Adair whistled softly.  “That’s getting next to us with a vengeance!” he commented.  “And it can be done, too.  Half a dozen of the small stock-holders have been to me since the fire was lighted, trying to get me to take their stock at market.”

“How much do we control—­that we are sure of?” Ford asked.

“I don’t know—­in figures.  Not more than two-fifths, I should say.  At the last board meeting I proposed that we make a safe majority pool among ourselves, but Uncle Sidney sat on me.  Said his own personal constituency among the little people was big enough amply to secure us.”

Ford swore pathetically.

“The one single instance when his caution might have steered him straight—­and it went to sleep!” he raged.

“Exactly,” laughed Adair.  “And now the Transcontinental moguls are buying up a majority of their own, meaning to capture the main-line dog and leaving us to wag the extension tail which we have just acquired.  Say, Ford; doesn’t that appeal to your sense of humor?”

“No, it doesn’t,” said Ford savagely.  To see one’s air-castles crumbling at the very moment when they were to be transmuted into solid realities is apt to provoke a reversion to type; and Ford’s type was Gothic.

“That’s a pity,” said Adair, absently rolling his cigarette between his thumb and finger.  “Also, it’s another pity that I am such a hopeless quitter.  I believe I could pull this thing out yet, if I could only get up sufficient steam.”

“For heaven’s sake, tell me what you burn, and I’ll furnish the fuel,” said Ford desperately.

“Will you?  I guess I need something pretty inflammatory.”

“Lord of love! haven’t you good and plenty, without calling upon me?  Are you going to let these stock-jobbing land-pirates on ’Change gibbet you as a solemn warning to aspiring young promoters?”

Adair paused with the cigarette half way to his lips.  “Ah,” he said, after a thoughtful moment.  “Perhaps that was what I needed.  No; they will not gibbet any of us to-day; and possibly not to-morrow.”  Then, with a sudden dropping of the mask of easy-going indifference:  “Give me the key to your room, and find me a swift stenographer.  Then go over to the Lake Shore headquarters and ask to have the Nadia coupled to the evening train for New York.”

“But the president?” Ford began.  “Didn’t he say something about going over these new lines on an inspection trip?”

“Never mind Uncle Sidney:  on this one occasion he will change his plans and go back to New York with us,” said Adair curtly.

“Good,” said Ford approvingly.  “And how about opening the new through line for business?  Do we go on?  Or do we hang it up until we find out where we are ’at’?”

“Don’t hold it up a single minute.  Drive it for all the power you can get behind it.  If we have to collide with things, let’s do it with the throttle wide open.  Now find me that shorthand person quickly, will you?”