Probably a certain number of the 5,000 which went
to the general public will come into the market too.
But of course you see that all such shares will simply
go through one operation before they come back to us.
Some one of the fourteen men we are squeezing will snap
them up and bring them straight to Semple, to get free from
the fortnightly tax we are levying on them. In that way
we shall eventually let out say half of these fourteen
'shorts,' or perhaps more than half."
"What do you want to do that for?" The sister's grey eyes
had caught a metallic gleam, as if from the talk about gold.
"Why let anybody out? Why can't you go on taking their
money for ever?"
Thorpe nodded complacently. "Yes--that's what I asked too.
It seemed to me the most natural thing, when you'd got
'em in the vise, to keep them there. But when you come
to reflect--you can't get more out of a man than there
is in him. If you press him too hard, he can always go
bankrupt--and then he's out of your reach altogether,
and you lose everything that you counted on making
out of him. So, after a certain point, each one of the
fourteen men whom we're squeezing must be dealt with on
a different footing. We shall have to watch them all,
and study their resources, as tipsters watch horses
in the paddock.
"You see, some of them can stand a loss of a hundred
thousand pounds better than others could lose ten thousand.
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