"I know," she shot back quickly. "For some reason best known to yourself, you saw fit to have Mr. Evan waylaid and man-handled on the first night of his return to his native State. But you needn't worry about that. He won't hold it against you. I'm sure you'll find him entirely amenable to reason."
The tyrant of "timber-jacks" frowned again. "H'm—reason, eh? How big a block of Twin Buttes stock shall I offer him?"
Her laugh was a silvery peal of derision.
"You always figure in dollars and cents, don't you, Mr. Simon Peter Hathaway?" she mocked.
"I have always found it the cheapest in the end."
"Listen," she said, with the folded fan held up like a monitory finger. "Mr. Gantry may be back any minute, and I can give you only the tiniest hint. You must go to Mr. Evan Blount and appeal to him frankly, as one business man to another."
"But I have heard—they say he's all kinds of a crank."
"Never mind what you have heard. Tell him all the facts and ask him to help you, and for mercy's sake don't offer him a block of your stock. Put it where it will do the most good. Put it in the name of Professor William J. Anners, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and show Mr. Blount how dreadfully disastrous the loss of the preferential freight rate would be to all the poor people in your list of stock-holders—including Professor Anners."
Hathaway drew down his cuff and made a pencil memorandum of the name and address of the new beneficiary.