Gordon flushed. "I guess one of us is crazy," he retorted, with some heat, "and I don't think I'm the one. I keep telling you you'd do a lot better to leave the whole market end of this thing to me. Why, half the people that'll buy our stock won't know how many shares there are, won't know what the par is, won't know a single identical thing about the mine except what I tell 'em in my advertisements. What's more, if we offered to tell 'em every single thing we know about the mine, they wouldn't care to take the trouble to listen. They're not buying shares in a copper mine. They're scraping together money enough to take a little flier, on margin, of course, something they mean to hold for a day or a week or maybe a month, and get out of at the first decent chance. The whole damned market's nothing but a big gamble, anyway, and everybody knows it, and what we're offering's a hundred times more legitimate than most of the stock deals people frame up, because, when all's said and done, we've got a genuine mine behind us. Still, we're not taking all this trouble just for our health, and we can use money just as well as anybody else. And the way to get the money, as I'm now trying to drive into your heads for about the tenth time, is to launch our mine with a big capitalization and a low par."
He stopped abruptly. Harrison, indeed, looked somewhat impressed, but Mason shook his head. "No, sir," he said stubbornly, "I know just a little mite about the market myself, and I don't say but what, if anybody's goin' to get skun, I wouldn't rather kinder give ourselves the benefit of the doubt, but five million dollars for the Ethel,"—he straightened up in his chair in his excitement—"five million dollars! Why, that's so damned unreasonable they're ain't no good tryin' to argue about it. When do you expect to pay a dividend on your million shares, I'd like to know?"
Gordon, to all appearances, looked thoughtful, as indeed he was. "Well," he admitted at length, "not right away, I suppose, and I'll own up there's some sense in the way you look at it, if the people were going to buy the stock for a real investment. Why don't we do this? Issue ten thousand shares of preferred stock, at a par of twenty-five or fifty, for the kind of people that want to buy for investment. We could really pay dividends on that, without the slightest doubt. And then, for the crowd that only wants to take a flier, and don't care a continental about the merits of the mine, or its future, we'll issue a million shares of common stock, at a par of five. Then we'll all be suited. How does that strike you?"
Mason snorted. "Oh, hell," he said forcibly, "what's the use of you talking that way? I've lived pretty near seventy years without robbing any one yet, and damned if I want to begin now. I'll wind up in the poorhouse first. What say, Jack?"
Harrison shook his head helplessly. "I don't know," he said vaguely. "Seems a pretty big lot of stock to me. Too big, I reckon."
Gordon laughed, with an attempt to pass the matter off lightly. "Oh, well," he said, "I don't want to do anything that neither of you approve of, of course. Why not let the whole matter of the capital stock drop for the present, and let the full board of directors settle it when we're organized?"
It was a last effort, and a futile one. Indeed, the moment the words had left his mouth, Gordon saw his mistake. Mason laughed a little dry laugh. "Yes," he said, with irony, "and four of the seven on the board are easterners. How'd they settle it, I wonder?"
Gordon's expression was not a pleasant one. With a faint shrug of his shoulders, he arose.
"Well, I'm sorry," he said, "but I don't see what I can do. If I do say it, you're being treated as fair as any two men could ask. You're looked out for in every possible way, and if you choose to spite yourselves, and call everything off, because you can't trust me on one of the minor details of the whole scheme, why, I can't see that it's up to me. I'm sorry, though, sincerely sorry. I firmly believe the mine has a great future."
Harrison's face lengthened perceptibly. The downfall of all his own cherished plans was far from pleasant. Mason, however, got up from his chair, his stern old face set in aggressive lines.