Edwin Lefevre

“ Hunt,” Colwell said, very politely, “my only desire is to please you and to help you. When you buy bonds you must be prepared to be patient. It may take months before you will be able to sell yours at a profit, and I don’t know how low the price will go in the meantime. Nobody can tell you that, because nobody knows. But it need make no difference to you whether the bonds go to 90, or even to 85, which is unlikely.” ”

“ But Fullerton F. Colwell had to do everything—in the stock market and in the office. He conducted the manipulation of the Wilson & Graves stocks, took charge of the un-nefarious part of the numerous pools formed by the firm’s customers—Mr. Graves attending to the other details—and had a hand in the actual management of various corporations. Also, he conferred with a dozen people daily—chiefly “big people,” in Wall Street parlance—who were about to “put through” stock-market “deals.” ”

“ The reason why you use a margin is that you can do much more with the money that way than if you bought outright. It protects your broker against a depreciation in the security purchased, which is all he wants. In this case you theoretically owe us $61,000, but the bonds are in your name, and they are worth $96,000, so that if you want to pay us back, all you have to do is to order us to sell the bonds, return the money we have advanced, and keep the balance of your margin ”

“ He had devoted his time, which was worth thousands, and his brain, which was worth millions, to disentangling his careless friend’s affairs, and when it was all over and every claim adjusted, and he had refused the executor’s fees to which he was entitled, it was found that poor Harry Hunt’s estate not only was free from debt, but consisted of $38,000 in cash, deposited in the Trolleyman’s Trust Company, subject to Mrs. Hunt’s order, and drawing interest at the rate of 21⁄2 per cent per annum. ”

“ Colwell?”
Mr. Colwell fiercely hated the unnamed “friend,” who had told her so little and yet so much. But he said to her, mildly: “I thought that I had explained all that to you. It might hurt a weak speculator if the bonds declined ten points, though such a decline is utterly improbable. But it won’t affect you in the slightest, since, having an ample margin, you would not be forced to sell. You would simply hold on until the price rose again. Let me illustrate. Supposing your house cost $10,000, and——”
“Harry paid $32,000,” she said, correctingly. ”

“ On the Stock Exchange the price of Man. Elec. L. H. & P. Co. 5s rose steadily. Mrs. Hunt, too indignant to feel lachrymose, discussed the subject with her Cousin Emily and her husband. Emily was very much interested. Between her and Mrs. Hunt they forced the poor man to make strange admissions, and, deliberately ignoring his feeble protests, they worked themselves up to the point of believing that, while it would be merely generous of Mr. Colwell to let his friend’s widow have the bonds at 93, it would be only his obvious duty to let her have them at 961⁄2. ”

“ He was a director in a half score of companies—financial débutantes which his firm had “brought out” and over whose stock-market destinies he presided. His partners left a great deal to him, and even the clerks in the office ungrudgingly acknowledged that Mr. Colwell was “the hardest worked man in the place, barring none”—an admission that means much to those who know it is always the downtrodden clerks who do all the work and their employers who take all the profit and credit. Possibly the important young men who did all the work in Wilson & Graves’ office bore witness to Mr. ”

“ Also, it was he who raised salaries; wherefore he was the most charming as well as the busiest man there. Of his partners, John G. Wilson was a consumptive, forever going from one health resort to another, devoting his millions to the purchase of railroad tickets in the hope of out-racing Death. ”