the
proper thing at the proper time. All too frequently we are dominated
by our emotions rather than by our judgment. It was so with me. The
other side had been presented to you rather cleverly at the right time.
And your ready acceptance of it angered me beyond bounds. You were
prejudiced. It stirred me to a perfect fury to think you couldn't be
absolutely loyal to your pal. When you took that position I simply
couldn't attempt explanations. Do you think I'd ever have taken the
other fellow's side against you, right or wrong?

Anyway, here it is: You got the essentials, up to a certain point, from
Brooks. But he didn't tell it all--his kind never does, not by a long
shot. They, the four of them, it seems, held a meeting as soon as I
shipped out that gold and put through that stock-selling scheme. That
was legitimate. I couldn't restrain them from that, being a hopeless
minority of one. Their chief object, however, was to let two or three
friends in on the ground floor of a good thing; also, they wanted each
a good bundle of that stock while it was cheap--figuring that with the
prospects I had opened up it would sell high. So they had it on the
market, and in addition had everything framed up to reorganize with a
capitalization of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. This all cut
and dried before I got there. Now, as it originally stood, the five of
us would each have made a small fortune on these Klappan claims.
They're good. But with a quarter of a million in outstanding
stock--well, it would be all right for the fellow with a big block.
But you can see where I would get off with a five-thousand-dollar
interest. To be sure, a certain proportion of the money derived from
the sale of this stock should be mine. But it goes into the treasury,
and they had it arranged to keep it in the treasury, as a fund for
operations, with them doing the operating. They had already indicated
their bent by voting an annual stipend of ten thousand and six thousand
dollars to Lorimer and Brooks as president and secretary respectively.
Me, they proposed to quiet with a manager's wage of a mere five
thousand a year--after I got on the ground and began to get my back up.

Free Gold would have been a splendid Stock Exchange possibility. They
had it all doped out how they could make sundry clean-ups irrespective
of the mine's actual product. That was the first thing that made me
dubious. They were stock-market gambler