SEIZE THE DAY
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way Tamkin talks. Don't ask me. Do you want the
Trib?
Aren't
you going to look at the closing quotations?"
"It won't help much to look. I know what they were yesterday
at three," said Wilhelm. "But I suppose I better had get the paper."
It seemed necessary for him to lift one shoulder in order to put his
hand into his jacket pocket. There, among little packets of pills and
crushed cigarette butts and strings of cellophane, the red tapes of
packages which he sometimes used as dental floss, he recalled that
he had dropped some pennies.
"That doesn't sound so good," said Rubin. He meant to be
conversationally playful, but
his
voice had no tone and his eyes,
slack and lid-blinded, turned elsewhere. He didn't want to hear.
It
was all the same to
him.
Maybe he already knew, being the sort of
man who knew and knew.
No, it wasn't good. Wilhelm held three orders of lard in the
commodities market. He and Dr. Tamkin had bought this lard
together four days ago at 12.96 and the price at once began to fall
and was still falling. In the mail this morning there was sure to be
a call for additional margin payment. One came every day.
The psychologist, Dr. Tamkin, had got him into this. Tamkin
lived at the Gloriana and attended the card game. He had explained
to Wilhelm that you could speculate in commodities at one of the
uptown branches of a good Wall Street house without making the
full deposit of margin legally required. It was up to the branch
manager.
If
he knew you-and all the branch managers knew Tam–
kin-he would allow you to make short-term purchases. You needed
only to open a small account.
"The whole secret of this type of speculation," Tamkin had
told him, "is in the alertness. You have to act fast-buy it and sell
it; sell it and buy in again. But quick! Get to the window and have
them wire Chicago at just the right second. Strike and strike again!
Then get out the same day. In no time at all you turn over fifteen,
twenty thousand dollars' worth of soybeans, coffee, corn, hides, wheat,
cotton." Obviously, the doctor understood the market well. Other–
wise he could not make it sound so simple. "People lose because
they are greedy and can't get out when it starts to go up. They
gamble, but I do it scientifically. This is not guesswork. You must
take a few points and get out. Why, ye gods!" said Dr. Tamkin with
