CHAPTER VII

THE OWNER


Some degree of triumph would perhaps have been excusable in the new
owner. Most signally had he turned the tables on his enemies. Yet it was
with no undue swagger that he seated himself upon a chair of
problematical stability, and began to study the pages of the morning's
issue. Sterne regarded him dubiously.

"This isn't a bluff, I suppose?" he asked.

"Ask your lawyers."

"Mac, get Rockwell's house on the 'phone, will you, and find out if
we've been sold."

Presently the drawl of Mr. Ellis was heard, pleading with a fair and
anonymous Central, whom he addressed with that charming impersonality
employed toward babies, pet dogs, and telephone girls, as "Tootsie," to
abjure juvenility, and give him 322 Vincent, in a hurry.

"You'll excuse me, Mr. Surtaine," said Sterne, in a new and ingratiating
tone, for which Hal liked him none the better, "but verifying news has
come to be an instinct with me."

"It's straight," said Ellis, turning his heavy face to his principal,
after a moment's talk over the wire. "Bought _and_ sold, lock, stock,
and barrel."