"Exactly."

There was silence in the room for some time.

"There's never any telling what stockholders will do," remarked Mr.

Fogg, his eyes still studying the panels of the ceiling.

Mr. Marston did not dispute that dictum.

His field-marshal slowly tipped down his head and gave his superior another of those bland stares.

"So I'll go right ahead and see what they'll do, sir."

He rose and kicked the legs of his trousers into place.

"You understand that in this affair, as in all matters where you have been employed, there must be absolutely clean work. There must be no come-back. Of course, I have instructed you to this effect regularly, but I wish to have you remember that I have repeated the instructions, sir."

"Exactly!" Mr. Fogg's eyes did not blink.

"You will be prepared to testify to that effect in case the need ever arises."

"Exactly!"

Mr. Fogg delivered that word like a countersign. Into it, in his interviews with Julius Marston, he put understanding, humility, promise.

"May we expect quick action?" asked the financier. "The thing mustn't hang fire. We have a lot of our nimble money tied up as it is."

"Exactly!" returned Mr. Fogg, on his way to the door. "Quick action it is!"

"This is probably the craziest idea that ever popped into a man's head when that man was sitting in Julius Marston's office," reflected Mr.

Fogg, marching through the anteroom of this temple of finance. "There's one thing about it that's comforting--it's so wild-eyed it will never be blamed on to Julius Marston as any of his getting up. And that's his princ.i.p.al lookout when a deal is on. It seems to be up to me to deliver the goods."

He sat down on a bench in the waiting-room and rubbed his knuckles over his forehead.

"Just let me get this thing right end to," he told himself. "How did the idea happen to hit me, anyway? Oh, yes! Old Vose bragging to me that every stockholder in the Vose line was behind him, and that the annual meeting was about to come off, and then I would see what a condemned poor show I stood to get even the toe of my boot into the crack of the company door. He's a Maine corporation. I've known of cases where that fact helped a lot. There are plenty of ifs and buts in this thing, but here goes!"

He applied himself to one of the office telephones, asked for several numbers, one after the other, and put questions with eagerness and rapidity.

The information he received seemed to disturb him considerably. He came out of the booth and scrubbed his cheeks with his purple handkerchief.

"Their annual meeting at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, four hundred miles from here! Well, I suppose I ought to be thankful that it's not being held right now," Mr. Fogg informed himself, determined to fan that one flicker of hope with both wings of his optimism. "But I've got to admit that twenty-four hours is almighty scant time for a job of this sort, even when the operator is the little Fogg boy himself. Damme, I haven't come to a full, realizing sense yet of all I've got to do and how I'm going to do it."

He hurried out, dove into an elevator, and was shot down to the street.

He was lucky enough to find a taxi at the curb.

"Grand Central," he told the driver. "I've got five dollars that says you can beat the Subway express and land me in season for the ten-o'clock limited for Boston."

As soon as it became evident to Mr. Fogg that his driver had seen his duty and was going to do it, traffic squad be blowed, the promoter settled back, and his thoughts began to revolve faster than the taxi's wheels.

"It's going to be like the mining-camp 'lulu hand,'" was his mental preface to his plans. "It can be played only once in a sitting-in; it has got to be backed with good bluff, but it's a peach when it works.

And what am I a promoter for? What have I studied foreign corporation laws for?"

Mr. Fogg took off his hat and mopped his bald spot, wrinkling his eyelids in deep reflection.

"The idea is," he mused, "I'm a candidate for the presidency of the Vose line at to-morrow's meeting. But I haven't been elected yet!"

However, Mr. Fogg's preliminary sniffing at the affairs of the Vose line had informed him where he could pick up at least ten scattered shares of their stock. He figured that before midnight he would have them in his possession. As to the next day and the next steps, well, the nerve of a real American plunger clings to life until the sunset of all hopes, even as the snake's tail, though the serpent's head be bruised beyond repair, is supposed to wriggle until sunset.

He despatched a telegram at New Haven. He received a reply at Providence, and he read it and felt like a gambler who has drawn a card to fill his bobtail hand. When a design is brazen and the game is largely a bluff, plain, lucky chance must be appealed to.

The telegram had been addressed to Attorney Sawyer Franklin, in a Maine city. It had requested an appointment with Mr. Franklin on the following morning.

The reply had stated that Mr. Franklin was critically ill in a hospital, but that all matters of business would be attended to by his office force, as far as was possible.

Attorney Sawyer Franklin, as Mr. Fogg, of course, was fully aware, was clerk of the Vose line corporation, organized according to the Maine law as a "foreign corporation," under the more liberal regulations which have attracted so many metropolitan promoters into the states of Maine and New Jersey.

XVIII - HOW AN ANNUAL MEETING WAS HELD--ONCE!

O, a ship she was rigged and ready for sea, And all of her sailors were fishes to be!

Windy-y-weather, Stormy-y-weather!

When the wind blows we're all together!

--The Fishes.

Fletcher Fogg, suave, dignified, radiating business importance, freshened by a barber's ministrations, walked into the Franklin law-offices the next morning at nine-thirty.

He announced himself to a girl typist, and she referred him to a young man who came forth from a private room.

"I have power of attorney from Mr. Franklin to transact his routine business," explained the young man. "Of course, if it's a new case or a question of law--"

"Neither, neither, my dear sir! Simply a matter of routine. But," he leaned close to the young man's ear, "strictly private."

Mr. Fogg himself closed the door of the inner office when the two had retired there.

"One of your matters to-day, I believe, is the annual meeting of the Vose line. I am a stockholder."

Fogg produced a packet of certificates and laid them on the desk.

"Are there to be any officers or other stockholders present?" he asked, showing just a bit of solicitude, in spite of himself.

"I think not," returned the young man. "Nothing has been said about it.

The proxies and instructions have been sent in, as usual, by registered mail." He indicated doc.u.ments stacked on the desk. "I was just about to begin on the matter."

"I suppose our proxies run to the clerk of the corporation, as usual, with full power of subst.i.tution, clerk to follow instructions," said Mr. Fogg, a bit pompously, using his complete knowledge of corporation routine.

"Yes, sir. We handle most of the corporation meetings that way when it's all cut and dried. In this case, it's simply a re-election of the old officers."