“Good!” exclaimed Turner, not having expected to accomplish so much of his object so easily. “The minute you lay me down those four shares I’ll hand you four hundred dollars.”
“Eight,” Billy calmly corrected him. “Those shares are worth a hundred dollars apiece any place now. Mine’s worth more than two hundred to me.”
“Nonsense,” protested the other. “Tell you what I’ll do, though. I’ll pay you two hundred dollars for your share and a hundred dollars apiece for the others.”
“Two,” insisted Billy. “We’ve talked it all over in the office, and we’ve agreed to pool our stock and stand out for two hundred apiece, if anybody wants it. As a matter of fact, I have all four shares in my possession at this moment,” and he displayed the certificates, holding up his lantern so that Turner could see them.
The sight of the actual stock, the three other shares which the astute Billy had secured on the promise of a hundred and fifty dollars per share immediately after Wallingford’s pointer, clenched the business.
It was scarcely as much a shock to Wallingford as the Turner crowd had expected it to be when those gentlemen, having purchased four hundred and ninety-nine shares of Wallingford’s stock at his own price, sat in the new stock-holders’ meeting, at the reorganization upon which they had insisted, with five hundred and three shares, and J. Rufus made but feeble protest when the five of them, voting themselves into the directorate, decided to put the founder of the company on an extremely meager salary as assistant manager, and Mr. Turner on a slightly larger salary as chief manager.
“There’s no use of saying anything,” he concluded philosophically. “You gentlemen have played a very clever game and I lose; that’s all there is to it.”
He thereupon took up the burden of the work and pushed through the matter of new memberships and of collections with a vigor and ability that could not but commend itself to his employers. The second week’s collections were now coming in, and it was during the following week that a large hollow wheel with a handle and crank, mounted on an axle like a patent churn, was brought into the now vacated room of the defunct People’s Coöperative Bond and Loan Company.
“What’s this thing for?” asked Wallingford, inspecting it curiously.
“The drawing,” whispered Doc Turner.