"There were seven shareholders. Five owned two shares apiece. Two are clerks who disappeared in the draft. Three are bond salesmen--forty-dollar-a-week men. The two who owned the bulk of the stock--well, one's a sort of confidential man in Richston's office. The other was for ten years in Wall's employment. They're both out of the country; with a few thousand dollars apiece, I imagine. Dummies--pure and simple. You can guess who got the money. But you can't prove anything. I doubt if you could take legal action against those foxy old birds if you had proof that the pair of them looted Spruce Supplies. It was ostensibly a legal transaction. The Norquay Trust Company should have protected itself, you see." "And that's only one of several such," Hale concluded. "They made a milk cow of this business. They saw that funds were invested where they would do the most good--for them. They simply made a goat of Grove." Rod stared at the figures on a sheet of paper before him. "Liabilities practically four hundred thousand in excess of available assets," he murmured. "That's a hump to get over. How long can we reasonably expect to go on--I mean how much grace will we have to meet everything without going into forced liquidation?" "With a fair amount of revenue from some outside source--say eighty or a hundred thousand every six months--we can go right along as usual," Hale replied. "There's no immediate call for funds. All the pressing obligations your father provided funds to meet. There's only a dead loss that this concern can't shake off by its own efforts. We can--we have--cut operating expenses to the bone. But as a trust company we can't--legitimately--make money fast enough ever to get even." "There's only one outside source of revenue available, you know," Rod reminded. "Is it wise to go any farther?" Hale shifted uneasily. "You'll beggar yourself." "Between beggaring myself and beggaring other people, there doesn't seem to be much choice." "Do you consider yourself personally responsible for Grove's actions?" Hale asked earnestly. "You know what the governor's idea was," Rod answered. "Grove put this over pretty much on the strength of the family standing. So we were tacitly involved. We'll be a public stink if we sit back. We aren't legally responsible; we are morally. That was his idea. I'm inclined to agree." "That's drawing it pretty fine," Hale responded. "Grove was his son. Individually you are not to blame at all. It's easy to make a grand gesture and go down. Heroic sort of thing. But once you're down everybody'll walk on you." "What are you getting at?" Rod demanded impatiently. "Do you want me to cut and run with the swag--like a burglar? It amounts to pretty much the same. I keep the estate intact, and these people all lose their money. I don't quite see why you should try to dissuade me."