part of the Cape that Raish
doesn't get wind of, particularly if it's somebody else's secret. He's
got a reg'lar pig's nose for rootin' up other people's private concerns.
Well, Raish found out what the Eagle Company was up to and he started
bein' up to somethin' himself."

Mr. Pulcifer, so Miss Phipps went on to say, conceived the idea of
buying the Skoonic Creek property before the Eagle Company could do so.
The principal difficulty was that just then his own limited capital was
tied up in various ways and he lacked ready money. So, being obliged to
borrow, he sought out Captain Hallett, got the shrewd old light keeper's
cupidity aroused--not a very difficult task at any time--and Captain
Jethro agreed to help finance the deal.

"It didn't need a whole lot of real money," explained Martha. "Most
folks that owned that land had owned it for mercy knows how long and had
done nothin' but pay taxes on it, so they were glad enough to sell for
somethin' down to bind what Raish and Jethro called 'options.' Anyhow,
when the Eagle people finally started in to put their grand plan into
workin', they bumped bows on into a shoal, at least that's the way
father used to tell about it. They found that all that Skoonic Creek
land was in the hands of Raish Pulcifer and Cap'n Jeth Hallett; those
two either owned it outright or had options where they didn't own."

At first the Eagle Company declined to have anything to do with the new
owners. They declared the whole affair off, so far as the Skoonic
Creek location was concerned, and announced their intention of going
elsewhere. But there was no sufficiently attractive "elsewhere" to go.
There followed much proposing and counter-proposing and, at last, an
entirely new deal. A new corporation was formed, its name The Wellmouth
Development Company.

"I don't know a great deal about it," confessed Martha, "that is, not
about the reasons for it and all, but, as near as I can make out, Raish
and Jethro wouldn't sell outright to the Eagle Company, but wanted to
come in on the profits from the cold storage business, which were
pretty big sometimes. And they couldn't get into the reg'lar Eagle Fish
Freezing Company, the old one. So they and the Eagle folks together
undertook to form this new thing, the Development Company, the name
meanin' nothin' or a whole lot, 'cordin' to how the development
developed, I presume likely. The capital stock--I know all this because
Cap'n Jethro and father us