"That's my own business," said Fletcher Fogg.
"You can't get away with it--you can't do it!" raged Vose. "I'll get
at the inside of how that meeting was conducted. You'd better take
backwater right now, Fogg, and save yourself. I'm not afraid to tell
you what I'm going to do. I'll have a temporary injunction issued. I'll
prove fraud was used at that meeting--bribery, yes, sir!"
Mr. Fogg smiled and sat down at the president's desk. "First he'll have
to find a young man by the name of David Boyne," he told himself.
"Vose," said the new president, "all you can show a court is the record
of an annual meeting, duly and legally held. And if the judge wants to
have a look at me he'll find me running this line a blamed sight better
than you have ever run it."
"It's a cheap, plain trick," bleated the aged steamship manager. "Your
crowd is going to sell out to the Paramount--it's your plot."
"Oh no! We're not inviting injunctions and law and newspaper talk and
slurs and slander, Mr. Vose. If there's ever any selling out you'll be
the first to suggest it; I never shall. You see, I'm just as frank with
you as you are with me. Selling this line to the Paramount right now,
just because the new board is in, would be ragged work--very coarse
work. Thank Heaven, I have a proper respect for the law--and what it can
do to bother a fool. I am not a fool, Mr. Vose."