knives, and standing against a background of mustangs, monte-banks, and lynch-law.
“We must get Wade,” Churm says, with authority. “He knows Iron by heart. He can handle Men. I will back him with my blank check, to any amount, to his order.”
Here a murmur of applause, swelling to a cheer, burst from the Directors.
Everybody knew that the Geological Bank deemed Churm’s deposits the fundamental stratum of its wealth. They lay there in the vaults, like underlying granite. When hot times came, they boiled up in a mountain to buttress the world.
Churm’s blank check seemed to wave in the air like an oriflamme of victory. Its payee might come from Botany Bay; he might wear his beard to his knees, and his belt stuck fall of howitzers and boomerangs; he might have been repeatedly hung by Vigilance Committees, and as often cut down and revived by galvanism; but brandishing that check, good for anything less than a million, every Director in Wall Street was his slave, his friend, and his brother.
“Let us vote Mr. Wade in by acclamation,” cried the Directors.
“But, gentlemen,” Churm interposed, “if I give him my blank check, he must have carte blanche, and no one to interfere in his management.”
Every Director, from President Brummage down, drew a long face at this condition.
It was one of their great privileges to potter in
