Of course other people who did not wish Welles well heard about it, and the whisper ran about the Street, getting blacker and blacker as it ran, until everybody knew something had happened--everybody except the directors of the VanTwiller Trust Company. And when the transfer-books closed for the annual meeting of the stockholders it was found that Mr. Alfred Jerningham owned, by purchase or option, and had irrevocable proxies on, a little more than twenty-eight thousand shares of the stock. This, together with the twelve thousand shares owned jointly by Patrick T. Behan and Oliver Judson, the street-railroad magnates, and the blocks controlled by the Garvin brothers, Tammany contractors, and Mayer & Shanberg, F. R. Chisolm, John Matson & Company, and others of the Behan-Judson clique, which once tried to secure control of the company and were foiled by Ashton Welles, made a combination that was bound to win at the annual election. Jerningham ceased going to the VanTwiller Trust Company because Ashton Welles had sailed for London on the receipt of a cablegram that read: _Leaving for Continent. Mother and I cannot return before three months. Will write soon._ _Anne_. Instead of calling on his friend Stewardson, Jerningham preferred to spend hours and hours conversing with Patrick T. Behan, “the most dangerous man in Wall Street!”--and the slickest. But on the day before the election Jerningham did call on Stewardson and offered to sell his holdings of VanTwiller stock at six hundred dollars a share. “Why, I thought you--” began the vice-president. “I know you did. I wanted you to. But six hundred dollars is only twenty-five dollars a share more than Behan, and Judson, and Garvin, and the rest of those pirates have offered me. I've decided not to be a stockholder of the trust company; so just get your friends together and tell them if they want to retain the control they can give you a check for me--six hundred dollars a share on twenty-eight thousand, one hundred and twenty-three shares. Put it down--twenty-eight thousand, one hundred and twenty-three shares. Good day!” “Wait! I want to say--” “Don't say it! Write it! I'm still at the Brabant,” said Jerningham, coldly. “I advise you to get at Mr. Welles on the steamer by wireless. Good day!” “But, I--” shouted Stewardson. Jerningham paid no attention to him and walked away. Later in the day negotiations were resumed. In the end Jerningham accepted a little less; but the deal yielded him a net profit of about two million dollars. He insisted upon being paid in gold coin. This convinced Stewardson and the other victims that Jerningham was out of his mind; but there is no law that enables officers of a trust company to imprison a gold maniac or to take away his gold, particularly when his lawyers stand very high in the profession.