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Page 72
"Buzz-z-z-z! Buzz-z-z-z-z! Buzz-z-z-z-z-z!"
He quit wondering. He knew.
Yet for a moment after he stood in their presence they seemed to take no
note of him. They were not sitting decorously in chairs as he conceived
that directors should. The big one with the cigarette sat on the table,
ponderously balanced with a fat knee between fat red hands. Another
stood with one foot on a chair. Only the quiet one was properly sitting
down. The elderly advanced dresser was not even stationary. With the
faultless coat thrown back by pocketed hands, revealing a waist line
greater than it should have been, he strutted and stamped. He seemed to
be trying to step holes into the rug, and to be exploding intimately to
himself.
"Plain enough," said the man who had been studying his foot on the
chair. "Some one pulled the plug."
"And away she goes--shoosh!" said the big man dramatically.
"Kennedy & Balch buying right and left. Open at a hundred and
twenty-five to-morrow, sure!" said the quiet one quietly.
"Placed an order yesterday for four hundred shares and got 'em," said
another, not so quietly. "And to-day they're bidding Federal Express up
to the ceiling."
"Plug pulled!"
The advanced-dressing director strutted to the fore with a visibly
purpling face.
"Plug pulled? Want t' know _where_ it was pulled? Right in this office.
Want to know who pulled it? _That!_" He pointed unmistakably to the
child among them taking notes. At another time Bean might have quailed,
at least momentarily; but he had now discovered that the
advanced-dressing old gentleman used scent on his clothes. He was afraid
of no man who could do that in the public nostrils. He surveyed the old
gentleman with frank hostility, noting with approval, however, the
dignified yet different pattern of his waistcoat. But he knew the other
directors were looking hard at him.
"Shrimp! snake!" added the old gentleman, like a shocked naturalist
encountering a loathsome hybrid.
"Been plowing with our heifer?" asked Breede incisively.
Bean was familiar with that homely metaphor. He felt easier.
"_Your_ heifer!" He would have liked to snort as the old gentleman did,
but refrained from an unpractised effort! "Your heifer? No; I bought a
good fat yoke of steers to do my plowing. Took _his_ money to buy one of
'em with!" He waved a careless arm at the smouldering-vessel across the
table. They were all gasping, in horror, in disgust. He was a little
embarrassed. He sought to smooth the thing over a bit with his next
words.
"Eagle shot down with its own feather," he said, hazily recalling
something that had seemed very poetic when he read it.
"Wha'd I tell you? Wha'd I _tell_ you!" shouted the oldest director,
doing an intricate dance step.
"Hold 'ny Federal?" asked Breede.
"A block or two; several margins of it," said Bean.
"How many shares?"
"Have to ask Kennedy & Balch; they're my brokers. I guess about some
seven or eight hundred shares."
"Wha'd I tell you? Wha'd I _tell_ you?" again shouted the oldest
director, and, as if despairing of an answer, he swore surprisingly for
one of his refined garniture and aroma.
"Find out something in this office?" asked Breede, evenly.
"Why wouldn't I? I found out something the minute you sent people to me
with that 'By the way--' stuff. I knew it as quick as you had them
breaking their ankles trying to get my fifty shares. Knew it the very
minute you sent that--that slinking gazelle to me." He pointed at Tully.
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