Stoughton hunched his shoulders still higher. "Fire him," he said
stolidly, then puffed his cheeks and breathed on the widow pane. In
the fog he wrote "Fire him" with his forefinger, taking particular care
to make it legible with neatly formed letters. The next moment both
fog and words evaporated. It flashed into Stoughton's mind that they
had not lasted long. He swung round, "It's the only thing to do, but I
don't want the job. You can have it, Birch."
The lean face changed not a whit. "I take my end of it. If I don't,
Marsham will."
"Look here, this isn't a one man job." Wimperley's voice had barely
regained its steadiness. "This message settles, as I take it, our
views of Clark. God knows we don't question anything but his
suitability for his position at the present stage of affairs. He's got
to be told the inevitable and we've all got to go up. There's no other
way out of it. We'll give him one or two of the smaller companies to
run and the public needn't know anything about it. I remember the
point you made, Stoughton. It's a good one and we've got to look out
for it."
But Stoughton did not move. "I'll be damned," he said softly, still
staring at the roof lines of Philadelphia. "Blast furnaces!"
"You will, if you don't come up with us," replied Birch acidly.
"I suppose I will. When do we go?"
"Will a week from to-day suit?"
They all made it suit. After a contemplative moment Riggs asked:
"Will you let him know, Wimperley, and just what do you propose to say?
You'll remember there have been other times when we contemplated
putting the brakes on, but we all got galvanized and the thing didn't
work."
"I'd merely say that we four are coming up--that's all."
Stoughton grinned a formidable grin in which there was a show of teeth
and an outthrust jaw.
"That's enough, he'll know."
They went off together, but rather silently, to lunch. On the way to
the street Stoughton asserted several times aloud, and with complete
conviction, that he would be damned, while the rest began to experience
a carefully concealed regret for the victim of their mission. At the
club they sat aimlessly and played with their food, conscious that they
were observed and known by all as the insiders in one of Philadelphia's
largest investments. Then, too, they learned that that morning the
stock of the Consolidated companies had leaped forward in one of those
unexpected boosts for which it was noted. Wimperley and the rest of
them had never gambled in it, but time and time again it moved as
though animated by the spread of secret and definite information. Just
as they were about to rise Birch leaned forward and began to arrange
pepper pots and salt cellars in a semi-symmetrical design.
"This," he said, "is all right and that, and that. These are out of
the question. You get me?"
The others nodded.
"No blast furnaces," he went on almost inaudibly. "No railway--no
further capital expenditure--and then we reach the melon of dividend,"
here he touched his untasted cantaloupe.
Now, just at this moment, Wimperley nodded energetically and laughed
outright, whereupon a man whose name was Marsham, who sat at an
adjoining table, turned--for Wimperley did not often laugh--and saw
Birch's long finger resting on the melon, and, since Marsham was,
without the knowledge of the others, one of the largest operators, in
Consolidated stock, that stock took a further jump just half an hour
later, and all through Pennsylvania there were farmers, mechanics,
country doctors and storekeepers who read the news and rejoiced
exceedingly thereat.
The others went their way, and Wimperley walked back to his office
immersed in profound contemplation. Feelings of personal injury were
mixed with those of apprehension. How would the affair proceed after
Clark had taken with him his unrivaled and intimate knowledge of the
works; for, and in spite of all the dictates of prudence, it seemed
impossible to think of the vast enterprise at St. Marys without its
central pivot.