“That’s what we come to say. He aims to get away with a heap of money, and the way he’s goin’ to do it is like this: He lets on he don’t want to sell any stock in his factory, but he come here to do that and nothin’ else. That’s what me and Wee-wee have figgered out. He’ll go on and build a factory and everything, and part of your money will go into that. It’s part of his bait. But he’ll get what he wants because _he_ isn’t paying any money in at all, is he? No, sir, he’s just puttin’ in his patent churn, and when the thing is all over you’ll find he’s sold every dollar of stock to you folks, and got about fifty thousand dollars out of you for that secret churn he dassent patent—and when you come to manufacture it you’ll find out it hain’t no good or somethin’.... That’s the whole idee.” Mr. Wade he just stared at us and says, “My goodness!” about seventeen times, and then he wants to know how we know what we’re talkin’ about, and Catty has to tell him he doesn’t really know, but just suspects it, and then Mr. Wade looks some happier. But then Catty says, “Did you ever see that churn?” “No,” says Mr. Wade. “Who ever saw it?” “Nobody,” says Mr. Wade. “But you boys are wrong. Why, a representative of the churn trust came and offered Mr. Kinderhook thousands and thousands of dollars if he wouldn’t manufacture it. They said it would put all the other churns off the market if he did.” “Why don’t he patent it?” says Catty. “Because he is afraid the churn trust or somebody would steal his patent and make churns like his.” “The churn trust hasn’t seen the churn, has it?” “No, of course not. That’s the thing Mr. Kinderhook is most afraid of.” “Churn trust don’t know how it works, nor how to make it, nor what it looks like, nor anything, does it?” “Certainly not. Didn’t I tell you—” “If the churn trust don’t know anything about it, how do they know it’s such a good churn that it will put them out of business?” says Catty, and Mr. Wade almost fell out of his chair. “I swan to man!” he says, and swallowed three or four times, and rubbed his neck in the back and almost nickered like a horse. “I swan to man! How does it know? I never thought of that. That _is_ funny. That certainly is funny.” “It would be funnier if you knew this Mr. Matthew Binger didn’t have anything to do with a churn trust at all, but was a personal friend of Kinderhook’s that he had telegraphed to come, wouldn’t it?” “It would be so funny that somebody would laugh out of the wrong side of his mouth,” says Mr. Wade. Then Catty told him about the telegram Mr. Kinderhook had sent to Mr. Binger to come, and all about that, and then all about how Mr. Atkins remembered how Kinderhook had another name once and used to run one of those cheat medicine shows. But by that time Mr. Wade was beginning to steady down and think. He began to look mad and then he began to laugh.