It was awful; it was unendurable; he longed to scream, to rave, to tear his hair. He mentally cursed the bears, the brokers, the directors, and every one else but himself. He heard some of his companions in the store bawling messages through the telephone, to be wired to New York; these were veterans, who assumed from past experience that a partial recovery would follow and that they would partly recoup their losses. But what could he do? There was not on earth a person whom he could ask, by telegraph, for the few hundred dollars necessary to a small speculation on the ruins.
He heard the outburst of incredulity, followed by rage, as the passengers who had remained at the little hotel received the unexpected news, which now seemed to him to be days old. Then he began to suspect everybody, even the crushed president and directors. What could be easier, Marge said to himself, than for these shrewd fellows to unload quietly before they left New York, and then get out of reach so that they could not render any support in case of a break? He had heard of such things before. It certainly was suspicious that the crash should have come the very day after they got away from the telegraph-wires. Likely enough they now, through their brokers, were quietly buying up all the stock that was being offered, to “peg it up,” little by little, to where it had been. The mere suspicion made him want to tear them limb from limb,--to organize a lynching-party, after the fashion of the Territory they were in, and get revenge, if not justice.
It was rather a dismal party that returned to New York from the trip over the E. & W. The president, fearing indignant Western investors, and still more the newspaper reporters, whom he knew would lie in wait for him until they found him, quietly abandoned the train before reaching Chicago, and went Eastward by some other route. A few of the more hardened operators began to encourage each other by telling of other breaks that had been the making of the men they first ruined, but they dropped their consoling reminiscences when Marge approached them; they had only contempt for a man who from his manner evidently was so completely “cleaned out” as to be unable to start again, even in a small way. The majority, however, seemed as badly off as himself; some of them were so depressed that when the stock of cigars provided specially for the excursion was exhausted they actually bought common pipes and tobacco at a way station, and industriously poisoned the innocent air for hundreds of miles.