Friday, the 13th of November, drifted over Manhattan Island in a drear drizzle of marrow-chilling haze, which just missed being rain—­one of those New York days that give a hesitating suicide renewed courage to cut the mortal coil.  By ten o’clock it had settled down on the Stock Exchange and its surrounding infernos with a clamminess that damped the spirits of the most rampant bulls.  No class in the world is so susceptible to atmospheric conditions as stock-gamblers.  Many a stout-hearted one has been known to postpone the inauguration of a long-planned coup merely because the air filled his blood with the dank chill of superstition.  Because of the expected Sugar pyrotechnics, Stock Exchange members had gathered early; the brokers’ offices were crowded to overflowing before ten; the morning papers, not only in New York but in Boston, Philadelphia, and other centres, were filled with stories of the big rise that was to take place in Sugar.  The knowing ones saw the ear-marks of the “System’s” press-agent in these stories; and they knew that this industrious institution had not sat up the night before because of insomnia.  All the signs pointed to a killing, and a terrific one—­pointed so plainly that the bears and Sugar shorts found no hope in the atmosphere or the date.

Bob had not been near the office the afternoon before, and as he had not come in by five minutes to ten I decided to go over to the Exchange and see if he were going to mix up in the baiting of the Sugar bears.  I had no specific reasons for thinking he was interested except his recent queer actions, particularly his hanging to the Sugar-pole, yet doing nothing, the day before.  But it is one of the best-established traditions of stock-gambledom that when an operator has been bitten by a rabid stock he is invariably attracted to it every time afterward that it shows signs of frothing.  More than all, I had one of those strong nowhere-born-nowhere-cradled intuitions common to those living in the stock-gambling world, which made me feel the creepy shadow of coming events.

As on that day a few weeks before, the crowd was at the Sugar-pole, but its alignment was different.  There in the centre were Barry Conant and his trusted lieutenants, but no opposing rival.  None of those hundreds of brokers showed that desperate resolve to do or die that is born of a necessity.  They were there to buy or sell, but not to put up a life or death, on-me-depends-the-result fight.  Those who were long of stock could easily be distinguished by their expressions of joy from the shorts, who had seen the handwriting on the wall and were filled with uncertainty, fear, terror.  The demeanour of Barry Conant and his lieutenants expressed confidence:  they were going to do what they were there to do.  They showed by their tight-buttoned coats, and squared shoulders that they expected lots of rush, push, and haul work, but apparently they anticipated no last-ditch fighting.  The gong pealed and the crowd of brokers