Shares were dug up in small lots, in huge blocks and slammed on the market for what they would bring.

All day the pounding went on.

Thousands of shares were poured out until Motors which had been climbing toward par in the neighborhood of 79 had declined forty points.

Brainard had jumped in first and had realized the top price for his holdings.
Yet during all the wild scenes when the telephone was ringing insistently for him, Brainard, having set the machinery in motion and having been ostentatiously in the office when it started in order to avert suspicion, could not now be found.
The market had closed and Constance was reading the account of the collapse as it was interpreted in the Wall Street editions of the papers, when the door opened and Brainard entered.
"This has been a good day's work, Constance," he said, flinging himself into a chair.
"Yes, I was just reading of it in the papers.

The little microphone has put an entirely new twist on affairs.