CHAPTER XXVIII
PEACE AT LAST
When the curtain fell on the closing scene of the performance in the Delaware court there ensued a brief interval of quiet in the affairs of Bay State Gas. Rejoicing in the temporary diversion of public attention, the chief actors proceeded to assume their former rôles, and soon affairs began to move at their old gait. Rogers took possession of all the Boston gas companies and patiently awaited the coming down the pike of some traveller with more money than brains. Having successfully corrupted the State of Delaware, Addicks was being measured for the senatorial toga, when accidentally the blind lady dropped her scales on his unprotected head, which catastrophe laid him out long enough to enable another to sneak the prize he had so long striven for. We are not at present concerned with the affairs of Delaware, and it suffices to say in passing, that after a heated contest one Richard Kenney was chosen to the senatorial seat Addicks had so long coveted, and that this man, a typical Delaware vote-rancher, after being sworn in as United States Senator, was brought back to Wilmington and tried for robbing a Delaware bank, his accomplices being some other heelers of Addicks. The disclosures made in the trial showed that the case in all characteristics conformed to the Addicks standard of indecency, for the bank officials, not satisfied with "blowing in" every dollar of deposits and capital the institution owned or controlled, had actually "lifted" in addition the building in which the bank was situated. One of the court functionaries who had heard the evidence tersely remarked: "Talk about stealing a red-hot stove: this is a case where they took the funnel with it to keep the draught going until they set it up in a new location!"
But Delaware, as my readers have doubtless gathered long ere this, is its own kind of a country, and rewards and punishments are so perversely adjusted that it seems a sort of Topsyturvydom. In this instance certain of Addicks' heelers went to State's prison and death; Kenney returned to the Senate to help make laws for the great free people of America, while the chief conspirator, with a threat to sue the blindfolded lady for damage done, began to set out the pieces on the Bay State Gas chessboard with a view to trying certain new moves that had occurred to his perpetual-motion mind.
The situation of Bay State Gas stock was fully understood by the public. While Rogers had possession of the Boston companies, he simply held them in trust, and must give them up whenever the parent corporation had coin enough to redeem them. The securities were still in the hands of the public and my friends, and my own duty to get Bay State Gas on its feet was plain. It was again a case of raising money, and to do this we had the issue of securities which we were preparing to float just before Foster and Braman swooped down on us. Addicks agreed that if I would undertake the marketing of this stock, he would issue only enough of it to redeem the properties from Rogers. His directors met and formally "resoluted" on this point, and I felt satisfied before going ahead that there was no danger of this money being put in jeopardy without actually stealing it. The company, for the nonce, had no other business but to pay office rent and clerk hire, and in spite of Addicks' financial immorality, all who knew him were aware he took no chances of ever getting himself sent to jail. So I began to sell the stock in the open market.