Bean would have made nothing of that.  He would have been bored, until Markham made a reference to fifty shares that happened to be owned by a young chap in the outer office.

“Take ’em over,” said one heavy-jowled director who incongruously held a cigarette between lips that seemed to demand the largest and blackest of cigars.

“He won’t sell,” answered Markham.  “I spoke to him.”

“Tell him to,” said the director to Breede.

“Tell him yourself,” said Breede.  “He said he wouldn’t sell.”

“Um!  Well, well!” said the director.

“Exactly what I told him,” remarked the conscientious Tully, who was present to take notes, “and he said to me, ’Mr. Tully, I am unwilling to imagine anything of less consequence.’  He seemed, uh—­I might say—­decided.”

“Gave me the same thing,” said Markham.

“Leak in the office,” announced the elderly advanced dresser.  “Fifty shares!” he added, twirling the glasses on their silk ribbon.  “Hell!  Going to let him get away with it?”

“Got to be careful,” suggested a quiet director who had listened.  “Can’t tell who’s back of him.”

“Call him in,” ordered the advanced dresser, fixing the glasses firmly on his purple nose.  “Call him in!  Bluff him in a minute!”

“Buzz!  Buzz!  Buzz!” smote fatefully on Bean’s ears.  He had expected it.  If they didn’t let him alone, he would tell them all that he could imagine nothing of less consequence.

He entered the room.  He hardly dared scan the faces of those directors in the flesh, but they were all scanning him.  He stood at the end of the table and fastened his eyes on a railway map that bedecked the opposite wall, one of those mendacious maps showing a trans-continental line of unbroken tangent; three thousand miles of railway without a curve, the opposition lines being mere spirals.

“Here, boy!” It was the advanced dresser of the white parted beard and the constant indignation.  Bean looked at him.  He had known from the first that he must clash with this man.

“That sort of thing’ll never do with us, you know,” continued the old gentleman, when he had diverted Bean’s attention from the interesting map.  “Never do at all; not at all; not-tat-tall.  Preposterous!  My word!  What rot!”

The last was, phonetically, “Wha’ trawt!”

Bean was studying the old gentleman’s faultless garments.  He wore a particularly effective waistcoat of white pique striped with narrow black lines, and there was a pink carnation in the lapel of the superbly tailored frock coat.

“Wha’ trawt!” repeated the ornate director.  Bean looked again at the map.

“Here, boy, your last chance.  We happen to need those shares in a little matter of voting.  I’ll draw you a check for the full amount.”

He produced the daintiest of check-books and a fountain pen of a chaste design in gold.  Bean’s look was the look of those who see visions.