Massingale tucked the long white beard still farther into the buttoned coat. "I been tellin' you I need a mule-driver to knock a little sense into me," he offered.
"It's a bad business any way you attack it," said Brouillard after a reflective pause. "What you have really got for yourself out of the deal is the ten-thousand-dollar deposit to your personal account, and nothing more; and they'll probably try to make you a debtor for that. Taking that amount and a fair estimate of the company's expenditures to date—say thirty-five thousand in round numbers, which is fairly chargeable to the company's assets as a whole—they still owe you about fifty-five thousand of the original hundred thousand they were to put in. If there were time—but you say this is the last day?"
"The last half o' the last day," Massingale amended.
"I was going to say, if there were time, this thing wouldn't stand the light of day for a minute, Mr. Massingale. They wouldn't go within a hundred miles of a court of law with it. Can't you get an extension on the notes?—but of course you can't; that is just the one thing Cortwright doesn't want you to have—more time."
"No; you bet he don't."
"That being the case, there is no help for it; you'll have to take your medicine and pay the notes. Do that, take an iron-clad receipt from the bank—I'll write it out for you—and get the stock released. After that, we'll give them a whirl for the thirty-three and a third per cent they have practically stolen from you."
The old man's face, remindful now of his daughter's, was a picture of dismayed incertitude.
"I reckon you're forgettin' that I hain't got money enough to lift one edge o' them notes," he said gently.
Brouillard had found a piece of blank paper in his pocket and was rapidly writing the "iron-clad" receipt.
"No, I hadn't forgotten. I have something over a hundred thousand dollars lying idle in the bank. You'll take it and pay the notes."