five minutes to ten
Because of the expected Sugar pyrotechnics , Stock Exchange members had gathered early ; the brokers ' offices were crowded to overflowing before ten ; the morning papers , not only in New York but in Boston , Philadelphia , and other centres , were filled with stories of the big rise that was to take place in Sugar . The knowing ones saw the ear-marks of the `` System 's '' press-agent in these stories ; and they knew that this industrious institution had not sat up the night before because of insomnia . All the signs pointed to a killing , and a terrific one -- pointed so plainly that the bears and Sugar shorts found no hope in the atmosphere or the date . Bob had not been near the office the afternoon before , and as he had not come in by five minutes to ten I decided to go over to the Exchange and see if he were going to mix up in the baiting of the Sugar bears . I had no specific reasons for thinking he was interested except his recent queer actions , particularly his hanging to the Sugar-pole , yet doing nothing , the day before . But it is one of the best-established traditions of stock-gambledom that when an operator has been bitten by a rabid stock he is invariably attracted to it every time afterward that it shows signs of frothing . More than all , I had one of those strong nowhere-born-nowhere-cradled intuitions common to those living in the stock-gambling world , which made me feel the creepy shadow of coming events .