“O I am not a man o' war or privateer,” said he,
Blow high, blow low, and so sailed we!
“But I'm an honest pirate a-looking for my fee,
Cruising down along the coast of the High Barbaree.”
--Shanty of the “Prince Luther.”
Mr. Fletcher Fogg privately and mentally and metaphorically slapped himself on the back whenever he considered his many activities.
He was perfectly certain that he was the best little two-handed general operator of an all-around character that any gentleman could secure when that gentleman wanted a job done and did not care to give explicit instructions as to the details of procedure.
The look of grief and regret that the fat face of Mr. Fogg could assume when said gentleman--after the job was done--blamed the methods as unsanctioned, even though the result had been achieved--that expression was a study in humility--humility with its tongue in its cheek.
If Mr. Fogg could have advertised his business to suit himself--being not a whit ashamed of his tactics--he would have issued a card inscribed about as follows:
“Mr. FLETCHER FOGG: Promoting and demoting. Building and busting. The whole inside of any financial or industrial cheese cleaned out without disturbing the outside rind. All still work done noiselessly. Plenty of brass bands for loud work. Broad shoulders supplied to take on all the blame.”
Mr. Fogg, in the presence of Julius Marston, was properly obsequious, but not a bit fawning. He wiped away the moisture patches beside his nose with a purple handkerchief, and put it back into his outside breast pocket with the corners sticking out like attentive ears. He crossed his legs and set on his knee an ankle clothed in a purple silk stocking. On account of his rotundity he was compelled to hold the ankle in place in the firm clutch of his hand. He settled his purple tie with the other hand.
“I'm glad I was in reach when you wanted me,” he assured Mr. Marston. “I'm just in on the Triton. And I want to tell you that you're running that steamboat line in the way an American business man wants to have it run. If I had been on any other line, sir, I wouldn't have been here to-day when you were looking for me. Everything else on the coast prowling along half-speed, but down slammed the old Triton, scattering 'em out from underfoot like an auto going through a flock of chickens, but not a jar or a scrape or a jolt, and into her dock, through two days of thick fog, exactly on the dot. That's the way an American wants to be carried, sir.”
“I believe so, Mr. Fogg,” agreed Julius Marston. “And that's why we feel it's going to be a good thing for all the coast lines to be under one management--our management.”
“Exactly!”
“It's true progress--true benefit to travelers, stockholders, and all concerned. Consolidation instead of rivalry. I believe in it.”
“Exactly!”
“As a broad-gauged business man--big enough to grasp big matters--you have seen how consolidation effects reforms.”
“No two ways about it,” affirmed Mr. Fogg.
“That was very good missionary work you did in the matter of the Sound & Cape line--very good indeed.”
“It's astonishing what high and lofty ideas some stockholders have about properties they're interested in. In financial matters the poorest conclusion a man can draw is that a stock will always continue to pay dividends simply because it always has done so. I had to set off a pretty loud firecracker to wake those Sound & Cape fellows up. I had to show 'em what damage the new deals and competition and our combination would do to 'em if they kept on sleeping on their stock certificates. Funny how hard it is to pry some folks loose from their par-value notions.” Mr. Fogg delivered this little disquisition on the intractability of stockholders with reproachful vigor, staring blandly into the unwinking gaze of Mr. Marston. “I don't want to praise my own humble efforts too much,” he went on, “but I truly believe that inside another thirty days the Sound crowd would have been ready to cash in at fifty, in spite of that minority bunch that was hollering for par. That was only a big yawp from a few folks.”
“Fifty was a fair price in view of what's ahead in the way of competition, but we have made it a five-eighths proposition in order to clinch the deal promptly. I just sent one of our boys around with the check.”
Mr. Fogg beamed. He used his purple handkerchief on his cheeks once more. He allowed to himself a few words of praise: “They'll understand some day that I saved 'em from a bigger bump. But it's hard to show some people.”
“Now, Mr. Fogg, we come to the matter of the Vose line. What's the outlook?”
Mr. Fogg looked sad. “After weeks of chasing 'em, I can only say that they're ugly and stubborn, simply blind to their best interests.”
“Insist on par, do they?”
“Worse than that. Old Vose and his sons and those old hornbeam directors--retired sea-captains, you know, as hard as old turtles--they have taken a stand against consolidation. They belong in the dark ages of business. Old Vose had the impudence to tell me that forming this steamboat combine was a crime, and that he wouldn't be a party to a betrayal of the public. He won't come in; he won't sell; he's going to compete.”
Mr. Marston stroked his strip of beard. “In order for our stock to be what we intend it to be, the Paramount Coast Transportation has got to operate as a complete monopoly, as you understand, Mr. Fogg. A beneficent monopoly--consolidation benefiting all--but nevertheless a monopoly. With one line holding out on us, we've got only a limping proposition.”
“Exactly!”
“What are we going to do about the Vose line?”
“Let it compete, sir. We can kill it in the end.”
“Possibly--probably. But that plan will not serve, Mr. Fogg.”
“It's business.”
“But it is not finance. I'm looking at this proposition solely as a financier, Mr. Fogg. I hardly know one end of a steamboat from the other. I'm not interested in rate-cutting problems. I don't know how long it would take to put the Vose line under. But I do know this, as a financier, handling a big deal, that the Paramount stock will not appeal to investors or the bonds to banks unless we can launch our project as a clean, perfect combination, every transportation charter locked up. I handle money, and I know all of money's timidity and all of money's courage. You think the Vose directors are able to hold their stockholders in line, do you?”
Mr. Fogg uncrossed his legs, put both feet on the floor, hooked his hands across his paunch, and gazed up at the ceiling, evidently pondering profoundly.
“I repeat, I'm not viewing this thing as a steamboating proposition, not figuring what kind of tariffs will kill competition,” stated Mr. Marston. “I'm not estimating what kind of tariffs will make a profit for the Paramount. I'd as soon sell sugar over the counter. My associates expect me to make money for them in another way--make it in big lumps and on a quick turn. The Vose line, competing, kills us from the financial viewpoint.”
“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 principal 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.
