"About the Manhattan and Niagara——" began Rivington. He had a way of moving his hands nervously when he spoke, and he rarely completed a sentence.
Hallett, who was the man in a white waistcoat, stopped chewing his cigar to ask:
"What are they kickin’ about? We own seventy-five per cent. of the preferred and sixty of the common."
"And it is too much, I think," said Rivington. "We need it only to keep from unsettling the N. Y. & N. J. interests, because—— Fifty-five of the preferred and fifty-two of the common, perhaps, but seventy-five and sixty——"
"And, now," chimed Hallett, "this little fellow—what’s his name?—the president. Oh, yes: Dohan, that’s it—starts out to launch a new stock-issue to bridge the river five miles from town and come into New York, an’ all without as much as sayin’ ’If you please’ to us! We ought to wreck his damned picayune road for him; that’s what we ought to do."
The two continued their indignant comments. Every little while they paused to give the crouching man at the head of the table a chance to speak, and more often they looked at him to see whether he wanted to speak; but, though his eyes were always alert to meet theirs, he did not, for some time, utter a word.
"Of course," said Rivington, "we are not directors of the road, but still——"
"Oh, hell!" grunted Hallett disgustedly. "Didn’t you just say between us we owned all the stock worth ownin’? We ought to unload and smash ’em."
"You may be right. I am inclined to think——"
"Right? Of course I’m right. I’m not goin’ to be bullied by a handful of dummies when I can sell them up as if I was a sheriff closing down on a crossroads grocery store!"
"They’re beggars on horseback! Wastin’ our money like this!"
"They have—— We should tell the legislature——"
"Gentlemen,"—it was the clear, crisp voice of the man at the head of the table that interrupted; he spoke in a tone somewhat different from that in which he habitually addressed his clerks and his brokers, but he spoke as suddenly and with all the authority that he used toward them—"if the M. & N. comes into New York, it will not take one-half of one per cent. of the profits away from our other roads. For all but its last thirty-two miles, the new line taps territory new to us, and the new stock will have paid for itself, and have paid a profit too, in five years."