WILLIAM PORTER RETURNS FROM A JOURNEY
Porter went into Fenton's private office and shut and locked the door after him. He always did this, and Fenton, who humored his best client's whims perforce, pushed back the law book which he was reading and straightened the pens on his blotter.
"I didn't expect you back so soon," he said. Porter looked tired and there were dark rings under his eyes.
"Short horse soon curried," he remarked, pulling a packet from his overcoat.
There was something boyish in Porter's mysterious methods, which always amused Fenton when they did not alarm and exasperate him.
Porter sat down at a long table and the lawyer drew up a chair opposite him.
"Which way have you been this time?"
"Down in the country," returned Porter, indefinitely.
Fenton laughed and watched his client pulling the rubber bands from his package.
"What have you there—oats or wheat?"
"What I have here," said Porter, straightening out the crisp papers he had taken from his bundle, "is a few shares of Clarkson Traction stock."
"Oh!" Fenton picked up a ruler and played with it until Porter had finished counting and smoothing the stock certificates.
"There you are," said the banker, passing the papers over to Fenton. "See if they're all right."
Fenton compared the names on the face of the certificates with the assignments on the back, while Porter watched him and played with a rubber band.
"The assignments are all straight," said Fenton, finally.
He sat waiting and his silence irritated Porter, who reached across and took up the certificates again.
"I want to talk to you a little about Traction."
"All right, sir," said Fenton, respectfully.
"I've gone in for that pretty deep this fall."
Fenton nodded gravely. He felt trouble in the air.
"I started in on this down East last summer. Those bonds all went East, but a lot of the stock was kicked around out here. If I get enough and reorganize the company I can handle the new securities down East all right. That's business. Now, I've been gathering in the stock around here on the quiet. Peckham's been buying some for me, and he's assigned it in blank. There's no use in getting new shares issued until we're ready to act, for Barnes and those fellows are not above doing something nasty if they think they're going to lose their jobs."
"The original stock issue was five thousand shares," said Fenton. "How much have you?"
"Well, sir," said Porter, "I've got about half and I'm looking for a few shares more right now."
Fenton picked up his ruler again and beat his knuckles with it. Porter had expected Fenton to lecture him sharply, but the lawyer was ominously quiet.
"I'm free to confess," said Fenton, "that I'm sorry you've gone into this. This isn't the kind of thing that you're in the habit of going into. I am not much taken with the idea of mixing up in a corporation that has as disreputable a record as the Traction Company. It's been mismanaged and robbed until there's not much left for an honest man to take hold of; they issue no statements; no one of any responsibility has been connected with it for a long time. The outside stockholders are scattered all over the country, and most of them have quit trying to enforce their rights, if they may be said to have any rights. You remember that the last time they went into court they were knocked out and I'm free to say that I don't want to have to go into any litigation against the company."
"Yes, but the franchise is all straight, ain't it?"
"Probably it is all right," admitted the lawyer reluctantly, "but that isn't the whole story by any manner of means. If it's known that you're picking up the stock, every fellow that has any will soak you good and hard before he parts with it. Now, there are the bondholders—"
"Well, what can the bondholders do?" demanded Porter.
"Oh, get a receiver and have a lot of fun. You may expect that at any time, too. Those Eastern fellows are slow sometimes, but they generally know what they're about."
"Yes, but if they weren't Eastern fellows—"
"Oh, a bondholder's rights are as good one place as another. Those suits are usually brought in the name of the trustee in their behalf."
"Now, do you know what I'm going to do?" demanded Porter, settling back in his chair and placing his feet on Fenton's table. "I'm going to turn up at the next annual meeting and clean this thing out. You don't think it's any good; I've got faith in the company and in the town; I believe it's going to be a good thing. This little gang here that's been running it has got to go. I've dug up some stock here that everybody thought was lost. At the last meeting only eight hundred out of five thousand shares were voted."
Fenton frowned and continued to punish himself with the ruler.
"You beat me! You haven't the slightest idea who the other shareholders are; the company is thoroughly rotten in all its past history, and here you go plunging into it up to your eyes. And they say you're the most conservative banker on the river."
"I guess you don't have to get me out of many scrapes," said Porter, doggedly.
"When's the annual meeting?" asked Fenton, suddenly.
"It's day after to-morrow—a close call, but I'll make it all right."
Fenton threw down his ruler impatiently.
"Mr. Porter, I want you to remember that I haven't given you any advice at all in this matter. It's an extra hazardous thing that you're doing. Now, I don't know anything definitely about it, but—I've got the impression that Margrave's paralleling your lines in this business." Porter brought his feet down with a crash.
