“Even if the Amphalula vein doesn’t run into it it will come near enough to make Horse’s Neck worth dollars per share.  It’s a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose proposition,” commented Mr. Hunn dryly.  “Who controls Amphalula?”

“We do,” snapped Greenbaum.

“Then it’s a cinch,” returned Hunn mildly.  “Shake out the sleepers, reorganize, and sell or hold as seems most advisable later on.”

Mr. Elderberry cleared his throat tentatively.

“If you gentlemen will pardon me—­I have been considering this matter for some little time,” he hazarded.  Mr. Elderberry was not only the professional salaried secretary of Horse’s Neck but was also treasurer of the Amphalula, and general factotum, representative and interlocking director for Scherer, Hunn, Greenbaum & Beck in their various mining enterprises, combining in his person almost as many offices as, Pooh-Bah in “The Mikado.”  Though he could not have claimed to serve as “First Lord of the Treasury, Lord Chief Justice, Commander-in-Chief, Lord High Admiral, Master of the Buck Hounds, Groom of the Back Stairs, Archbishop of Titipu and Lord Mayor, both acting and elect, all rolled into one,” he could with entire modesty have admitted the soft impeachment of being simultaneously treasurer of Amphalula, vice-president of Hooligan Gulch and Red Water, secretary of Horse’s Neck, Holy Jo, Gargoyle Extension, Cowhide Number Five, Consolidated Bimetallic, Nevada Mastodon, Leaping Frog, Orelady Mine, Why Marry and Sol’s Cliff Buttress, and president of Blimp Consolidated.

All these various properties were either owned or controlled by Scherer, Hunn, Greenbaum & Beck and had been acquired with the use of the same original capital in various entirely legal ways, which at the present moment are irrelevant.  The firm was a strictly honorable business house, from both their own point of view and that of the Street.  Everything they did was with and by the advice of counsel.  Yet not one of these active-minded gentlemen, including Mr. Greenbaum, the dolichocephalous Scherer and the acephalous Hunn, had ever done a stroke of productive work or contributed anything toward the common weal.  In fact, distress to somebody in some form, and usually to a large number of persons, inevitably followed whatever deal they undertook, since their business was speculating in mining properties and unloading the bad ones upon an unsuspecting public which Scherer, Hunn, Greenbaum & Beck had permitted to deceive itself.

Thus, when Greenbaum called upon Mr. Elderberry for advice, it savored strongly of Koko’s consulting Pooh-Bah and was sometimes almost as confusing, for just as Pooh-Bah on these occasions was won’t to reply, “Certainly.  In which of my capacities?  As First Lord of the Treasury, Lord Chamberlain, Attorney-General, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Privy Purse or Private Secretary?” so the financial and corporate Elderberry might equally well ask:  “Exactly.  But are you seeking my advice as secretary of Horse’s Neck, of Holy Jo, of Cowhide Number Five, or as vice-president of Hooligan Gulch and Red Water, treasurer of Amphalula or president of Blimp Consolidated?”