There was a long silence, while the cab rolled swiftly on its way. "Well?" Oliver asked at last.

"I can imagine," said Montague, "how a man might intend to move a certain stock, and think that he had the power, and yet find that he was mistaken. There are so many forces, so many chances to be considered - it seems to me you must be taking a risk."

Oliver laughed. "You talk like a child," was his reply. "Suppose that I were in absolute control of a corporation, and that I chose to run it for purposes of market manipulation, don't you think I might come pretty near knowing what its stock was going to do?"

"Yes," said Montague, slowly, "if such a thing as that were conceivable."

"If it were conceivable!" laughed his brother. "And now suppose that I had a confidential man - a secretary, we'll say - and I paid him twenty thousand a year, and he saw chances to make a hundred thousand in an hour - don't you think he might conceivably try it?"

"Yes," said Montague, "he might. But where do you come in?"

"Well, if the man were going to do anything worth while, he'd need capital, would he not? And he'd hardly dare to look for any money in the Street, where a thousand eyes would be watching him. What more natural than to look out for some person who is in Society and has the ear of private parties with plenty of cash?"

And Montague sat in deep thought. "I see," he said slowly; "I see!" Then, fixing his eyes upon Oliver, he exclaimed, earnestly, "One thing more!"

"Don't ask me any more," protested the other. "I told you I was pledged - "

"You must tell me this," said Montague. "Does Bobbie Walling know about it?"

"He does not," was the reply. But Montague had known his brother long and intimately, and he could read things in his eyes. He knew that that was a lie. He had solved the mystery at last!

Montague knew that he had come to a parting of the ways. He did not like this kind of thing - he had not come to New York to be a stock-gambler. But what a difficult thing it would be to say so; and how unfair it was to be confronted with such an issue, and compelled to decide in a few minutes in a cab!