locked. Sign your residuary legatee’s share of the stock to us and we’ll pay you a cool million. But we don’t want the stock, of course. It has only a certain small nuisance value. Now, lady, are you going to be reasonable or do we have to get tough? My dear girl, we wouldn’t dream of harming you!”
She scowled. “Arnold came to see me once. He kept pretending that / was trying to sell to him. I don’t know, maybe that’s what somebody told him. All I know is, I feel as though someone hit me over the head with a lighthouse.”
A butler shambled hi. “Are you at home to Mr. Arnold, sir?” he whispered.
“No!” crowed Hubble delightedly. “You hear that, Coett?”
Nelson cut in, “Hold it a minute, Bliss. Are you sure you’re doing the right thing? Maybe if the three of us got together——” he looked quickly at Mundin. “That is, perhaps all of us could freeze out the Toledo bunch.”
Coett said, “Tell him to go to blazes. Tell the butler to tell him, so we can all hear it First we settle things among “ourselves—then we figure who else we have to cut in, if anybody. But I don’t think we need anybody else.”
“Tell him,” Hubble said gleefully to the butler. “Fellows, if you knew how long I’d waited—— Well, all right. Harry’s right, George. Figure it out. You’ve got eleven per cent under your thumb, counting proxies for the voting trust. I’ve got five and a half, solid. Harry has three of his own, and he influences—how many, Harry?”
“Nine,” said Coett shortly.
“You see?” said Hubble. “That’s plenty. With these people’s twenty-five per cent, we——”
Mundin came down heavily on Norma’s foot just as she was opening her mouth to ask how they had located the stock. He said rapidly, “Don’t you think we should save this till dinner’s over?”
Hubble cast an eye around the table. “Why, dinner’s over now,” he said mildly. “Let’s have our coffee in the library.”
Hubble stopped at the entrance to the library and did something with a switchbox before permitting the others to enter. “Have my own controls here,” he said pridefully. “Wife has most of the house, hah-hah, she can’t begrudge me one little nook of my own! Let’s see if we can’t get something more
cheerful.” The “library”—there wasn’t a book or microfilm in sight—shimmered and flowed, and turned into something like a restoration of a nineteenth-century London club.
Mundin tested one of the wing-back chairs suspiciously, but it was good. Norma was still staring at him thoughtfully; but she kept her mouth shut and he said cheerily, “Now, gentlemen, to work.”
“Right,” said Harry Coett. “Before we get too deep, I want to know how we stand on one thing. I’m sure it’s just one of those crazy things that get started, but I heard somebody say something at the meeting. They mentioned Green, Charles-worth. Just for the record, have you got anything to do with them?”
Green, Charlesworth. Ryan had mentioned them, Mundin recalled; they seemed to be something to worry about. Mundin said definitely, “We are not from Green, Charlesworth. We are from ourselves. Miss Lavin and her brother are the direct heirs of one of the founders of G;M.L. I—uh—happen to have a trifling amount of stock myself—besides being their attorney.”
Coett nodded briskly. “Okay. Then it’s a plain and simple raid; and we’ve got the muscle to do it. I take it we are all agreed, then, that the first step is to throw the corporation into bankruptcy?”
Mundin said in a strangled voice, “Hey!”
Coett grinned. “I thought you were no expert,” he said amiably. “What did you expect, Mundin?”
“Why,” Mundin floundered, “there’s—ah—your stock, and our stock, and—well, it seems clear-cut to me. Majority rules, doesn’t it?”
He stopped. All hands were enjoying a good, though polite, laugh. Coett said, “Mr. Mundin, you have a lot to learn. Do you seriously think we could vote our stock outright under the existing rules?”
“I don’t know,” Mundin said honestly.
“You don’t,” Coett agreed. “You can’t rock the boat. The proxies won’t stand for it; a raid, yes, but handled right,”