I could have sworn Mr. Rogers inwardly chuckled at my fatuity, but I went right on:
"If Mr. Rockefeller has decided that your share and his of the allotment must, in whole or in part, be turned into money before the second section is tackled, there's nothing for it but to go ahead, and I will put in great work for you (I didn't add, "my work, if I can make it, will keep you in as long as the public have a share"), because," said I, "my one ambition now is to complete the second section and get things in such shape that those people I have had locked-in so long can get out, if they care to."
It was an intricate problem that was thus settled, for Mr. Rogers well knew that it would be useless to attempt to sell big quantities of Amalgamated without my detecting it, and he dared not ask me to have a hand in his plot without including my own stock. When he saw I intended to stand by my baby, and yet was so anxious to get to the second section that I would accede to Mr. Rockefeller's wishes, he perceived that the situation was ideal for his purposes.
"Let me glance over that subscription list," I said; and I opened up the book, for book it really was.
My readers may surmise how intense was my interest in scanning the results of my work. This great stack of bank sheets before me was the official list of the subscription, stitched together in seventeen sections of twenty pages each; twenty-eight names, with city, State, street number addresses, and amounts subscribed to a page, all in ink in longhand.
"Better take them with you to the hotel and go carefully over the names and amounts," put in Mr. Rogers. "It certainly is a long job, but one that you must tackle some time, and the sooner the better."
Here was the missing link in my chain of evidence, delivered directly into my hands without a word of persuasion or cajolery. Providence played that hand for me surely. I concealed my jubilance by rattling along vociferously:
"I shall have to work over this a heap, sending out circulars and what not. It would have been better to have had it in typewriting, but I suppose Stillman didn't dare intrust it to the machine people. However, I can divide up the seventeen sections among different people and none will know the whole story. I will keep it in Boston with the other papers, and—gracious! what's this?"
"What is it?" he asked, smiling at my excitement.
In front of me was the section beginning with the "Mc's," and the largest subscription on the page was 6,000 shares—1,200 allotment. I followed the line back to the name. It was that of Hugh McLaughlin, then the big "boss" of Brooklyn, who, like all the other big bosses of New York State, was a trusted lieutenant of "Standard Oil." I put my finger on the amount and said: