The effect was electrical.  President Colbrith sat up very straight in his chair; two or three of the anxious ones opened on Ford with a rapid fire of questions; and Brewster, the copper magnate, sat back and chuckled softly in his beard.

“No, gentlemen; there is no change in the situation, so far as I know.  Of course, you are not so foolish as to let the newspaper talk of the tie-up at the Chicago elevators influence you,” Ford was saying to the anxious inquirers.  “And, apart from that, everything is going our way.  As I have remarked, our stock at the present figure is good enough for me, and I only wish I had two hundred thousand, instead of twenty thousand, to put into it.”

Brewster stopped chuckling long enough to hold up a finger to the broker.  “You may buy for my account, too, Mackie, while you are at it—­and keep on buying till I tell you to quit.”

This broke the deadlock instantly, and for a few minutes the board room was as noisy as the wheat pit with a corner threatening.  Brewster, still laughing in his beard, pulled Ford out of the press at the broker’s end of the table.

“I’m going to ask only one thing of you, young man,” he began, his shrewd little eyes twinkling.  “Just let me know when you are going to get out, so I can pull through without having to take the bankruptcy.”

[Illustration:  “Will you be good enough to buy for my account, Mr. Mackie”]

“I’ll do it, Mr. Brewster,” laughed Ford.  “Only I’m not going to get out—­unless you folks freeze me out.”

“Then it isn’t a long bluff on your part?”

“It is, and it isn’t.  We still stand to win if we have the nerve to hold on—­in which event P. S-W. at twenty-nine and a fraction is a gold mine.  That’s one view of it, and the other is this:  we’ve simply got to corner our own stock if we expect to sell thirty millions additional bonds.”

“Well, I guess you’ve gone the right way about it.  But are you sure about these Chicago terminals?  A legal friend of mine here says you’ll never get in.”

“He was possibly paid to say it,” said Ford hotly.  “There has never been a shadow of doubt touching our trackage rights on the C. P. & D. contracts, or upon our ability to maintain them.  All the Transcontinental people hoped to do was to make a newspaper stir to help keep our stock down.  They know what we are going to do to them over in their western territory, and they won’t stop at anything to block us.”

“Of course; I think we were all inclined to be a little short-sighted and pessimistic here, Mr. Ford.  When do you go back to your fighting ground?”

“To-night.”

“You won’t wait to see what happens here?”

“I don’t need to, I am sure.  And the minutes—­my minutes—­are worth dollars to the company just now.”

“Well, go in and win—­only don’t forget to give me that tip.  You wouldn’t want to see a man of my age going to the poorhouse.”