“They’re all crooked.”
“You’re cock-eyed. About two per cent are crooked — and they’re damned smart. They cover a lot of territory. Some of the honest ones are stupid. The crooked ones can’t afford to be.”
“Stick up for lawyers if you want to, but give me the dope.”
“Crumweather,” I said, “is making a specialty of beating the Blue Sky Law.”
“It can’t be beaten. They’ve tried that before.”
“Any law can be licked,” I said. “I don’t care what it is.”
“Well, you studied it. I didn’t.”
I said, “The Blue Sky Law can be licked. The way Crumweather is licking it is taking old corporations which have forfeited their charters to the state for failure to pay their franchise taxes, reviving those corporations, and letting them engage in an entirely different form of business. In order to do that, he first buys up the stock of defunct corporations. It isn’t every franchise forfeiture that gives him just what he needs. He needs a corporation that had nearly all of its stock issued and which has no corporate liabilities. He buys up the old shares of stock which have become private property in the hands of a bona fide purchaser, then he revives the corporation. He finds out what his clients are going to sell the stock for and gives them the certificates at a price which gives him a ten-per-cent profit on every share that’s sold. He instructs his clients to avoid the appearance of selling generally to the public, but keeps them in the position of making individual private transactions.”
“Well?” she asked.
“We’ll never touch him on the blackmail,” I said. “He’s too slick and too far removed. The only way to hook him is to get him where we can bust him with some of this corporation crooked work. It isn’t going to be easy because he’s plenty smart.”