The way he asked this question in one of his cross-bred, cat-purring-and-fox-bark tones which I had seen him work on others, and which I had observed always denoted a perfect knowledge of your answer to his question before you had it, did not help my guessing any. I told him I knew nothing more than that there was such a company with stock dealt in on the English and our markets. "Nothing more than that?" And he looked at me quizzically. "Have you been watching the stock's actions in the market?" In a second it flashed over me that Anaconda had been quite active of late, that is, had been largely traded in without attracting much attention, although the price had been steadily advancing. "I thought you boasted you could read the tape, Lawson?" he went on, "and that nothing could be happening in a field you were interested in without your smelling it out? When I tell you Mr. Rockefeller and myself have bought control of the biggest copper property in the world, measured either by the number of shares and their selling price or by production, without your even suspecting it, much less the public's jumping in and running up the price on us, you can see there is something in our quiet way of doing things compared with your public way." "All right, Mr. Rogers; I have never contended that there were as many dollars in my way of doing things as in yours--as many dollars for _us_." "Lawson," said he, "the public are about ready to invest in the first section of our new consolidated company, are they not?" "Sitting up nights to see that they get a place in line the minute we scatter our first handbills," I answered. "Well, are we ready to put our things together? Have we got the necessary companies to meet the ideas you have been educating the public into?" "We have things in such shape that we can whip a $75,000,000 or a $100,000,000 company up for public subscription in a very few days, if you give the word." Mr. Rogers leaned toward me and said in his most decisive and imperious tones: "Very well; I have plans all shaped up which will allow us to offer the first section, but not made up as we first arranged. Mr. Rockefeller and myself have decided to put entirely new companies in the first section, and to reserve the Butte and the Montana and other companies you have been working on for the second section."