"I didn't know. But what of it?"
"Why, only that your friend Temple wants to be there, when he and I march into the meeting controlling a majority interest and elect a board of directors for old Napper Tandy, leaving him completely out of it. Not a word about that, however, to anybody, till the time comes. We want to add to the dramatic effect by making the thing a complete surprise."
If Captain Will Hallam had been a robust boy of ten, chewing upon a particularly toothsome morsel, he could not have shown a greater relish for what was in his mouth than he did for these sentences as he uttered them. His manner had all of active satisfaction in it that an eager card player manifests when he saves a doubtful game by throwing down a final and unsuspected trump at the end of a hand that has seemed to be lost.
But Duncan was still mystified, and in answer to his questions Captain Hallam explained.
"When you got yourself into trouble by monkeying with the accentuations of a buzz saw," he said, "I could see only one way out, and that was to put you into a position where even the disembodied spirit of Calumny itself could not pretend to believe old Napper Tandy's yarn. You know Tandy is fond of playing tricks, especially upon me, and as the president and controlling spirit of a rather strong bank, he has been able to give me a good deal of trouble now and then. A year ago Stafford and I decided that it might some day be handy for us to control a majority of the stock in Tandy's bank. There was a good deal of it lying about loose—that is to say, a number of people held little blocks of it, ranging from one share to five. All of these people were more or less under Tandy's influence, and all of them were in the habit of giving him proxies to vote their stock or else themselves going into the stockholders' meeting and voting as he desired. Stafford and I quietly set about buying up this loose stock—through other people, of course, so that we shouldn't appear in the matter. We had got forty-eight per cent. of it, when you got yourself into trouble with Tandy. It occurred to me that if we could get three or four more shares and emphasize our confidence in you by making you president of Tandy's own bank, and turning him out to grass, he might see the point and stop his lies. I flatter myself that Stafford and I are pretty well known all over the West and among bankers in the East. We are not at all generally regarded as a pair of sublimated idiots—which same we should certainly be if we deliberately made a bank president out of a young man whose integrity was open to any possibility of suspicion. Now, don't be in a hurry!"—seeing that Duncan was eager to ask questions, or to express his appreciation of Captain Hallam's interest in himself—"don't be in a hurry and don't interrupt. Let me tell you the whole story. At first I didn't see any possible way in which to secure the three shares, without which I could do nothing. I took pains to have the stock register of the bank examined. I found that Tandy himself and the members of his immediate family owned forty-eight shares, and that four more belonged to Kennedy, the tug captain whom you discharged after calling him by a picturesque variety of pet names. Of course it was of no use to approach Kennedy, even through an outsider, as he is in Tandy's employ now, and very deeply in Tandy's debt. I must explain that, as Stafford and I had bought stock through agents of our own, we had kept our hands concealed by leaving the several shares nominally in the hands of the men we had employed to buy them and instructing those men to go on voting the stock in whatever way Tandy wished. This made Tandy feel perfectly secure of his control of the bank. Even if he had sold out half his own interest he would have felt secure, seeing that all the floating stock was within his voting control. You see I'm a rather good-natured man, on the whole, and I never like to make a man feel uncomfortable unless I must. When your trouble arose I thought I saw that there was nothing for it but to make a strike for some of Tandy's own stock. I didn't much believe the thing could be done, but I've seen so many miracles worked in my time that I believe in them. You sent for Temple—and by the way, he's a fellow that's built from the ground up—and I set him at work. I told him what we wanted done and why, but I couldn't tell him how to do it, because I didn't know. I gave him a free hand, and left him to use his own wits. As they happened to be particularly good wits, he did the trick within less than two days. He managed to buy Kennedy's four shares, not from Kennedy, but from Tandy himself, so that now when the stockholders' meeting comes, I'll march in, representing the two shares that I'm known to own, and Temple will be with me, holding proxies for all the rest of mine and Stafford's stock. We'll vote fifty-two against forty-eight. We'll name all the directors, and they will make you president at once. I'll put some shares in your hands to qualify you, but you ought actually to own at least ten shares in your own right. Have you got any money loose?"
Captain Hallam knew very well that Duncan had a sufficient deposit balance in the Hallam bank to cover the suggested purchase, but he wanted to forestall and prevent the expression of Duncan's thanks. Hence his question, and hence, also, the look he cast in Mrs. Hallam's direction, in obedience to which that gracious and sagacious gentlewoman broke at once and insistently into the conversation.
"Now, if you two men have quite finished with business," she said, "I want a small share of attention on my own part."
"Will you excuse me for a little while, Duncan," interrupted Captain Will, "while I give some orders at the stables and in the garden? I very nearly forgot them. Mrs. Hallam will entertain you in my absence, I'm sure."
As soon as the head of the house had made his escape through the door, Mrs. Hallam—whose friendship for Duncan had won all that is possible of privilege for itself—turned to him and asked:
"Why haven't you been taking Barbara to places? Why didn't you tell me to invite her here for supper to-night? You know I have had her here a dozen times, and you know how welcome she always is."