"He—he's over at the hotel," he stammered.
"Under guard?"
"Well—y-yes."
Brouillard pointed to the telephone on the wall.
"Go and call up your crowd and get it here. Tell Judge Williams to bring the stock he is holding, and Schermerhorn to bring the Massingale notes, and your man Jackson to bring the stock-book. We'll have that directors' meeting that was called, and wasn't held, three weeks ago."
"Oh, good Heavens!" protested the millionaire, "put it off—for God's sake, put it off! It will be wasting time that may be worth a thousand dollars a minute!"
"You are wasting some of the thousand-dollar minutes right now," was the cool reply, and the engineer turned to his desk and squared himself as if he were going to work on a bunch of foremen's reports.
It was a crude little expedient, but it sufficed. Cortwright tramped to the 'phone and cursed and swore at it until he had his man at the other end of the wire. The man was the lawyer, as it appeared, and Cortwright abused him spitefully.
"You've balled it—balled it beautifully!" he shouted. "Come over here to Brouillard's office and bring Schermerhorn and the stock and the notes and Jackson and the secretary's books and Massingale and your infernal self! Get a move, and get it quick! We stand to lose the whole loaf because you had to butt in and sweep up the crumbs first!"
When the procession arrived, as it did in an incredibly short time, Brouillard laid down the law.