But now it became difficult to get wheat at all. All of a sudden nobody was selling. The buyers in the Pit commenced to bid against each other, offering a dollar and two cents. The wheat did not “come out.” They bid a dollar two and a half, a dollar two and five-eighths; still no wheat. Frantic, they shook their fingers in the very faces of Landry Court and the Gretry traders, shouting: “A dollar, two and seven-eighths! A dollar, three! Three and an eighth! A quarter! Three-eighths! A half!” But the others shook their heads. Except on extraordinary advances of a whole cent at a time, there was no wheat for sale.

At the last-named price Crookes acknowledged defeat. Somewhere in his big machine a screw had been loose. Somehow he had miscalculated. So long as he and his associates sold and sold and sold, the price would go down. The instant they tried to cover there was no wheat for sale, and the price leaped up again with an elasticity that no power could control.