"We are no more anxious for a receivership and a public outcry over a whopping failure than you are," Bartley Richston declared. "But neither are we to be stampeded into sinking more money. It would be lunacy. Most of us see clearly that to go ahead simply means a bigger smash later on. This is no matter for sentiment. We are practical men and we see no sound reason for making tremendous sacrifices. As an alternative I would suggest—since you seem to think, contrary to our judgment, that the Norquay Trust can be resuscitated—that you take it over, lock, stock and barrel, yourself. You can have my interest. I'm satisfied my shares aren't worth the paper they're printed on. Then you can use your own resources to bolster it up, and if you succeed any profit or glory will be your own."
"Very well," Norquay senior agreed, very gently and—to Rod—quite unexpectedly. "I will accept your shares, and your resignations. In the usual manner you will elect in your places such men as I name. Not to-morrow, nor next week, but now—at once. It is quarter to eleven. There are clerks and telephones. I shall be back at a quarter to twelve.
"Remember," he concluded harshly, "I am a wealthy man and not given to idle threats. If any of you at any time now or in the future takes a step by word or deed to precipitate a crisis which I am trying to avoid—then I step aside. The funds I propose to use in clearing up this mess of your making I shall then devote to seeing that such of you as I can reach shall get your just deserts for certain disbursements in connection with this trust company."
He turned his back on them. Rod followed him out to the cloak-room. They put on their coats in silence, walked out to the street where a closed motor car waited at the curb.
"The Western Club," Mr. Norquay told the chauffeur.
"I need a drink badly," he said to Rod, "to take the taste out of my mouth. Well, we're committed to a devil of an undertaking, Rod. You'll have to begin ripping the heart out our timber as soon as there's a break in the weather. It is our only salvation. I have turned everything else into cash the last few weeks against this emergency. I never believed we should ever get into so tight a corner. We've got a fighting chance. That's all."
"I wonder," Rod's mind envisaged certain passages in his great-great-grandfather's journal, "if it's as tight a corner as the Chilcotins had us in once or twice? There have been tight corners in the past, pater. Do you suppose we have lost our capacity for hard fighting? Gone soft? Eh?"
His father glanced at him. "God forbid," he said quietly, and relapsed into silence.
"It is my fault," he sighed, "I should have fathomed Grove long ago. Blind, blind! He's eaten up with vanity. Fancies himself a Napoleon on the field of affairs. They've played shrewdly on that. I can see it now. He doesn't realize yet what they've done to him, nor how. He's been bewildered for weeks—and still confident that if he could get enough money he could carry it off. A fool and his money! Power in weak hands. They made a tool of him, a common tool. And we've got to pay through the nose. There's no choice—unless we get down to their level and run to cover like jackals."
"If you have proof of criminal acts, why don't you club them with that; make them disgorge?" Rod asked.