“Your wishes shall be carried out to the letter, Mr. Smith,” he promised. “The legality of the transaction cannot be questioned. Your financial stewardship of the affairs of the other party has been scrupulously above any criticism and we nor any other concerned have any option but to be guided by your commands.
“I confess,” he added with a puzzled smile, “that the methods of your company have always baffled me; this time, however, I cannot for the life of me see what is behind the North Star’s strategy.”
“This time,” enlightened Acey Smith as he bade Sir David good-bye, “there is no strategy behind the North Star’s methods.”
Acey Smith had barely left the president’s office when a stout, florid-faced man who had been waiting outside was ushered in.
“By the way, Sir David,” he asked closing the door, “who is that extraordinary looking chap who just left this office?”
“Who is he?” echoed Sir David Edwards-Jones rather abstractedly. “He’s a lumberman from the Northwest. But, Dennison, he is also one of the most remarkable, most inscrutable men in the whole Dominion of Canada.”
Which statement, vague as it was, contained as much information as can usually be drawn from great bankers relative to their customers.
II
On the afternoon of the memorable Monday, October 16, one week previous to the date at which the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills was under agreement with the government to be in full operation manufacturing newsprint from the pulpwood boomed at Nannabijou Limits or lose their cutting rights on the North Shore, Norman T. Gildersleeve, president of the International Investment Corporation, parent of the Kam City Company, was pacing the docks at the limits and cursing the haste that had brought him out to such a monotonous place a day before it was necessary.
The tugs which he had wired for from Duluth would not now likely reach the limits until the following day, and, with all the indications of rough weather that were apparent, they might be later still. As a matter of fact—and Gildersleeve was quite cognizant of that fact-the United States tugs dare not touch a pole in the booms without the North Star’s permission until such time as Ontario government authority intervened in the strike and approved of the use of the foreign tugs as an emergency. But Gildersleeve considered himself a master of the gambler’s game of bluff. He had taken every means of stimulating quick government action by means of what he called “hot grounders” over the wires to the premier and members of his cabinet in Toronto. The presence of the fleet of American tugs, ready to pitch into the work of transporting the poles, he calculated, would take the heart out of the North Star Company. If it didn’t—well, he’d have those tugs in readiness and he’d sue the North Star for the expense of bringing them over.