ten o'clock
Nine o'clock came , then nine-thirty . It was almost time for the stock market to open . My thoughts , which had been diverted from my rash plunge into the intricacies of high finance , began to return to it . As ten o'clock drew near , I began to realize what I had bade Davis do , and to think what might happen because of it . I , Roscoe Paine , no longer even a country banker , was at the helm of `` Big Jim '' Colton 's bark in the maelstrom of the stock market . It would have been funny if it had not been so desperate . And desperate it was , sheer reckless desperation and nothing else .