ake N.P.C. a dominant factor in the
commercial life of the country. You don't care about that, but it was
all a sort of commercial blackmail on certain fellows and interests to
keep them from fighting N.P.C." Barclay hitched himself forward to the
edge of his chair, and still held out his grappling-hook of a hand to
hold them as he smiled and went on: "Well, I've been kind of swapping
horses here for six months or so--trading my gilt-edged bonds and
stuff for cash and buying up N.P.C. stock. I got a lot of it
quietly--an awful lot." He grinned. "I guess that was square enough.
I paid the price for it--and a little better than the price--because
I had to." He was silent a few moments, looking at the fire. He
meditated pleasantly: "There was some good in it--a lot of good when
you come to think of it--but a fearful lot of bad! Well--I've saved
the good. I just reorganized the whole concern from top to
bottom--the whole blame rebate hopper. We had some patents, and we
had some contracts with mills, and we had some good ideas of
organization. And I've kept the good and chucked the bad. I put N.P.C.
out of business and have issued stock in the new company to our
minority whose stock I couldn't buy and have squeezed the water out of
the whole concern. And then I took what balance I had left--every
cent of it, went over the books for thirty years, and made what
restitution I could." He grinned as he added: "But I found it was
nearly whittlety whet. A lot of fellows had been doing me up, while I
had been doing others up. But I made what restitution I could and then
I got out. I closed up the City office, and moved the whole concern to
St. Paul, and turned it over to the real owners--the millers and
elevator men--and I have organized an industry with a capitalization
small enough to make it possible for them to afford to be honest for
thirty years--while our patents and contracts last, anyway." He put
an elbow in the hollow of his hand, and the knuckles on his knee as he
sat cross-legged, and drawled: "I wonder if it will work--" and
repeated: "I wonder, I wonder. There's big money in it; she's a dead
monopoly as she stands, and they have the key to the whole thing in
the Commerce Department at Washington. They can keep her straight if
they will." He paused for a while and went on: "But I'm tired of it.
The great hulk of a thing has ground the soul out of me. So I ducked.
Girls," he cried, as he turned toward them, "here's the wa