“Velgome to de marget vonce more, Mr.—, Mr.—”

“Wilton,” said Eppner, assisting his partner in his high, dry voice, with cold civility. His blue-black eyes regarded me as but a necessary part of the machinery of commerce.

I gave my orders briefly.

“Dot is a larch order,” said Bockstein dubiously.

“You don't have to take it,” I was about to retort, when Eppner's high-pitched voice interrupted:

“It's all right. The customary margin is enough.”

Wallbridge was more enthusiastic.

“You've come just in the nick of time,” said the stout little man, swabbing his bald head from force of habit, though the morning was chill. “The market has been drier than a fish-horn and duller than a foggy morning. You saved me from a trip to Los Angeles. I should have been carried off by my wife in another day.”

“You have got Gradgrind's idea of a holiday,” I laughed.

“Gradgrind, Gradgrind?” said the little man reflectively. “Don't know him. He's not in the market, I reckon. Oh, I'm death on holidays! I come near dying every day the Board doesn't meet. When it shut up shop after the Bank of California went to the wall, I was just getting ready to blow my brains out for want of exercise, when they posted the notice that it was to open again.”

I laughed at the stout broker's earnestness, and told him what I wanted done.

“Whew!” he exclaimed, “you're in business this time, sure. Well, this is just in my line.”

Lattimer and Hobart, after a polite explanation of their rules in regard to margins, and getting a certified check, became obsequiously anxious to do my bidding.

I distributed the business with such judgment that I felt pretty sure our plans could not in any way be exposed, and took my place at the rail in the Boardroom.

The opening proceedings were comparatively tame. I detected a sad falling-off in the quality and quantity of lung power and muscular activity among the buyers and sellers in the pit.

At the call of Confidence, Lattimer and Hobart began feeding shares to the market. Confidence dropped five points in half a minute, and the pit began to wake up. There was a roar and a growl that showed me the animals were still alive.

The Decker forces were taken by surprise, but with a hasty consultation came gallantly to the rescue of their stock. At the close of the call they had forced it back and one point higher than at the opening.

This, however, was but a skirmish of outposts. The fighting began at the call of Crown Diamond.

It opened at sixty-three. The first bid was hardly made when with a bellow Wallbridge charged on Decker's broker, filled his bid, and offered a thousand shares at sixty-two.

There was an answering roar from a hundred throats and a mob rushed on Wallbridge with the apparent intent of tearing him limb from limb. Wallbridge's offer was snapped up at once, but a few weak-kneed holders of the stock threw small blocks on the market.

These were taken up at once, and Decker's brokers were bidding sixty-five.

At this Eppner gave a blast like a cornet, and, waving his arms frantically, plunged into a small-sized riot. I had entrusted him with five thousand shares of Crown Diamond to be sold for the best price possible, and he was feeding the opposition judiciously. The price wavered for a moment, but rallied and reached sixty-six.

At this I signaled to Wallbridge, and with another bellow he started an opposition riot on the other side of the room from Eppner, and fed Crown Diamond in lumps to the howling forces of the Decker combination.

The battle was raging furiously.

I had no wish to break the price of the stock. I was intent only at selling shares at a good price, but I had convinced the Decker forces that there was a raid on the stock, and they had rallied to protect it at whatever cost.

The price see-sawed between sixty-six and sixty-five, and amid a tumult of yells and shouts I sold twelve thousand shares. At last they were gone, but the offers still continued.

Outsiders had become scared at the persistent selling, and were trying to realize before a break should come, and in spite of Decker's efforts the price ran down to sixty.

There was a final rally of the Decker forces, and the call closed with Crown Diamond at sixty-three.

I was pleased at the result. Doddridge Knapp had intrusted me with the shares with the remark, “I paid fifty for 'em and they're not worth a tinker's dam. I got an inside look at the mine when I was in Virginia City. Feed Decker all he'll take at sixty. He's been fooled on the thing, and I reckon he'll buy a good lot of them at that.”

