"
Morrison laughed as he read it aloud.
"It ought to get the colonel," he said, "but the newspaper man who prints
it should be hung."
"They will print it all right," said Jack Prince.
And they did print it; going from newspaper office to newspaper office
Prince and Morrison saw to that, using their influence as big buyers of
advertising space and even insisting upon reading proof on their own
masterpiece.
But it did not work. Early the next morning Colonel Tom appeared at the
offices of the arms company with blood in his eye, and swore that the
consolidation should not be put through. For an hour he stormed up and
down in Sam's office, his outbursts of wrath varied by periods of
childlike pleading for the retention of the name and glory of the Raineys.
When Sam shook his head and went with the old man to the meeting that was
to pass upon his action and sell the Rainey Company, he knew that he had a
fight on his hands.
The meeting was a stormy one. Sam made a talk telling what had been done
and Webster, voting some of Sam's proxies, made a motion that Sam's offer
for the old company be accepted.
And then Colonel Tom fired his guns. Walking up and down in the room
before the men, sitting at a long table or in chairs tilted against the
walls, he began talking with all of his old flamboyant pomposity of the
past glories of the Rainey Company.
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