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Updated: June 22, 2025
Gil-martin came out from the office, saw Brown and said, with sickly bravado: "I held out as long as I could. But they got my ducats. A sporting life comes high, I tell you!" But Brown did not heed him, and Gilmartin pushed the elevator button impatiently and cursed at the delay.
It seemed as though the regeneration of Gilmartin had been achieved when he changed his shabby raiment for expensive clothes. He paid his tradesmen's bills and moved into better quarters. He spent his money as though he had made millions. One week after he had closed out the deal his friends would have sworn Gilmartin had always been prosperous. That was his exterior.
Later, it often came to pass that Gilmartin would borrow a few dollars when the customers were not trading actively. The amounts he borrowed diminished by reason of the increasing frequency of their refusals. Finally, he was asked to stay away from the office where once he had been an honored and pampered customer.
They escorted him to his house. They wished to be with him to the last possible minute. Everybody in the drug trade seemed to think that Gilmartin was on the highroad to Fortune.
Gilmartin, after they were dispossessed for non-payment of rent, left her husband, and went to live with a sister in Newark who did not like Gilmartin. His clothes became shabby and his meals irregular. But always in his heart, as abiding as an inventor's faith in himself, there dwelt the hope that some day, somehow, he would "strike it rich" in the stock market.
In less than five minutes Smithers was so wrought up that he bought 500 shares and promised solemnly not to "take his profits," s. o. sell out, until Gilmartin said the word. Then they had another drink and another look at the ticker. "You want to keep in touch with me," was Gilmartin's parting shot. "I'll tell you what Sharpe tells me.
One day he borrowed five dollars from a man who had made five thousand in Cosmopolitan Traction. The stock, the man said, had only begun to go up, and Gilmartin believed it and bought five shares in "Percy's," his favorite bucket shop. The stock began to rise slowly but steadily. The next afternoon "Percy's" was raided, the proprietor having disagreed with the police as to price.
To be sure, poor Gilmartin said: "I've changed my mind about Newport. I guess I'll spend the summer on my own Hotel de Roof!" And he grinned; but he grinned alone. Wilson, the dry goods man, who laughed so joyously at everybody's jokes, was now watching, as if under a hypnotic spell, the lips of the man who sat on the high stool beside the ticker and called out the prices to the quotation boy.
"I bought this yesterday for my wife; took it out of a little deal in Trolley," he told Hopkins, taking a small jewel-box from one of the desk's drawers. It contained a diamond ring, somewhat showy, but obviously quite expensive. Hopkins's semi-envious admiration made Gilmartin add, genially: "What do you say to lunch?
He lived in the district where men do not say "Good-morning" on meeting one another, but "How's the market?" or, when one asks: "How do you feel?" receives for an answer: "Bullish!" or "Bearish!" instead of a reply regarding the state of health. At first, after the fatal slump, Gilmartin importuned his brokers to let him speculate on credit, in a small way. They did.
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