I had sold Doddridge Knapp's entire lot of the stock at an average of over sixty-five, had netted him a profit of fifteen dollars a share, and had, for a second purpose, served the plan of campaign by drawing the enemy's resources to the defense of Crown Diamond and weakening, by so much, his power of operating elsewhere.

By the time Omega was reached I had the plans fully in hand.

The assault on Crown Diamond had caused a nervous feeling all along the line, and under rumors of a bear raid there had been a drop of several points.

Omega felt the results of the nervousness and depression, and opened at seventy-five.

There was a moment's buzz—the quiet of a crowd expectant of great events. Then Wallbridge charged into the throng with a roar. I could not distinguish his words, but I knew that he was carrying out my order to drop five thousand shares on the market. At his cry there was an answering roar, and the scene upon the floor turned to a riot. Men rushed hither and thither, screaming, shouting, waving their arms, pushing, jostling, tearing each other to get into the midst of the throng, whirling about, mobbing first one and then another of the leather-lunged leaders who furnished at each moment fresh centers for the outbreak of disorder. How the market was going, I could only guess. At Wallbridge's onset I saw Lattimer and Eppner make a dive for him and then separate, following other shouting, screaming madmen who pirouetted about the floor and tried to save themselves from a mobbing. I heard seventy shouted from one direction, but could not make out whether it set the price of the stock or not. The din was too confusing for me to follow the course of events.

At last Wallbridge staggered up to the rail, flushed, collarless and panting for breath, with his hat a hopeless wreck.

“We've done it!” he gasped in my ear. “The dogs of war are making the fur fly down here, you bet! Don't you wish you was in it?”

“No, I don't!” I shouted decidedly. “How does it go?”

“I sold down to seventy-one—average seventy-three, I guess—and she's piling in fit to break the floor.”

“Did Lattimer and Eppner get your stock?” I could not help asking.

“They got about three thousand of it. Rosenheim got the rest.”

I remembered Rosenheim as the agent of Decker, and sighed. But Lattimer and Eppner were busy, and I had hopes.

“Where is it now?” I asked.

“Sixty-nine and a half.”

I meditated an instant whether to use my authority to throw another five thousand shares on the market. But I caught sight of Decker opposite, pale, hawklike, just seizing an envelope from a messenger. He tore it open, and though his face changed not a line, I felt by a mysterious instinct that it brought assurance of the aid he sought.

“Buy every share you can get,” I said promptly. “Don't get in the way of Lattimer or Eppner. Put on steam, too.”

“Two-forty on a turnpike road,” said Wallbridge. And, refreshed by a minute of rest, he gave a prolonged bellow and charged frantically for a stout man in a white waistcoat who was doing the maniac dance across the hall.

A moment later the clamor grew louder and the excitement increased. I heard shouts of seventy-five, seventy-eight, eighty and eighty-five. Decker's men had entered into the bidding with energy. The sinews of war had been recruited, and it was a battle for the possession of every block of stock.

Thus far I had followed closely the plan laid down for me by Doddridge Knapp, and the course of the market had agreed with the outlines of his prophecy. But now it was going up faster than he had expected. Yet I could do nothing but buy. I dared not set bounds to the bidding. I dared not stop for an instant to hear how the account of purchases stood, for it might allow Decker to get the stock that my employer would need to give him the control of the mine. I could only grip the railing and wait for the end of the call.

At last it came, and “Omega, one hundred and five and three-quarters” was the closing quotation. I feverishly took the totals of my purchases from the brokers, and gave the checks to bind them. Then I hastily made my way through the excited throngs that blocked the entrance to the Exchange, brought thither by the exciting news of “a boom in Omega,” and hurried to the office.

Doddridge Knapp had not yet come, and I consumed myself with impatience for ten minutes till I heard his key in the lock and he entered with a calm smile on his face.

“What luck, Wilton?” was his greeting. The King of the Street, whose millions had been staked in the game, was less excited than I who risked nothing.

