That day he wrote checks, an unpleasant curl of the lip betraying his consciousness of his wife, of the look in her eyes, of the hard bitterness of her tones because he was spending money on something other than her whims. His anger held and hardened with the congealing quality of his contempt for her selfishness, her cold-blooded acquisitiveness. He felt that the greatest ease he could know was never to see Doris again so long as he lived.
Wherefore, he did not go home. But Doris called him on the telephone, just before noon.
"Bill, are you going to be home for luncheon?"
"No."
"When are you coming, then? Don't you realize what people will be saying? I should think you might have some little consideration for me."
"I can trust you to attend to that matter," Bill replied evenly. "I have never yet known you to fail. When I hear from San Francisco I shall let you know. I wired last evening, and should hear to-day or to-morrow."
"Bill Dale, you——"
"Yes. Certainly. Good-by." Bill hung up and turned back unemotionally to his work. His lawyer, who sat within three feet of him, believed that Bill was speaking to a client, or an employee of some kind.
The next day, Parowan Consolidated dropped to one dollar, and people were selling by wire,—and Bill was buying. He was appalled at the amount of stock which had been placed on the market and sold at boom prices. The incorporation had been for two million shares. There had been two million, seven hundred thousand shares issued. The auditor had discovered that for Bill.
Bill had a happy half-hour, thinking that he had "got the goods" on Rayfield and Emmett. But Fuller, the attorney, dug into the records and discovered just when and where and how the capital stock had been increased nearly one million shares. Bill called to mind the times when he had been asked, just as he put on his hat to leave after some brief visit to the office, "Oh, just sign up these minutes, Mr. President. Catch you while I can, is the only way I can get at you!" And Bill, knowing that Doris was waiting for him, had signed minutes, documents, stock and check books hastily, without giving the time he should have devoted to the reading. So the capital stock had been increased with his official sanction, but without his knowledge. There was nothing that he could say, nothing that he could do. An officer of a corporation is supposed to know the official acts of his organization.