"You did!" exclaimed Lamb. "Why did you go to them? Why didn't you go out and sell the stock yourself?"
"I am not a stock salesman, my boy."
"You have been active enough in selling your private stock," charged Lamb.
"That's my business," retorted Mr. Wallingford. "I am strictly within my legal rights in disposing of my own stock. It is my property, to do with as I please."
"It is obtaining money under false pretenses, for until you have completed this machinery and made a market for our goods, the stock you have sold is not worth the paper it is printed on. It represents no value whatever."
"It represents as much value as treasury stock or any other stock," retorted Mr. Wallingford. "By the way, make a transfer of this fifty-share certificate to Thomas D. Caldwell."
"Caldwell!" exclaimed Lamb. "Why, he is one of the very men we have been trying to interest in some of this treasury stock. He is of our lodge. Last week we had him almost in the notion, but he backed out."
"When the right man came along he bought," said Wallingford, and laughed.
"This money should have gone into our depleted treasury," Lamb declared hotly. "I refuse to make the transfer."
"I don't care; it's nothing to me. I have the money and I shall turn over this certificate to Mr. Caldwell. When he demands the transfer you will have to make it."