Page:Frank Owen - The Actress.djvu/105

Rh born to be a doormat and have remained one simply to follow out the natural idea of things. I ought to have 'Welcome' tattooed on my back so that my friends would feel more at home when they walked over me."

As he spoke, he commenced walking up and down the room as though he were almost bursting with suppressed energy.

"But now I'm through with it all!" he cried. "Nobody'll ever use my spine for a ladder again. And as for Roger Patterson, I'll crush him against the wall until the streak of yellow in his nature rubs off on the bricks. You spoke just now of his deal in Bleecker's Infused Steel. The poor fool thinks he has a snowball in his hand when in reality he has a live-hot coal which he will eventually find he cannot handle. Bleecker's cash capital is practically wiped out because they are investing it all in buildings. I'm giving you strictly confidential, inside 'dope,' The board of managers in the past was a trifle slack, but the entire firm is being reorganized. It has contracts pending with a dozen of the biggest railroads in the country to supply all the infused steel used. It realizes that there is a big boom just ahead. As for the reason it falls down on s, that is simple enough. There is no competent foreman or metallurgist in charge of the furnace room, nobody to see that metals are subjected to the exact degree of heat necessary, nor that the steel is infused to the proper depth. Consequently, the milling-cutters fall down under test. It is not the process that's at fault, but the manner in which it is carried out. Under the new management,