Strange stories of Bob’s doings began to seep into my office.  For long periods he would disappear.  Neither the nurses in charge of his wife, nor his brother, mother, and sisters, for whom he had purchased a mansion a few blocks above his own, would hear a word from him.  Then he would return as suddenly as he had disappeared, and his wild eyes and haggard face would tell of a prolonged and desperate soul struggle.  He drank often now, a habit he had never before indulged in.

For ten days before the second anniversary of his marriage he had been missing.  On the morning of the anniversary he appeared at the Exchange, wild-eyed and dare-devil reckless.  The market had been advancing for weeks and was at a high level.  Tom Reinhart and his branch of the “System” were working out a new fleecing of the public in Union and Northern Pacific.  At the strike of the gong Bob took possession of the Union Pacific pole and in thirty minutes had precipitated a panic by his merciless selling.  Our house was heavily interested in the Pacifics, although not in connection with Reinhart and his crowd.  As soon as I got word that Bob was the cause of the slaughter, I rushed over to the Exchange and working my way into the crowd, I begged a word with him.  He had broken both stocks over fifty points a share and the panic was raging through the room.  He glared at me, but finally followed me out into the lobby.  At first he would not heed my appeal, but finally he said, “Jim, it is too bad to let up.  I had determined to rub this devilish institution off the map, but if it really is a case of injury to the house, it’s my opportunity to do something for you who have done so much for me, so here goes.”  He threw himself into the Union Pacific crowd, first giving an order to a group of his brokers, who jumped for a number of other poles.  Almost instantly the panic was stayed and stocks were bounding upward two to five points at a leap.  Bob continued buying Union Pacific and his brokers other stocks in unlimited quantities.  Nothing like such a quick turn of the market had been seen before.  His power to absorb stocks seemed to be boundless.  It was estimated that personally and through his brokers he bought over half a million shares before he joined me and left the Exchange.

I looked at him in wonderment.  “Bob, I cannot understand you,” I said at last as we turned out of Broad Street into Wall.  “It seems as if you work with magic.  Everything you touch turns to gold.”

He wheeled on me.  “Yes, Jim, you are right.  Gold, heartless, soulless gold.  But what is the dross good for?  What is it good for to me?  To-day I suppose I have made the biggest one-man killing in the history of ’the Street.’  I must be an easy twenty-five millions richer in gold than I was this morning, and I had enough then to dam the East River and a good section of the North.  But tell me, Jim, tell me, what can it buy in this world that I have not got?  I had health and happiness,