"Within half an hour. And give you a full interview, explaining my reasons for the announcement."
"Well, I'm on!"
Martin had a well-deserved newspaper reputation for accuracy and good judgment. On his urgent recommendation, therefore, the managing editor of the Daily Truth consented to run Clifford Matheson's full-page advertisement and to insert the interview, contingent on his depositing with Martin a cheque for £250,000 to indemnify the paper against a possible libel action on the part of Lars Larssen.
Matheson also prepared letters to Sir Francis Letchmere, Lord St Aubyn, and Carleton-Wingate, giving a statement of his reasons for the announcement in the Daily Truth of the next morning, and asking them to send telegrams to all those who had made applications for shares. The telegram to be sent out was worded:—
"I strongly advise all investors to cancel by wire their applications for shares in Hudson Bay Transport. See explanation in Daily Truth of May 3rd.—Clifford Matheson."
Martin, who was leaving for London by a midnight train, took charge of the three letters and promised to have them safely delivered to the three Directors of the company early in the morning.
Two days later, Matheson had to leave his wife in the hands of the doctors in order to attend a brief meeting of the Board of Directors of Hudson Bay Transport, Ltd.
They were seated in the stately board-room of the London and United Kingdom Bank in Lombard Street, at one end of the huge oval table over which the affairs of nations are settled. Clifford Matheson was in the chair.
The routine business of the meeting had been cleared when a clerk announced that Mr Larssen wished to enter. Until the allotments had been made by the other four Directors, he had no legal right to sit at the board of the company or to take part in any discussion. He now asked formal permission to enter, and the Directors formally agreed to receive him.