Page:Edgar Jepson--the four philanthropists.djvu/315

Rh days. There were conferences with Morton and Pleever; there was the careful mastering of the details of Pudleigh's deliberate mismanagement of the company, in case I should be called upon to arrange the present Board of Directors; and there was the arranging of our measures to secure the control. In this Pleever was one of the greatest helps to us. With a serene but senseless confidence in the underpaid, Pudleigh left all the matters connected with the Granite Company in his hands. He never interfered in the matter save to find fault with Pleever's work; and Pleever entered into our plans without a scruple. So it came about that Pudleigh never saw our special resolution to dismiss the directors and appoint new ones, and Pudleigh's nominees on the board, Pratt and Wiggins, were kept in an equal ignorance. I warned Honest John Driver by letter, and Gutermann by word of mouth, not to tell Pudleigh of it, though there was little chance of either of them meeting him; and it seemed likely that he would know nothing about it till he came to the meeting. We did not want him to try to allot the rest of the shares of the company to his clerks, or play any like financial trick upon us by way of giving needless trouble.

Two days before the meeting Pudleigh did give a little thought to the matter. He gave Pleever instructions to arrange that the two directors who