Mr. Tobias Greenbaum, of Scherer, Hunn, Greenbaum & Beck, carefully placed his cigar where it would not char his Italian Renaissance desk and smoothed out the list which Mr. Elderberry, the secretary of The Horse's Neck Extension Copper Mining Company, handed to him. The list was typed on thin sheets; of foolscap and contained the names of stockholders, but as it had lain rolled up in the bottom of Mr. Elderberry's desk for five years without being disturbed it was inclined to resist the gentle pressure of Mr. Greenbaum's fingers. Mr. Greenbaum glanced sharply round the plate-glass lake that separated him from the other directors of Horse's Neck, rather as if he had detected his associates in a crime. "Isaacs says," he announced in an arrogant, almost insulting tone, though below the surface he was an entirely genial person, "that the new vein in the Amphalula runs into the west drift of Horse's Neck almost to where we quit work in Number Nine five years ago." "If it does it will make it a bonanza property," emphatically declared his partner, Mr. Scherer, a dolichocephalous person with very black hair and thin bluish cheeks. "It's a pity we didn't buy it all in at ten cents a share." "We did!" retorted Greenbaum. "All that could be shaken out. We've got all the stock that hasn't gravitated to the cemeteries." "Even if the Amphalula vein doesn't run into it it will come near enough to make Horse's Neck worth dollars per share. It's a heads-I-win-tails-you-lose proposition," commented Mr. Hunn dryly. "Who controls Amphalula?" "We do," snapped Greenbaum. "Then it's a cinch," returned Hunn mildly. "Shake out the sleepers, reorganize, and sell or hold as seems most advisable later on." Mr. Elderberry cleared his throat tentatively. "If you gentlemen will pardon me--I have been considering this matter for some little time," he hazarded. Mr. Elderberry was not only the professional salaried secretary of Horse's Neck but was also treasurer of the Amphalula, and general factotum, representative and interlocking director for Scherer, Hunn, Greenbaum & Beck in their various mining enterprises, combining in his person almost as many offices as, Pooh-Bah in "The Mikado." Though he could not have claimed to serve as "First Lord of the Treasury, Lord Chief Justice, Commander-in-Chief, Lord High Admiral, Master of the Buck Hounds, Groom of the Back Stairs, Archbishop of Titipu and Lord Mayor, both acting and elect, all rolled into one," he could with entire modesty have admitted the soft impeachment of being simultaneously treasurer of Amphalula, vice-president of Hooligan Gulch and Red Water, secretary of Horse's Neck, Holy Jo, Gargoyle Extension, Cowhide Number Five, Consolidated Bimetallic, Nevada Mastodon, Leaping Frog, Orelady Mine, Why Marry and Sol's Cliff Buttress, and president of Blimp Consolidated.