Page:The Wizard of Wall Street and his Wealth.djvu/132

 from himself to Fisk. The ex-peddler loved to bask in the sun of public notoriety. Gould was timid, but Fisk had the brazen courage of a courtesan.

Gould and Fisk now became exceedingly nervous over the firmness of the President's policy. He induced Mr. Corbin to write a letter directly to the President himself. This letter, written on the seventeenth, under the influence of Gould's anxiety, was instantly sent away by a special messenger of Fisk's, who rode twenty-eight miles on horseback from Pittsburg, and delivered it in person to the President. He read the letter, and had his suspicions at once aroused. He said laconically to the messenger: "It is satisfactory; there is no answer." He began to see through the game, and at once desired Mrs. Grant to write to Mrs. Corbin requesting her husband to have nothing more to do with the Gould-Fisk gang.

The messenger telegraphed "All right" to the conspirators.

"We now come to the week which was to witness the explosion of all this elaborately constructed mine. On Monday the 20th, gold again rose. Throughout Tuesday and Wednesday, Fisk continued to purchase without limit and forced the price up to 40. At this time, Gould's firm of Smith, Gould & Martin, through which the operation was conducted, had purchased some $50,000,000, and yet the bears went on selling, although they could only continue the contest by borrowing Gould's own gold. Gould, on the other hand, could no longer