"And where do you stand now?" he pursued.
"Still short of it, and before you can get fairly to work kicking up a rumpus I should not be surprised if we were short the whole capital stock. Rogers, as you know, does play a great game, that is, when he has all the cards, owns the table, the room it's in, and has control of the doorkeeper."
There was an interval of tense silence. Untermyer was making a noble effort to swallow his fury. I began to figure the degree of my responsibility if he should burst a blood-vessel or have an apoplectic stroke. Finally he said:
"Lawson, if I don't blow this thing to pieces and shake 26 Broadway to its foundations, I'm not Sam Untermyer."
The time had come to reason with the heated legal gentleman, and in plain language I proceeded to show him where he stood, the position of the property, the public's relation to it, and his own duty to the clients whose money he had invested in it. Under the logic of my argument he cooled. He saw the net, and that he and his friends were absolutely enmeshed. He even admitted that he and his friends had unknowingly aided in what had occurred and were mostly to blame for their present position; but while he acknowledged all this, he reiterated over and over again that in all his experience—and in Samuel Untermyer's professional position he has either prosecuted, defended, or had an inquisitorial finger in every sword-swallowing, dissolving-view, frenzied finance game that has been born or naturalized in Wall Street within the decade—he had never met the equal in high-handed bunco of this deal in Utah.
Finally he said: "There's one thing I can do, if I cannot get even with Rogers; and that is, I can 'fire' the present management of this company, and I'm going to do it now, this very minute, and incidentally I'm going to state what I think of them and the whole dirty business."
I called up "Standard Oil" on the telephone and told what had happened. Mr. Rogers said: "Cool him down at any cost, but particularly try to show him I had little to do with the deal; that it was largely the outgrowth of what the Clark-Ward people thrust upon us, and that I left the details to you and the lawyers."
Again I had visions of what would be the cost of making "Coppers" a success.
Within an hour Untermyer was back visibly relieved and glowing after his encounter. He had the resignations in his pocket, and he began joyously to detail the specific opprobriums he had cast upon the management. "I shall put in an entirely new management," he proclaimed triumphantly.
"You have positively made up your mind to that?" said I.