In his bag was a carefully compiled list of these stock-holders, with their addresses and the amounts of their respective holdings.  At the worst, he concluded, it should mean nothing more formidable than a deal of quick traveling, some anxious bargaining, perhaps, and a little finesse to keep his object in securing the options safely in the background.

This was how it appeared in the prospect; and the young engineer had yet to learn that the securing of options is a trade by itself—­a trade by no means to be caught up in passing, even by the most gifted of tyros.

Hence, it was extremely fortunate for this particular tyro—­more fortunate than he could possibly know at the moment—­that his telephone message sent from the first telephone he could reach after his train stopped in the Union Station, caught Kenneth at the Green Bag Club.  It was a mere chance that he knew that Kenneth, the senior member of the firm of attorneys having general oversight of the Pacific Southwestern’s legal department, was at the moment in Chicago; a chance hanging upon the fact that he had met Kenneth as he was passing through on his way eastward.  But it was not by chance that the first familiar face he saw on entering the rotunda of the Grand Pacific Hotel was that of Kenneth.  The sight was merely the logical result of Ford’s urgent request telephoned to the lawyer’s club.

“By Jove, Kenneth; this comes within two inches of being a miracle!—­my catching you here before you had started West,” Ford ejaculated.  And then:  “When are you going back?”

“I am supposed to be on the way now,” was the lawyer’s reply.  “I had made all my arrangements to start back to-night on the slow train, but I dined with some friends on the North Side and made a miss.  Where have you been?”

“I’m just in from New York.  Let me register and get a room; and you put away any lingering notion you may have of heading westward to-night.  I’ve got to have your ear for a few hours to begin with, and the whole of you for the next few days.  No; don’t probe me here.  Wait, and I’ll unload on you gradually.  You won’t be sorry you missed your train.”

Fifteen minutes later Ford had his adviser safely behind a closed door, and had put him succinctly in possession of the world-subverting facts, as far as they went.  When he concluded, the lawyer was shaking his head dubiously, just as Auditor Evans had done.

“Ford, have you any adequate idea of what a tremendous proposition you are up against?” he asked quietly, helping himself to a cigar out of the engineer’s freshly opened box.

“I don’t believe I have underrated the difficulties, any of them,” said Ford, matching the attorney’s gravity.  “There are bones all the way along, but I think I have struck the biggest of them just here.  I ought to be in a dozen places at once, and not later than to-morrow noon.  That’s something I can’t quite compass.”