Porter had been casually asked by his Boston friend whether there was any local market for the stock or bonds; and he had answered that there was not; that the holders of shares in Clarkson kept what they had because they could no longer sell to one another and that they were only waiting for the larger outside bondholders and shareholders to assert themselves. Porter had ridden down to Boston with his brother banker and when they parted it was with an understanding that the Bostonian was to collect for Porter the Clarkson Traction securities that were held by New England banks, a considerable amount, as Porter knew; and he went home with a well-formed plan of buying the control of the company. Times were improving and he had faith in Clarkson's future; he did not believe in it so noisily as Timothy Margrave did; but he knew the resources of the tributary country, and he had, what all successful business men must have, an alert imagination. It was not necessary for Porter to disclose the fact of his purchases to the officers of the Traction Company, whom he knew to be corrupt and vicious; the transfer of ownership on the company's books made no difference, as the original stock books had been destroyed,--a fact which had become public property through a legal effort to levy on the holdings of a shareholder in the interest of a creditor. Moreover, if he could help it, Porter never told any one about anything he did. He even had several dummies in whose names he frequently held securities and real estate. One of these was Peckham, a clerk in the office of Fenton, Porter's lawyer. Wheaton had not long been an officer of the bank before he began to be aware that there was considerable mystery about Porter's outside transactions. Porter occasionally perused with much interest several small memorandum books which he kept carefully locked in his desk. The president often wrote letters with his own hand and copied them himself after bank hours, in a private letter-book. Wheaton was naturally curious as to what these outside interests might be. It had piqued him to find that while he was cashier of the bank he was not consulted in its larger transactions; and that of Porter's personal affairs he knew nothing.