I gave him my memoranda, and tried to read his face as he studied them.

“You did a good job with Crown Diamond,” he grunted approvingly.

“Thanks,” I returned. “I thought it wasn't bad for a stock that was not worth mentioning.”

“Um, yes. Decker can light his cigars with it next month.”

“A million dollars' worth of cigar-lighters might be called a piece of extravagance,” I murmured.

“You'll think so if you ever buy 'em, Wilton,” growled the King of the Street feelingly. “And here is seven thousand six hundred shares of Omega bought and five thousand sold. That scheme worked pretty well. We made twenty-six hundred by it. Um—the price went up pretty fast.”

The King of the Street looked sourly at the figures before him. “You ought to have got more stock,” he growled.

This was a shock to my self-congratulation over my success, and I gave an inquiring “Yes?”

“As I figure it out,” he said, “somebody else got seven thousand shares and odd. There were over fifteen thousand shares sold in your Board.”

I murmured that I had done my best.

“Yes, yes; I suppose so,” said my employer. “But we need more.”

“How much?” I asked.

“I've got a little over forty-eight thousand shares,” he said slowly, “and I must have near sixty thousand. It looks as though I'd have to fight for them.”

“Which will cost you about a million and a half at present rates,” I returned.

“I'll give you a million commission, Wilton, if you'll get them for that.”

The King of the Street plainly did not underrate the task he had set.

“Well, Decker isn't any better off than you,” I said consolingly.

“He's ten or fifteen thousand shares worse off than I am.”

“And he's put a fortune into Crown Diamond, and is pretty well loaded with Confidence.”

“True, my boy.”

“And so,” I argued, “he must be nearer the bottom of his sack than you are.”

“Very good, Wilton,” said the King of the Street with a quizzical look. “But you've left one thing out. You don't happen to know that the directors of the El Dorado Bank had a secret meeting last night and decided to back Decker for all they are worth.”

“Rather a rash proceeding,” I suggested.

“Well, he had three millions of their money in his scheme, so I reckon they thought the tail might as well follow the hide,” explained my employer.

“The only thing to do then is to get a bank yourself,” I returned.

Doddridge Knapp's lips closed, and a trace of a frown was on his brows.

“Well, this isn't business,” he said. “Now here is what I want,” he continued. And he gave directions for the buying at the afternoon session.

“Now, not over one hundred and twenty-five,” was his parting injunction. “You may not get much—I don't think you will—though I have a scheme that may bring a reaction.”

Doddridge Knapp's scheme for a reaction must have been one of the kind that goes off backward, for Omega jumped skyward on the afternoon call, and closed at one hundred and thirty. Rumors were flying fast that a big bonanza, “bigger than the Consolidated Virginia,” had been discovered on the six-hundred-foot level, and the great public was rushing to Pine Street to throw its dollars into the blind pool against Knapp, Decker and the El Dorado bank. And I had been able to get a scant one thousand five hundred shares when the call was over.

“I did better than you,” said Doddridge Knapp, when I explained to him the course of the session. “I found a nest of two thousand five hundred, and gathered them in at one hundred and twenty. But that's all right. You've done well enough—as well as I expected.”

“And still eight thousand to get,” I said.

“Nearly.”

“Well, we'll get them in due time, I suppose,” I said cheerfully.

“We'll have 'em by Monday noon, or we won't have 'em at all,” growled Doddridge Knapp.

“How is that?”

“You seem to have forgotten, young man, that the stock transfer books of the Omega Company close on Monday at two o'clock.”

As I had never heard this interesting piece of information before, I could not in strictness be said to have forgotten it.

“Well, we ought to have the stock by that time,” I said consolingly.

“We ought,” said the King of the Street grimly, pausing in the doorway, “but things don't always happen as they ought.”

As I remembered that if things had happened as they ought Doddridge Knapp would be in jail, I gave a hearty assent to the proposition as the door closed behind my retreating employer.