"Where'd you get that?"
"It's this way," said Fenton, in his quietest tones. "A Baltimore lawyer that I know wrote me a letter,—I just got it this morning,—asking me about Margrave's responsibility. It seems that my friend has a client who owns some of these shares. A good deal of that stock went to Baltimore and Philadelphia, you may remember. I assume that Margrave is after it."
"Wire your friend right away not to sell,—" shouted Porter, pounding the table with his fist.
"I did that this morning, and here's his answer. I got it just before you came in. Margrave evidently got anxious and wired them to send certificates with draft through the Drovers' National. They're probably on the way now." He passed the telegram across to Porter, who put on his glasses and read it.
"Now," continued Fenton, "I don't know just what this means, but it looks to me as if Margrave was hot on the track of the trolley company himself; and Tim Margrave isn't a particularly pleasant fellow to go into business with, is he?"
"But the bondholders would still have their chance, wouldn't they, even if he got a majority of the stock?"
"Well, you haven't any bonds, have you? First thing I know you'll be telling me that you've got a few barrels of them," he added, jokingly. He could not help laughing at Porter.
Porter took the cigar from his mouth, looked carefully at the lighted end of it, and said with a casual air, as if he had a particularly decisive and conclusive statement to make and wished to avail himself of its dramatic possibilities:
"My dear boy, I've got every blamed bond!"
Fenton sat gazing at him in stupefied wonder.
"Would you mind saying that again?" he said, after a full minute of silent amazement in which he sat staring at his client, who was blowing rings of smoke with great equanimity.
"I've got all the bonds, was what I said."
The lawyer walked around the table and put his hand on Porter's shoulder. He was trying to keep from laughing, like a parent who is about to rebuke a child and yet laughs at the cause of its offense. Porter evidently thought that he had done an extremely bright thing.
"As I understand you, you have bought all of the bonds and half of the stock."
"About half. I'm a little—just a little—short."
"Will you kindly tell me what you wanted with the stock if you had the bonds?"
"Well, I figured it this way, that the franchise was worth the price I had to pay for the whole thing, and if I had the stock control I'd save the fuss of foreclosing. You lawyers always make a lot of rumpus about those things, and a receivership would prejudice the Eastern market when I come to reorganize and sell out."
Fenton lay back in his chair and laughed, while Porter looked at him a little defiantly, with his hat tipped over his eyes and a cigar sticking in his mouth at an impertinent angle.
"You'd better finish your job and make sure of your majority," said Fenton. His rage was rising now and he did not urge Porter to remain when the banker got up to go. He was not at all anxious to defend a franchise which the local courts, always sensitive to public sentiment, might set aside.
"I'll see you in the morning first thing," said Porter at the door, which Fenton opened for him. "I want you to go to the meeting with me and we'll need a day to get ready."
The lawyer watched his client walk toward the elevator. It occurred to him that Porter's step was losing its elasticity. While the banker waited for the elevator car he leaned wearily against the wire screen of the shaft.
Fenton swore quietly to himself for a few minutes and then sat down with a copy of the charter of the Clarkson Traction Company before him, and spent the remainder of the day studying it. He had troubled much over Porter's secretive ways, and had labored to shatter the dangerous conceit which had gradually grown up in his client. Porter had, in fact, a contempt for lawyers, though he leaned on Fenton more than he would admit. Fenton, on the other hand, was constantly fearful lest his client should undo himself by his secretive methods. He had difficulty in getting all the facts out of him even when they were imperatively required. Once in the trial of a case for Porter, the opposing counsel made a statement which Fenton rose in full confidence to refute. His antagonist reaffirmed it, and Fenton, not doubting that he understood Porter's position thoroughly, appealed to him to deny the charge, fully expecting to score an effective point before the court. To his consternation, Porter coolly admitted the truth of the imputation. But even this incident and Fenton's importunity in every matter that arose thereafter did not cure Porter of his weakness. He was a difficult client, who was, as Fenton often said to himself, a good deal harder to manage in a lawsuit than the trial judge or opposing counsel.
The next morning Fenton was at his office early and sent his boy at once to ask Mr. Porter to come up. The boy reported that Mr. Porter had not been at the bank. Fenton went down himself at ten o'clock and found the president's desk closed.
"Where's the boss?" he demanded.
"Won't be down this morning," said Wheaton. "Miss Porter telephoned that he wasn't feeling well, but he expected to be down after luncheon.”