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Rh Pleever shrugged his shoulders.

"Are the proxies all right?" said Pudleigh.

"They're quite regular," said Pleever.

Pudleigh sat back with an easy air, but he kept looking at Driver and Gutermann with no little suspicion. Then I rose and seconded Chelubai's resolution, and supported it in a short speech, in which I dealt with the maladministration of the company's affairs, and accused the directors of letting its business dwindle and dwindle with a view to getting the property into their own hands for a fiftieth part of its value.

We soon proposed and seconded our men, and after a dispute as to whether they were or were not elected by show of hands, got to voting. Pudleigh sat back with folded arms, plainly in the part of a copper-colored Napoleon of Finance.

But when Pleever read out the result—the election of Chelubai, Bottiger, Morton and myself by between fifty and sixty thousand votes—the little band from the north voted for us to a man—Pudleigh was indeed startled out of his conqueror's attitude.

"You dolt!" he muttered to Pleever. "Didn't I tell you to transfer the vendor's 40,000 shares to me?"

"I couldn't," said Pleever sulkily. "You never gave me the transfer."

Pudleigh sprang up and danced about like a