“I think so myself,” replied Mr. Schryhart, who was broad-shouldered, square-headed, black-eyed, and with a short black mustache gracing a firm upper lip. He had hard, dark, piercing eyes. “I see by the papers, if they can be trusted,” he said, coming direct to the point, “that you are interesting yourself in local gas. Is that true?” “I’m afraid the papers cannot be generally relied on,” replied Cowperwood, quite blandly. “Would you mind telling me what makes you interested to know whether I am or not?” “Well, to tell the truth,” replied Schryhart, staring at the financier, “I am interested in this local gas situation myself. It offers a rather profitable field for investment, and several members of the old companies have come to me recently to ask me to help them combine.” (This was not true at all.) “I have been wondering what chance you thought you had of winning along the lines you are now taking.” Cowperwood smiled. “I hardly care to discuss that,” he said, “unless I know much more of your motives and connections than I do at present. Do I understand that you have really been appealed to by stockholders of the old companies to come in and help adjust this matter?” “Exactly,” said Schryhart. “And you think you can get them to combine? On what basis?” “Oh, I should say it would be a simple matter to give each of them two or three shares of a new company for one in each of the old. We could then elect one set of officers, have one set of offices, stop all these suits, and leave everybody happy.” He said this in an easy, patronizing way, as though Cowperwood had not really thought it all out years before. It amazed the latter no little to see his own scheme patronizingly brought back to him, and that, too, by a very powerful man locally—one who thus far had chosen to overlook him utterly. “On what basis,” asked Cowperwood, cautiously, “would you expect these new companies to come in?” “On the same basis as the others, if they are not too heavily capitalized. I haven’t thought out all the details. Two or three for one, according to investment. Of course, the prejudices of these old companies have to be considered.” Cowperwood meditated. Should or should he not entertain this offer? Here was a chance to realize quickly by selling out to the old companies. Only Schryhart, not himself, would be taking the big end in this manipulative deal. Whereas if he waited—even if Schryhart managed to combine the three old companies into one—he might be able to force better terms. He was not sure. Finally he asked, “How much stock of the new company would be left in your hands—or in the hands of the organizing group—after each of the old and new companies had been provided for on this basis?” “Oh, possibly thirty-five or forty per cent. of the whole,” replied Schryhart, ingratiatingly. “The laborer is worthy of his hire.”