"What didn't go in the storm was carried off by Giddings when he abandoned the ship. But the hull's there and--oh, I'll get her off and fix her up all right." "Always knew Giddings was a rascal. He oozes piety and respectability. That's the worst kind you have down-town. When a man carries so much character in his face--it's like a woman who carries so much color in her cheeks that you know it couldn't have come from the inside." "You're wrong about Giddings. He's honest enough. Any other man would have done the same in his place. He stayed until there was no hope of saving the ship." "All lost but his honor--Wall Street honor, eh?" "Precisely." After a pause Langdon said: "I'd no idea you held much of your own stock. I thought you controlled through other people's proxies and made your profits by forcing the stock up or down and getting on the other side of the market." "But, you see, I believe in Woolens," replied Dumont. "And I believe in it still, Langdon!" His eyes had in them the look of the fanatic. "That concern is breath and blood and life to me, and wife and children and parents and brothers and sisters. I've put my whole self into it. I conceived it. I brought it into the world. I nursed it and brought it up. I made it big and strong and great. It's mine, by heaven! MINE! And no man shall take it from me!" He was sitting up, his face flushed, his eyes blazing. "Gad--he does look a wild beast!" said Langdon to himself. He would have said aloud, had Dumont been well: "I'm precious glad I ain't the creature those fangs are reaching for!" He was about to caution him against exciting himself when Dumont sank back with a cynical smile at his own outburst. "But to get down to business," he went on. "I've eleven millions of the stock left--about a hundred and twenty thousand shares. Gladys has fifty thousand shares--how much have you got?" "Less than ten thousand. And I'd have had none at all if my mind hadn't been full of other things as I was sailing. I forgot to tell my broker to sell." Dumont was reflecting. Presently he said: "Those curs not only took most of my stock and forced the sale of most of my other securities; they've put me in such a light that outside stockholders wouldn't send me their proxies now. To get back control I must smash them, and I must also acquire pretty nearly half the shares, and hold them till I'm firm in the saddle again." "You'd better devote yourself for the present to escaping the grave. Why bother about business? You've got enough--too much, as it is. Take a holiday--go away and amuse yourself." Dumont smiled. "That's what I'm going to do, what I'm doing--amusing myself. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't live, if I didn't feel that I was on my way back to power. Now--in the present market I couldn't borrow on my Woolens stock. I've two requests to make of you." "Anything that's possible."