The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Wreckers, by Francis Lynde
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Title: The Wreckers
Author: Francis Lynde
Illustrator: Arthur E. Becher
Release Date: February 12, 2012 [EBook #38846]
Last updated: April 22, 2012
Language: English
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THE WRECKERS
BY FRANCIS LYNDE
WITH FRONTISPIECE BY
ARTHUR E. BECHER
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
NEW YORK 1920
COPYRIGHT, 1920, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Published March, 1920
To a certain grave and reverend official of the Union Pacific System
who, in his younger days, might well have played the part of _Jimmie
Dodds_, this book is affectionately inscribed by
THE AUTHOR.
[Illustration: "You have spoken only of the difficulties and
responsibilities, Graham, but there is another side to it."]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. AT SAND CREEK SIDING 1
II. A TANK PARTY 11
III. MR. CHADWICK'S SPECIAL 23
IV. THE TIPPING OF THE SCALE 36
V. THE DIRECTORS' MEETING 51
VI. THE ALEXA GOES EAST 60
VII. "HEADS OFF, GENTLEMEN!" 65
VIII. WITH THE STRINGS OFF 75
IX. AND SATAN CAME ALSO 90
X. THE BIG SMASH 96
XI. WHAT EVERY MAN KNOWS 102
XII. WITH THE WHEELS TRIGGED 112
XIII. THE LOST 1016 123
XIV. A CLOSE CALL 140
XV. THE MACHINE 155
XVI. IN THE COAL YARD 169
XVII. THE MAN AT THE WINDOW 185
XVIII. THE NAME ON THE REGISTER 200
XIX. THE HOODOO 206
XX. THE HELPLESS WIRES 216
XXI. BILLY MORRIS EXPLAINS 225
XXII. WHAT THE PILOT ENGINE FOUND 232
XXIII. THE MAJOR'S PREMONITION 247
XXIV. THE DEAD-LINE 262
XXV. FLAGGED DOWN 274
XXVI. THE DIPSOMANIAC 292
XXVII. THE DESERTER 312
XXVIII. THE BEGINNING OF THE END 319
XXIX. THE MURDER MADMAN 334
XXX. "UNDER THE WIDE AND STARRY SKY" 349
XXXI. P. S. L. COMES HOME 365
THE WRECKERS
I
At Sand Creek Siding
As a general proposition, I don't believe much in the things called
"hunches." They are bad for the digestion, and as often as not are like
those patent barometers that are always pointing to "Set Fair" when it
is raining like Noah's flood. But there are exceptions to all rules, and
we certainly uncovered the biggest one of the lot--the boss and I--the
night we left Portland and the good old Pacific Coast.
It was this way. We had finished the construction work on the Oregon
Midland; had quit, cleaned up the offices, drawn our last pay-checks,
told everybody good-by, and were on our way to the train, when I had one
of those queer little premonitory chills you hear so much about and knew
just as well as could be that we were never going to pull through to
Chicago without getting a jolt of some sort. The reason--if you'll call
it a reason--was that, just before we came to the railroad station, the
boss walked calmly under a ladder standing in front of a new building;
and besides that, it was the thirteenth day of the month, a Friday, and
raining like the very mischief.
Just to sort of toll us along, maybe, the fates didn't begin on us that
night. They waited until the next day, and then proceeded to shove us in
behind a freight-train wreck at Widner, Idaho, where we lost twelve
hours. It looked as if that didn't amount to much, because we weren't
due anywhere at any particular time. The boss was on his way home for a
little visit with his folks in Illinois, and beyond that he was going to
meet a bunch of Englishmen in Montreal, and maybe let them make him
General Manager of one of the Canadian railroads.
So Mr. Norcross was in no special hurry, and neither was I. I wasn't
under pay, but I expected to be when we reached Canada. I had been
confidential clerk and shorthand man for the boss on the Midland
construction, and he was taking me along partly because he knows a
cracking good stenographer when he sees one, but mostly because I was
dead anxious to go anywhere he was going.
But to come back to the Widner delay: if it hadn't been for that
twelve-hour lay-out we would have caught the Saturday night train on the
Pioneer Short Line, instead of the day train Sunday morning, and there
would have been no meeting with Mrs. Sheila and Maisie Ann; no telegram
from Mr. Chadwick, because it wouldn't have found us; no hold-up at Sand
Creek Siding; in short, nothing would have happened that did happen. But
I mustn't get ahead of my story.
