Tutt and Mr. Tutt Part 35

Tutt. "So Scherer, Hunn, Greenbaum & Beck are going to reorganize something, are they? Let 'em try! Not so long as I've got my hat!"

"This is all very enigmatical to me," replied Miss Wiggin. "But then, I'm only a woman. Aren't they all right? Why shouldn't they reorganize a mine if it's exhausted?"

"If it's exhausted why do they want to reorganize it?" he demanded, climbing to his feet. "Let me tell you something, Minerva! All my life I've been fighting against tyranny--the tyranny of the law, the tyranny of power, the tyranny of money."

He drew fiercely on his stogy, which being desiccated flared like a Roman candle.

"You don't need to tell me what this plan of reorganization is; because they wouldn't propose one unless it was going to benefit them in some way, and the only way it can be made to benefit them is at the expense of the other stockholders. _Quod erat demonstrandum_."

Mr. Tutt seemed to have become distended somehow and to have spread over the entire wall surface of his office like the genie which the fisherman innocently permitted to escape from the bottle.

"There isn't one reorganization scheme in a hundred that isn't crooked somewhere."

"According to that, if a business is unsuccessful it ought to be allowed to go to pot for fear that somebody might make a profit in putting it on its feet," she countered. "I think you're a violent, irascible, prejudiced old man!"

"All the same," he retorted, "show me a reorganization scheme and I'll show you a flimflam! What's this one? Bet you anything you like it's as crooked as a ram's horn. I don't have to hear about it. Don't want to read the plan. But I'll bust it--higher than Hades. See if I don't!"

He spat the remaining filaments of his stogy from the window and fished out another.

"How do we come into it, anyhow?" he demanded.

"Doctor--I mean Mister Barrows," replied Miss Wiggin.

"Oh, yes. Of course. Well, you send for him to come down here and sign the papers."

"What papers?"

"The complaint and order to show cause."

"But there isn't any."

"There will be, all right, by the time he gets here."

Miss Wiggin looked first puzzled and then pained.

"I don't understand," she said rather stiffly. "Do you mean that the firm of Tutt & Tutt is going to engage in the enterprise of trying to break up a plan of reorganization without knowing what it is? Won't you lay us all open to the accusation of being strikers?"

Mr. Tutt's ordinarily brown complexion became slightly tinged with purple.

"Let the court decide!" he cried hotly. "You say Scherer, Hunn, Greenbaum & Beck are proposing to reorganize a mining company? You admit we hold some of the stock? Well--as the natural-born and perennial champion of the outraged minority--I'm going to attack it, and bust it, and raise heck with it--on general principles. I'm going to throw that d.a.m.ned old hat of mine into the ring, my child, and play h.e.l.l with everything."

And with a cluck Mr. Tutt leaned over, produced a dingy bottle wrapped in a coat of many colors and poured himself out a gla.s.s of malt extract.

When Mr. Greenbaum was summoned to the telephone and informed by Mr.

Elderberry in disgruntled tones that somebody had just served upon him an order to show cause why the proposed reorganization of Horse's Neck should not be set aside and enjoined, he not only became instantly annoyed but highly excited.

"What!" he almost screamed.

"I'll read it to you, if you don't believe it!" said Mr. Elderberry.

"'United States District Court, Southern District of New York, Edward V.

Barrows, Complainant against Horse's Neck Extension Mining Company, Defendant.

"'Upon the subpoena herein and the complaint duly verified the nineteenth day of February, 1919, and the affidavit of Ephraim Tutt and--'"

"Who in h.e.l.l is Tutt?" shouted Greenbaum, interrupting.

"I don't know," retorted Elderberry; "or Barrows either."

"Well, skip all the legal rot and get to the point," directed Greenbaum.

"'Ordered--ordered, that the defendant, Horse's Neck Extension Mining Company, show cause at a stated term to be held in and for--'"

"I said to cut the legal rot!"

"Um--um--'why an injunction order should not be issued herein pending the trial of this action and enjoining the defendant from disposing of its a.s.sets and for the appointment of a receiver of the a.s.sets of the defendant corporation; and why the complainant should not have such other, further and different relief as may be equitable.'"

There was a long pause during which Mr. Elderberry was under a convincing delusion that he could actually hear the thoughts that were rattling round in Mr. Greenbaum's brain.

"You there?" he inquired presently.

"Oh, yes, I'm here!" retorted Greenbaum. "This is the devil of a note!

Have you spoken to Chippingham?"

"Yes."

"What does he say?"

"He says it's awkward. They have got hold somewhere of one of our old circulars of 1914 in which the property is described as worth about ten million dollars--that was during the boom, you remember--and they claim we are selling it to ourselves for less than one million and that on its face it's a fraud on the minority stockholders who can't afford to buy stock in the new corporation--as of course it would be if the mine was really worth ten million or anything like it."

"Did we really ever get out any circular like that?" demanded Greenbaum in a protesting voice. "I don't recall any."

"That was when we were making a market for the stock," Elderberry reminded him. "We couldn't say enough. Honestly, to look at the thing now is enough to make you sick!"

"Well, it's just a hold-up--that's what it is. Some crook like this Tutt or this Barrows has found out about Amphalula and is bringing a strike suit. You'll have to call a meeting right away. I'd like to strangle all these shyster lawyers!"

And it never occurred to Mr. Greenbaum that the possible existence of the Amphalula vein was what in fact made the order to show cause justifiable--his actual ground of complaint being that anybody should, as he a.s.sumed, have found out about it in defiance of his plans.

"Yeronner," said Attendant Mike Horan as he helped Judge Pollak into his black bombazine gown in his chambers in the old Post-Office Building on the morning of the return day, "there's a great bunch out there in the court room waitin' for ye, an' no mistake!"

"Indeed!" remarked His Honor. "And who are they? What is the case?"

"Hanged if I know," answered Mike, snipping a piece of fluff off his judgeship's shoulder. "There's a white-bearded old guy, two or three swell gents with tall hats, Counselor Tutt and an attorney named Chippingham, besides that pretty Miss Wiggin; and they ain't speakin'

none to one another, neither."