"What will you take to make a report on Ely Central?" I asked in the same matter-of-fact way I would have addressed a stranger.
"What's the purpose of the report?"
"The Scheftels company wants confidential, expert information such as you are qualified to give as to the value and prospects of the property," I answered.
"I'll take $5,000," he said, "but only on one condition. I am going to the Ely and Ray districts to report for English capitalists, and I can take your property in at the same time. My report is not to be published and I reserve the right to make a verbal instead of a written one. If you really want to know what I think of the property, I am quite willing to give it a careful examination and let you know. Because of the stock-market campaign you are making, I would not accept your offer if, did I report favorably, your idea would be to make use of the report in the market."
The bargain was struck. A few days later Mr. Herzig received $2,500 from the Scheftels company, on account, and a check for traveling expenses. He left for Ely.
On the Saturday morning when the New York Sun article appeared containing the excerpts from the Engineering & Mining Journal's onslaught, I wired my brother substantially as follows:
Savage attack in Engineering & Mining Journal on Ely Central. If your report on property is favorable, I beg you to let us have it by wire and allow the use of it to counteract.
An hour later I followed it up with another message telling him not to wire any report. I set forth that because he was my brother, it might prove of little avail, now that the publication had been made, and that it might only tend to do him personal damage in the profession because of the unqualified manner in which the Engineering & Mining Journal had taken a stand against the property. In reply he wired Captain W. Murdoch Wiley the short but decisive report already quoted herein, regarding the geological reasons why Ely Central should have the ore, which afterward was fully verified by Dr. Walter Harvey Weed in the message also reproduced in the foregoing. In a letter from Ely to Captain Wiley confirming the message, the original of which is in my possession, Mr. Herzig said:
I have formed a very favorable opinion of the property. I feel that it has the making of a big mine, and under the circumstances I am willing to stand a little racket for a time.
The same day he wired Captain Wiley to buy for his account 2,500 shares of Ely Central at the market price, which order was executed through the Scheftels company.