Page:The Wizard of Wall Street and his Wealth.djvu/143

 Gould & Martin controlled their own gold and were ready to do as they pleased with it without consulting Fisk. I do not think there was any general agreement. None of us who knew him cared to do business with him. I would not have taken an order from him nor had anything to do with him.' Belden was considered a very low fellow. 'I never had anything to do with him or his party,' said one broker employed by Gould. 'They were men I had a perfect detestation of; they were no company for me. I should not have spoken to them at all under ordinary circumstances.' Another says, 'Belden is a man in whom I never had any confidence in any way. For months before that I would not have taken him for a gold transaction.'

"And yet Belden bought millions upon millions of gold. He himself says he had bought twenty millions by this Thursday evening, and this without capital or credit except that of his brokers. Meanwhile Gould, on reaching the city, had at once given secret orders to sell. From the moment he left Corbin he had but one idea, which was to get rid of his gold as quietly as possible. 'I purchased merely enough to make believe I was a bull,' says Gould. This double process continued all that afternoon. Fisk's wild purchases carried the price up to 144, and the panic in the street became more and more serious as the bears realized the extremity of their danger. No one can tell how much gold which did not exist they had contracted to deliver or pay the difference in price. One of the clique brokers swears