The letter was about Cohoon’s Brewery Company, Limited, and it was signed by a firm of solicitors.  It referred to the verbatim report, which it said would be found in the financial papers, of the annual meeting of the company held at the Cannon Street Hotel on the previous day, and to the exceedingly unsatisfactory nature of the Chairman’s statement.  It regretted the absence of Mrs. Alice Challice (her change of condition had not yet reached the heart of Cohoon’s) from the meeting, and asked her whether she would be prepared to support the action of a committee which had been formed to eject the existing board and which had already a following of 385,000 votes.  It finished by asserting that unless the committee was immediately lifted to absolute power the company would be quite ruined.

Priam re-read the letter aloud.

“What does it all mean?” asked Alice quietly.

“Well,” said he, “that’s what it means.”

“Does it mean—?” she began.

“By Jove!” he exclaimed, “I forgot.  I saw something on a placard this morning about Cohoon’s, and I thought it might interest you, so I bought it.”  So saying, he drew from his pocket the Financial Times, which he had entirely forgotten.  There it was:  a column and a quarter of the Chairman’s speech, and nearly two columns of stormy scenes.  The Chairman was the Marquis of Drumgaldy, but his rank had apparently not shielded him from the violence of expletives such as “Liar!” “Humbug!” and even “Rogue!” The Marquis had merely stated, with every formula of apology, that, owing to the extraordinary depreciation in licensed property, the directors had not felt justified in declaring any dividend at all on the Ordinary Shares of the company.  He had made this quite simple assertion, and instantly a body of shareholders, less reasonable and more avaricious even than shareholders usually are, had begun to turn the historic hall of the Cannon Street Hotel into a bear garden.  One might have imagined that the sole aim of brewery companies was to make money, and that the patriotism of old-world brewers, that patriotism which impelled them to supply an honest English beer to the honest English working-man at a purely nominal price, was scorned and forgotten.  One was, indeed, forced to imagine this.  In vain the Marquis pointed out that the shareholders had received a fifteen per cent, dividend for years and years past, and that really, for once in a way, they ought to be prepared to sacrifice a temporary advantage for the sake of future prosperity.  The thought of those regular high dividends gave rise to no gratitude in shareholding hearts; it seemed merely to render them the more furious.  The baser passions had been let loose in the Cannon Street Hotel.  The directors had possibly been expecting the baser passions, for a posse of policemen was handy at the door, and one shareholder, to save him from having the blood of Marquises on his soul, was ejected.  Ultimately, according to the picturesque phrases of the Financial Times report, the meeting broke up in confusion.