“I protest, Mr. Gallatin, against your methods of conducting this meeting,” said Leuppold, rising and extending a quavery arm. “You bring as your chief evidence a man once in the employ of my client, a discredited clerk, a man discharged for drunkenness, for incompetence, for dishonesty.”
“No—for honesty, Mr. Leuppold,” Gallatin broke in hotly. “That was why he was discharged. He was too honest to understand the ethics of big business and his utility was at an end. So Mr. Loring let him go. That was a mistake. He knew too much, Mr. Leuppold.”
“You’ll have a chance to prove what he knows, sir. There won’t be much difficulty in discrediting his testimony——”
“You’re making a mistake, Mr. Leuppold,” broke in Gallatin, his voice now thundering. “The question here isn’t so much one of law as it is one of morals. That injunction may be dissolved by the Court of Appeals; but I give you my word that, if you insist on carrying through that sale of the Sanborn Mines to the Pequot Coal Company, I propose to charge your client and the directors of the Sanborn Company with conspiracy, and I’ll convict them—just as sure as the Lord made little apples!”
He dominated the situation and felt it in the short hush that followed his concluding remarks, and in the rapid revolution of Leuppold’s watch charm. Loring had sunk back in his chair, both of his great hands clasping its arms, his gaze on Gallatin’s face, critical but smiling. What he saw there evidently brought a realization that Mr. Gallatin held the whip hand; for as Leuppold began speaking again, he moved one of his hands through the air and rose.
“Wait!” he said. He took two or three paces across the room, between window and door and then stood, his hands in his trousers pockets, fumbling at his keys. It was at least five minutes before he spoke again. But at last he stopped in front of Gallatin and looked at him from head to toe, and suddenly to every one’s surprise, broke out into a loud laugh.
“Mr. Gallatin, you’ve beaten me.”
Success had come so quickly and the end of the case so suddenly that Gallatin looked at his adversary, not certain whether to believe his own ears, and half suspecting some kind of a ruse or trick, the art of which Henry K. Loring, as he knew, was past grand master, when he went on again.
“I don’t propose to ask you how you found Mr. Markham out in Illinois, or to try and learn what your methods were in getting together all this evidence. I know it’s there and that’s enough. I did write those checks and the abstracts from the books are doubtless correct. I suppose,” he laughed again, “your evidence of my connection with the Lehigh and Pottsville is quite tangible?”