Page:Train - Tutt and Mr Tutt (Scribner, 1922).djvu/304

 Miss Wiggin looked first puzzled and then pained.

"I don't understand," she said rather stiffly. "Do you mean that the firm of Tutt & Tutt is going to engage in the enterprise of trying to break up a plan of reorganization without knowing what it is? Won't you lay us all open to the accusation of being strikers?"

Mr. Tutt's ordinarily brown complexion became slightly tinged with purple.

"Let the court decide!" he cried hotly. "You say Scherer, Hunn, Greenbaum & Beck are proposing to reorganize a mining company? You admit we hold some of the stock? Well—as the natural-born and perennial champion of the outraged minority—I'm going to attack it, and bust it, and raise heck with it—on general principles. I'm going to throw that damned old hat of mine into the ring, my child, and play hell with everything."

And with a cluck Mr. Tutt leaned over, produced a dingy bottle wrapped in a coat of many colors and poured himself out a glass of malt extract.

When Mr. Greenbaum was summoned to the telephone and informed by Mr. Elderberry in disgruntled tones that somebody had just served upon him an order to show cause why the proposed