It was on Sunday that the jolt began to get ready to land on us. Mr.
Norcross had been a railroad man for so long that he had forgotten how
to knock off on Sundays, and right soon after breakfast, with the help
of a little Pullman berth table and me and my typewriter, he turned our
section into a business office, saying that now we had a good quiet day,
we'd clean up the million or so odds and ends of correspondence he'd
been letting go while we were tussling for the Midland right-of-way
through the Oregon mountains.
By this time, you will understand, we were rocketing along over the
Pioneer Short Line, and were supposed to be due at Portal City at
half-past seven that evening. From where he sat dictating to me the boss
was facing forward and now and then an absent sort of look came into his
eyes while he was talking off his letters, and it puzzled me because it
wasn't like him. I may as well say here as anywhere that one of his
strong points is to be always "at himself" under all sorts of
conditions.
So, as I say, I was sort of puzzled; and one of the times after he had
given me a full grist of letters and had gone off to smoke while I
typed a few thousand lines from my notes to catch up, I made a
discovery. There were two people in Section Five just ahead of us, a
young woman and a girl of maybe fifteen or so, and the Pullman was the
old-fashioned kind, with low seat-backs. I put it up that in those
absent-eyed intervals Mr. Norcross had been studying the back of the
young woman's neck. I was measurably sure it wasn't the little girl's.
Along in the forenoon I made an excuse to go and get a drink of water
out of the forward cooler, and on the way back I took a good square look
at our neighbors in Number Five. At that I didn't wonder at the boss's
temporary lapses any more whatever. The young woman was pretty enough to
start a stopped clock--only "pretty" isn't just the word, either; there
wasn't any word, when you come right down to it. And the little girl was
simply a peach--a nice, downy, rosy peach; chunky, round-faced,
sunny-haired, jolly; with a neat little turned-up nose and big sort of
boyish laughing eyes that fairly dared the world.
I made a good half-dozen mistakes when I got in behind the old writing
machine again and went on with the letters; but never mind about that.
As I began to say, things rocked along until we had about worn the day
out, and at the second call to dinner Mr. Norcross told me to strap up
the machine and put the files away in the grips and we'd go eat. Though
I was only his stenographer, and a kid at that, he was big enough and
Western enough not to let the buck-private-to-officer gap make any
difference, and always when we were knocking about together he made me
sit at his table.
Sometimes, when it happened that way, he'd ditch the rank-and-file
dignities and talk to me as if the thousand miles or so between his job
and mine were wiped out. But this Sunday evening he was pretty quiet,
breaking out once in the meat course to tell me that he'd just had a
forwarded telegram from an old friend of his that would stop us off for
a day or two in Portal City, the headquarters of the Pioneer Short Line.
Farther along, pretty well into the ice-cream and black coffee, he came
to life again to ask me if I had noticed the young lady and the girl in
the Pullman section next to ours.
I told him I had, and then, because I had never known him to bother his
head for two minutes in succession about any woman, he gave me a shock;
said they were ticketed to Portal City--and to find that out he must
have asked the train conductor--adding that when we reached Portal it
would be the neighborly thing for me to do to help them off with their
hand-bags and see that they got a cab if they wanted one.
"Sure I will," says I. "That is, if the lady's husband isn't there to
meet them."
"What?" he snaps out. "You know her? She is married?"
"No, I don't exactly _know_ her," I shuffled. "But she is married, all
right."
"How can you tell if you don't know her?" he barked; just like that.
I had to make good, right quick, as everybody does who goes up against
Mr. Graham Norcross. But it so happened that I was able to.
"Her suit case is standing in the aisle, and I saw the tag. It has her
name, 'Mrs. Sheila Macrae,' on it."
The boss has a way of making two up-and-down wrinkles and a little
curved horse-shoe line come between his eyes when he is going to reach
for you.
"There are times, Jimmie, when you see altogether too much," he said,
sort of gruff; and he ate straight through to the far side of his
ice-cream pyramid before he began again.
