“If this were a fact of our work it could wait, sir; but it ain't.” Corrigan was warming up. “It concerns you, personally, Mr. Bigelow. We have accepted your guidance so far because we believed you to be a certain kind of a man, and to stand for certain principles in business. We want to go on believing this, and we don't want to wait a minute, now that we're all together here. I've been told that you're the real operator of the big corner on the Board, that your money is in it, and that the man named Le Duc has been put up so that your name wouldn't be known. Is that so?”
Every face in the room changed expression. The blood rushed into Bigelow's.
“If you've been taking our time to make wild charges against my character———”
“You aren't answering,” shouted Corrigan. “Tell me that. That's what I ask.”
“You'd better cool down a bit, Harry.”
“No, Mr. Anderson, I won't cool down.”
“See here,” said Bigelow, his voice rising with the others. “This has nothing whatever to do with this meeting.”
Corrigan leaned over the table and looked him keenly in the eyes. “If you mean to withdraw here and now, Mr. Bigelow, to dissolve this agreement, then I'm with you; it has nothing to do with it. But if you mean to go on as our managing director, then you've got to answer that question.”
The other men looked at one another. “I guess that's fair, Mr. Bigelow,” observed the man in boots. “So long as Harry's sprung this on us we wouldn't any of us feel quite easy about it.”
“Well, sir, is it true?” asked Corrigan.