"Out of the four there might be one we couldn't——"
"Anybody can buy anybody. There are more ways than one. Anyhow, we're not even directors."
"We own the road. Practically——"
"Nobody knows that."
"It seems to me——"
"They don't!" Hallett spat to the floor a bit of tobacco that, bitten from the end of his cigar, had clung to his lips. "They only think they do. It'd be the hardest thing in the world to prove that was ever tried."
"Would it?" Rivington questioned. "I really believe——"
The quick, cold voice of the third man flashed across their talk. It was as if he leaped at them.
"We may own the road," he said; "but we don't operate it. Not one of us has officially any administrative power in the matter of its operation. You gentlemen have forgotten that." He smiled: his teeth were pointed.
"Still," said Rivington, "if the fusion movement——"