Porter took the cigar from his mouth, looked carefully at the lighted end of it, and said with a casual air, as if he had a particularly decisive and conclusive statement to make and wished to avail himself of its dramatic possibilities: "My dear boy, I've got every blamed bond!" Fenton sat gazing at him in stupefied wonder. "Would you mind saying that again?" he said, after a full minute of silent amazement in which he sat staring at his client, who was blowing rings of smoke with great equanimity. "I've got all the bonds, was what I said." The lawyer walked around the table and put his hand on Porter's shoulder. He was trying to keep from laughing, like a parent who is about to rebuke a child and yet laughs at the cause of its offense. Porter evidently thought that he had done an extremely bright thing. "As I understand you, you have bought all of the bonds and half of the stock." "About half. I'm a little--just a little--short." "Will you kindly tell me what you wanted with the stock if you had the bonds?" "Well, I figured it this way, that the franchise was worth the price I had to pay for the whole thing, and if I had the stock control I'd save the fuss of foreclosing. You lawyers always make a lot of rumpus about those things, and a receivership would prejudice the Eastern market when I come to reorganize and sell out." Fenton lay back in his chair and laughed, while Porter looked at him a little defiantly, with his hat tipped over his eyes and a cigar sticking in his mouth at an impertinent angle. "You'd better finish your job and make sure of your majority," said Fenton. His rage was rising now and he did not urge Porter to remain when the banker got up to go. He was not at all anxious to defend a franchise which the local courts, always sensitive to public sentiment, might set aside. "I'll see you in the morning first thing," said Porter at the door, which Fenton opened for him. "I want you to go to the meeting with me and we'll need a day to get ready." The lawyer watched his client walk toward the elevator. It occurred to him that Porter's step was losing its elasticity. While the banker waited for the elevator car he leaned wearily against the wire screen of the shaft.