come to us."

I carried my heart-tearing perplexities to dinner, cogitated over the
arguments pro and con, and finally made up my mind that the percentage
of wisdom was in favor of sticking by the ship. On board I was in better
shape to protect my friends and followers than if I jumped into the
ocean. Time has shown since that it would have been far better for all
concerned for me to have touched off the powder magazine that night, had
one grand and glorious explosion, and gone down with the wreckage, than
to have sailed through the hell of after years. I am not the first man
who has balked at amputation and got blood-poisoning.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE BOGUS SUBSCRIPTION

Later, on his way downtown, Mr. Rogers came to my rooms.

"Are you ready for the finals, Lawson?" he said cordially. He, too, had
dined, and doubtless philosophized; his whole air showed me he had
satisfied himself that I would submit to the logic of conditions. No man
knows the human animal from his heart's seed to its bloom better than
Henry H. Rogers--and I was human.

I told him I would hold the reporters until I got the word from him, and
that it must not be later than midnight. No questions were asked nor
assurances given. He left in a moment for the National City Bank, and
there in its solemn chambers he and James Stillman perpetrated the act
which is the crime of Amalgamated, in itself a stark and palpable fraud,
but aggravated by the standing of the men concerned in it, and the
pledges that were slaughtered, into as arrant and damnable piece of
financial villany as was ever committed.

About eleven o'clock my telephone rang. I heard Mr. Rogers' voice.

"Lawson, Stillman's tally is so far completed that we know about where
we are. Give out to the press that the subscription runs between four
hundred and four hundred and twenty-five millions, call it four hundred
and twelve millions, after throwing out one hundred and seventy millions
from speculators, and sixty-two millions as defective, and after
shutting out fifty millions more which were received too late. Each
subscriber will be allotted fifteen to twenty per cent. of his
subscription--call it eighteen per cent."

The figures were paralyzing. I made no attempt to analyze them. They
came so late that as soon as the newspaper-men with me got them they
flew to their offices and thus I escaped a strenuous ordeal of
interviewing. Our arrangements for distributing the facts through