th that last
swipe of the muck rake, got the Corrugated rung into the mess? And, say,
anyone would think, from some of the papers, that we was all a bunch of
crooks down here, spendin' our time feedin' wads of hundred-dollar bills
to the yellow dog. Maybe it don't stir up Mr. Robert some thorough,
though!

"Why," I heard him say to the old man, "it's a beastly outrage, that's
what it is! All the fellows at the club are chaffing me about it, you
know. And besides it's disturbing business frightfully. Look at the
tumble our shares took yesterday! I say, Governor, we must send out a
denial."

"Huh!" growls Old Hickory. "Who cares a blinkety blanked blank what they
say we did? Let 'em prove it!"

Then the next day them checks was sprung on the investigatin' committee,
and it looked as though they'd made out their case against the
Corrugated. Perhaps there wa'n't doin's on the seventeenth floor that
mornin'! Clear out where I sat I could hear the boss callin' for first
one man and then another, and Piddie is turkeyin' in and out so excited
he don't know whether he's on duty or runnin' bases. Once, when he stops
to lean against the spring-water bottle and wipe his dewy brow, I slips
up behind and taps him quick on the shoulder.

"Ye-e-e-es, sir!" says he, before he sees who it is.

"Never mind, Piddie," says I. "I was goin' to ask you 'Guilty or not
guilty?' But what's the use? Anyone can see it was you that did it."

"You--you impudent young sauce box!" he begins. "How dare you----"

"Ah, save that for the subpoena server," says I. "He'll be in here
after you in a minute. And, say, my guess is that you'll get about ten
years on the rockpile."

When the special directors' meetin' gets under way, though, and the big
guns of the Corrugated law force got on the job, there was less noise
and more electricity in the air. Honest, with all that tiptoein' and
whisperin' and serious looks bein' passed around, I didn't even have the
gall to guy one of the new typewriter girls. Kind of gets on your
nerves, a thing of that kind does, and if a squad of reserves had
marched in and pinched the whole outfit, I shouldn't have been so much
surprised.

Right in the midst of it too there comes my three rings on the buzzer,
and in I sneaks where they're holdin' the inquest. Say, they're all
sittin' around the big mahogany directors' table, with the old man at
the head, lookin' black and ugly, and grippin' a half smoked cigar butt
betw