“Not a smidgin. Well, one day at the depot Wee-wee and me seen this man send a telegram to another feller, tailin’ him to come right off because the crop was ripe.... Pretty soon the other man come, but they pretended they didn’t know each other, and the last feller to come tried to buy the secret off of the first man.” “What secret?” “The secret way of makin’ the churn. It hain’t patented. I didn’t understand about that before, but I do now. The man says he wouldn’t patent, but would jest manufacture secret. The second man says the new churn would put every other churn out of business, and he offered fifty thousand dollars to the first man if he wouldn’t build any factory at all. He offered it where folks could hear, and before night everybody in town was sayin’ jest the secret was worth fifty thousand dollars.” “Then did the first man sell any stock?” “Nope.” “Huh!... Looks queer. He will sell stock, though. You see, young man. He’s got folks crazy to buy, and pretty soon he’ll sell, and scoot. That’s the way it looks to me.... No patent, eh? He’s probably got this secret of his valued high, and when he sells stock the secret’s included.... Part of the money will have to go to build a factory.” The lawyer was sort of talking to himself now. “Where the fraud will happen will be the secret. Most likely you’ll find out he’s sold every bit of stock in the concern. The folks will be left with a factory and a secret that isn’t worth a cent. Has anybody seen this churn?” “Not a soul. It’s awful secret.” “Um!... He isn’t guaranteeing anything. It doesn’t matter whether his churn is worth a cent. Folks that are crazy about a thing don’t ask questions. They just swallow the bait, hook, line, and sinker.” “But where will this feller make any money?” “Out of what he calls his secret. Of course, the cost of the mill will have to be paid. He’s incorporated for enough to cover that, and put in his secret for a big wad. Let’s say he has stock altogether for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. It will cost maybe seventy-five to build the mill. The rest will be to pay for the secret. See?” “Guess I do,” says Catty. “When he sells all the stock and pays for the mill, he’ll have left over the seventy-five thousand that he charges for the secret. Hain’t that it?” “That’s it.” “And if the secret hain’t any good, why, the folks have a mill that hain’t worth anything because the thing they was plannin’ to make in it hain’t worth makin’?” “That’s the idea.” “Hum!... Much obleeged. Kind of hard to prove, hain’t it?” “Nothing harder—ahead of time. You’d have to find out what his secret was, and prove to folks that it was no good, and that he intended to cheat them with it. I don’t see how it can be worked.” “It’s goin’ to be hard, all right, but, mister, we’re a-goin’ to do it. We’ll git this feller somehow, and we’ll prove it on him. We’ll do it or bust.”