Our Wetmore group, with “investors” at Goff and Bancroft, contributed a sum said to be $14,350 toward the completion of a well in a producing field east of Enid, Oklahoma, on land owned by a Bancroft man. The headquarters of the Company was in a fair sized city in southern Kansas, with a department store owner as president, a physician and surgeon as secretary—and a banker deeply interested in a covered-up sort of way. The president and the land owner had departed with our money, supposedly to complete the well—and then we would all most likely be “sitting pretty.” But in about a week we got notice of a called meeting to vote $30,000 increase in capital stock. Also, we were advised of the bringing in of a gas well of ten million feet potential on the lease adjoining the company ground on the south, still farther away from the known production area on the north, proving that we were still “sitting pretty.” Had this been reported before we joined-up with our Southern Kansas financiers, I, for one, would have kept my money. Sane people do not let the public in on a speculative enterprise after its success is practically assured. Our Wetmore “investors”, gave me proxies, and sent me down to investigate. I first went with the land-owner to the Oklahoma field. We found no activity at the well on his land, but the rig was still up. And the drillers were working on the reported gas strike just across the road. They told me that they had struck a small flow of gas—that it was not strong enough to blow your hat off the casing. I got back to the Kansas headquarters on Saturday about noon, and went at once to the department store owned by the president. He introduced his wife, who worked in the store, and his father-in-law, whom I shall call Mr. Shapp—though this is not his real name. The president insisted that I take dinner with him at his home. I sensed something was wrong—but I couldn’t place it just yet. I learned later that Dr. Lapham had got wise to something pertaining to the call for an increase of capital stock, and had written him a critical letter. Dr. Lapham told me later that it was a “scorcher”—and I can well believe it was. They were all rather upset. Of course the president, and the secretary, and the banker, knew some things which I didn’t know—yet. My dinner host was a bit “jumpy” because of that “scorcher” letter of Dr. Lap-ham’s, and my appearance two days in advance of the called meeting. But had he known what I had just learned at the dinner table, he could have trusted me implicitly. Some years prior to this I had sold, through advertisement in the Topeka Capital, 500 shares of our mining stock to the fictitious Monroe P. Shapp, of that address, and through him 200 shares in the name of his daughter, Ella J. Shapp. Now, when the merchant called his wife “Ella” I put two and two together—then I knew that I was among old friends. And I couldn’t find it in my heart to get rough with them.