"Well, you're getting you eye teeth cut slowly," laughed Jack, "and in a year or two you'll know sheep from goats. I'm sorry you can't go to call on Ethel Sherman this evening, but you can't. It's just as well, for when she hears you have come out on top of Rockhaven and are worth a few thousand, she'll receive you with more warmth. She is back from the mountains, brown as an autumn leaf and looking out of sight. If I didn't know she was the most heartless and selfish hypocrite ever clad in petticoats, I'd make love to her myself."
And Jack Nickerson, the inveterate scoffer at all things, took himself away.
That day Rockhaven was bid up to twenty, the short interest more than doubled, and the two arch conspirators, Weston and Simmons, in the privacy of the latter's office that night, held a love feast, nudged each other in the ribs, and laughed and joked while they smoked costly cigars, feeling sure a small fortune was within sight.
"I think it's best to let 'em bid it up to about forty," said Simmons, in a self-confident tone, and as though the street were within his grasp, "and then I'll feed those hungry bears granite chips by the shovelful."
"I flatter myself," he continued, "that I have engineered this deal as but few could; and if this pious old hen, Mrs. Converse, attends strictly to foreign missions a few days longer, all will go well."
"No need to worry about her," responded Weston, whose spirits had also risen. "I, too, am fairly smooth, and have persuaded her to leave her stock with me to sell when the right time comes; and I have also subscribed five hundred toward a home for old ladies she is interested in. That's the way I _converse_ with her."
Little did either realize that Nemesis, with three thousand shares in reserve, lurked in Broker Page's office, and that another thousand in the pocket of the "fossil who fiddled," as Weston had once called Jess Hutton, would be added to that avenging club, inside of twenty-four hours.
In response to Winn's summons, dressed in a somewhat faded and nondescript garb, with bell-crowned silk hat of ancient style, Jess Hutton reached the city.
His coat, a surtout with small gilt buttons, a reddish brown vest, trousers of gray mixed stuff, a high collar with black satin stock, and his ruddy brown face with fringe of gray beard and keen twinkling blue eyes made him conspicuous. He carried a cane, limping a little as always, and when he greeted Winn on the station platform, the latter felt that all Rockhaven had arrived.