“Cut it out, Mr. Farley,” said Tom savagely, all the Gordon fighting blood singing in his veins.  “You’ve got a thing to do, and it is going to be done before you leave America.  Will you talk straight business, or not?”

The president adjusted his eye-glasses, and gave this brand-new Gordon a calm over-look.

“And if I decline to discuss business matters with a rude school-boy?” he intimated mildly.

“Then it will be rather the worse for you,” was the defiant rejoinder.  “Acting for my father and the minority stock-holders, I shall try to have you and your son held in America, pending an expert examination of the company’s affairs.”

It was a long shot, with a thousand chances of missing.  If there was anything criminal in the Farley administration, the evidences were doubtless well buried.  But Tom was looking deep into the shifty blue eyes of his antagonist when he fired, and he saw that he had not wholly missed.  None the less, the president attempted to carry it off lightly.

“What do you think of this, Vincent?” he said, turning to his son.  “Here is Tom Gordon—­our Tom—­talking wildly about investigations and arrests, and I don’t know what all.  Shall we give him his breakfast and send him back to school?”

Tom cut in quickly before Vincent could make a reply.

“If you’re sparring to gain time, it’s no use, Mr. Farley.  I mean what I say, and I’m dead in earnest.”  Then he tried another long shot:  “I tell you right now we’ve had this thing cocked and primed ever since we found out what you and Vincent meant to do.  You must turn over the control of Chiawassee Consolidated, legally and formally, to my father before you go aboard the Baltic, or—­you don’t go aboard!”

“Let me understand,” said the treasurer, cutting in.  “Are you accusing us of crime?”

“You will find out what the accusation is, later on,” said Tom, taking yet another cartridge from the long-range box.  “What I want now is a plain, straightforward yes or no, if either of you is capable of saying it.”

The president took his son aside.

“Do you suppose Dyckman has been talking too much?” he asked hurriedly.

Vincent shook his head.

“You can’t tell ... it looks a little rocky.  Of course, we had a right to do as we pleased with our own, but we don’t want to have an unfriendly construction put on things.”

“But they can’t do anything!” protested the president.  “Why, I’d be perfectly willing to turn over my private papers, if they were asked for!”

“Yes, of course.  But there would be misconstruction.  There is that contract with the combination, for example; we had a right to manipulate things so we’d have to close down, and it might not transpire that we made money by doing it.  But, on the other hand, it might leak out, and there’d be no end of a row.  Then there is another thing:  there is somebody behind this who is bigger than the old soldier or this young foot-ball tough.  It’s too nicely timed.”