To the astonishment of every man in the crowd he let loose
one wild yell, a cross between the war-whoop of an Indian and the bay of a
deep-lunged hound regaining a lost scent. Then he began to throw over
Sugar stock, right and left, in big and little amounts. He slaughtered the
price, under-cutting Barry Conant's every offer and filling every bid. For
twenty minutes he was a madman, then he stopped. Sugar was falling rapidly
to the price it finally reached, 90, and the panic was in full swing, but
panics seemed now to have no interest for Bob. He pushed his way through
the crowd and, joining me, said: "Jim, forgive me. I have dragged you into
an enormous loss, have ruined Beulah Sands, her father, and myself. I
think at the last moment I did the only thing possible. I threw over the
150,000 shares and so cut off some of our loss. Let us go to the office
and see where we stand." He was strangely, unnaturally calm after that
heart-crushing, nerve-tearing day. I tried to tell him how I admired his
cool nerve and pluck in about-facing and doing the only thing there was
left to do; to tell him that required more real courage and
level-headedness than all the rest of the day's doings; but he stopped me:
"Jim, don't talk to me.
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