Chapter XLIII

Late that afternoon Cappy Ricks graciously summoned the Chronicle reporter to his office and told him in detail all he knew about the Australian wheat invasion.

"Of course," he added, "this may be mere street gossip; but I think there's something in it, my boy. At any rate, I thought you might care to be tipped off to the situation. It looks like a corking story to me. I suggest that you call up Ford & Carter and see what they have to say about it."

"I wonder whether the Examiner reporter has a tip on this?" the Chronicle man queried hopefully.

"Not from me. This story is for you, young man. That's why I called you down to my office."

About the same hour J. Augustus Redell might have been seen at the press table on 'Change, unfolding a similar story to the market reporter of the Examiner, who thought it was a humdinger of a story, and so declared.

"All right. Glad you think so," Mr. Redell replied, beaming upon him. "And just to show you I'm right, I'll not breathe a word of it to the Chronicle man."

Having planted his journalistic bomb, Mr. Redell glanced at his watch. It was exactly eleven o'clock. "I still have time," he murmured, and departed immediately to the office of Gregg of December wheat, but to cease selling the instant the market hesitated to absorb it or the price broke a point. At the same moment, in another brokerage office, Cappy Ricks was issuing a similar order. Before the market closed, Cappy had succeeded in selling a hundred and eighty thousand bushels, while Redell had disposed of a hundred and thirty. Evidently the bears took it as it came, for the market closed strong at $1.89.

Neither Cappy nor Redell reported at his office the following day. At the hour when the market opened in Chicago both schemers appeared on the floor of the Merchants' Exchange and bent their gaze upon the only blackboard on 'Change they had not heretofore honored with their scrutiny--the board in back of the Grain Pit, which carried the quotations on the Chicago Board of Trade, already beginning to come in by wire.

For an hour the trading was inactive. Then suddenly the price broke half a point as somebody tossed a lot of fifty thousand bushels on the market. Cappy and Redell each wondered whether he might not be the responsible party; and while they pondered somebody unloaded a hundred thousand bushels at $1.88. Cappy gasped as the quotations appeared on the blackboard.

"Something doing, Gus!" he whispered; Redell nodded.

And now commenced a period of wild trading. The price crept back to $1.89, only to be assaulted and beaten back to $1.87; then, fraction by fraction and point by point, the price fell; and J. Augustus Redell wagged his head approvingly.

"They have received our message," he said. "The riot is on!"