"All right, I will," said the other grimly. "Well, then, I've tried my best to bribe your people, and I've got little out of it. I've tried the foreman, the night watchman, and everybody else. I've had a dozen of your workmen slugged for scabbing, and four or five of them shot, one or two at least, for a good, permanent funeral. And I paid the funeral expenses! You didn't know that? Well, that's the truth of it!" "Well, _what_ do you know about that!" gasped Standley, aghast. "I know a good deal about it, my Christian friend," said the slender man relentlessly. "I can tell you what you already know, that your motors are dismantled to-day. I can tell you also that there's a very good chance that the secret we've been after is in the hands of one man, and he's holding it up for some reason best known to himself. We've got nothing on him! I can also tell you that if he won't give up--though _why_ he won't, I can't imagine--it's possible we can work out a receiver of our own elsewhere, without him." VII "Well, what does he want?" This from the old man. "That's the everlasting mystery and puzzle of it. He doesn't want anything, so far as I can learn. There's some factor in him that I can't get my hands on, try the best that I can. Not that I don't expect to break you wide open eventually, my friends." "Now why do you want to do that?" asked the older financier. "Why not join in with us and break the bonehead?" "Fine! But how can we do that? He's sitting pretty tight. The man's played in fine luck. I admit I rather admire him." "Bah, that's the way with all the new ones; they all play in luck for a time. Each Napoleon has his boom, but after a time boom values shrink--they always do. This chap'll find his level when we get ready to tell him." "For instance?" "Well, for instance, then! He's sitting there with a small margin of control in the International. That gave him his start, and he's wise enough to hang on to that. But it didn't give him his money--he's only made dividend money out of that; and who cares for dividend money? He doesn't own control in the Guatemala Oil Company, does he? He's made a lot out of Arizona and Utah coppers, but he doesn't own control in a single company there, does he? He's in with the L.P., but he borrowed to get in. He's made a big killing in Rubber, but he doesn't own any Rubber control of his own, does he? Now, you follow him out in every deal he's made---iron, copper, steel, oil, rails, timber, irrigation, utilities, industrials--and you'll find he's simply been banking on his inside information and his outside credit. Who gave him both of those things?--Why, we did, didn't we? All right! Suppose we withdraw our credit. What happens?" VIII