"Just a moment before you order me out. I'm a stockholder in this company, and I am within my rights."
"You a stockholder? How much stock do you own? Where did you get it?"
"I own thirty-five thousand shares outright." Mr. Wayland tossed a packet of certificates upon the table. "And I have options on all the stock you placed in Chicago. I said you would hear from me when the time came."
"So you think the time has come to crush me, eh?" said Emerson. "Well, you've been swindled. Only one-third of the capital stock has been sold, and Alton Clyde holds thirty-five thousand shares of that."
The old man smiled grimly. "I have not been swindled."
"Then Clyde sold out!" exploded Boyd.
"Yes. I paid him back the ten thousand dollars he put in, and I took over the twenty-five thousand shares you got Mildred to take."
"Mildred!" Emerson started as if he had been struck. "Are you insane?
Mildred doesn't own—Why, Alton never told me who put up that money!"
"Don't tell me you didn't know!" cried Wayne Wayland. "You knew all the time. You worked your friends out, and then sent that whipper-snapper to my daughter when you saw you were about to fail. You managed well; you knew she couldn't refuse."
"How did you find out that she held the stock?"