"'Macrae,' you say: that is Scotch. And so is 'Sheila.' Most likely the
names, both of them, are only hand-downs. She looks straight American to
me."
"She is pretty enough to look anything," I threw in, just to see how he
would take it.
"Right you are, Jimmie," he agreed. "I've been looking at the back of
her neck all day. I don't know whether you've ever noticed it--you are
only a boy and probably you haven't--but there are so many women who
don't measure up to the promises they make when you see 'em from behind.
You catch a glimpse of a pretty neck, and when you get around to the
face you find out that the neck was only a bit of bluff."
If I had been eating anything in the world but ice-cream I believe it
would have choked me. What he said led up to the admission that he had
been making these face-and-neck comparisons for goodness knows how long,
and I couldn't surround that, all at once. You see, he was such a
picture of a man's man in every sense of the word; a fighter and a
hard-hitter, right from the jump. And for a man of that sort women are
usually no more than fluffy little side-issues, as Eve said when they
told her she was made out of Adam's rib.
That ended the dining-car part of it. The sure-enough, knock-out round
was fought at the rear end of our Pullman, which happened to be the last
car in the train. As we walked back after dinner Mr. Norcross gave me a
cigar and said we'd go out to the observation platform to smoke, because
the smoking-room was full up with apple-raisers, and sheep-feeders and
cattlemen, all talking at once.
As we went down the aisle I noticed that Section Five was empty, and
when we reached the door we found the young lady and the girl standing
at the rear railing to watch the track unroll itself under the trucks
and go sliding backwards into the starlight; or at least that was what
they seemed to be doing. The young lady was wearing a coat with a storm
collar, but the girl had a fur thing around her neck, and her stocky,
chunky little arms were elbow deep in a big pillow muff to match, though
the April night wasn't even half-way chilly.
The boss growled out something about waiting until the ladies should go
in; and then, for pure safety's sake, he stepped out on the platform to
close the side trap door which, with the railing gate on that side, had
been left open by a careless rear flagman. Just then the big "Pacific
type" that was pulling us let out a whistle screech that would have
waked the dead, and the air-brakes went on with a jerk that showed how
beautifully reckless the railroading was on the Pioneer Short Line.
Mr. Norcross was reaching for the catch on the floor trap and the jerk
didn't throw him. But it snapped the young woman and the girl away from
the railing so suddenly that the little one had to grab for hand-holds;
and when she did that, of course the big muff went overboard.
At this, a bunch of things happened, all in an eye-wink. The train
ground and jiggled to a stop; the girl squealed, "Oh, my muff!" and
skipped down the steps to disappear in the general direction of the
Pacific Coast; the young woman shrieked after her, "Maisie _Ann_!--come
back here--you'll be _left_!" and then took her turn at disappearing by
the same route; and, on top of it all, the boss jumped off and sprinted
after both of them, leaving a string of large, man-sized comments on the
foolishness of women as a sex trailing along behind him as he flew.
Right then it was my golden moment to play safe and sane. With three of
them off and lost in the gathering night, somebody with at least a grain
of sense ought to have stood by to pull the emergency cord if the train
should start. But of course I had to take a chance and spill the gravy
all over the tablecloth. The stop was at a blind siding in the edge of a
mountain desert, and when I squinted up ahead and saw that the engine
was taking water, it looked as if there were going to be plenty of time
for a bit of a promenade under the stars. So I swung off and went to
join the muff hunt.
Amongst them, they had found the pillow thing before I had a chance to
horn in. They were coming up the track, and the boss had each of the two
by an arm and was telling them that they'd be left to a dead moral
certainty if they didn't run. They couldn't run because their skirts
were too fashionably narrow, and there were still three or four
car-lengths to go when the tank spout went up with a clang and a
clatter of chains and the old "Pacific type" gave a couple of hisses and
a snort.
"They're going!" gritted the boss, sort of between his teeth, and
without another word he grabbed those two hobbled women folks up under
his arms, just as if they'd been a couple of sacks of meal, and broke
into a run.
It wasn't a morsel of use, you know. Mr. Norcross stands six feet two in
his socks, and I've heard that he was the best all-around athlete in his
college bunch. But old Hercules himself couldn't have run very far or
very fast with the handicap the boss had taken on, and in less than half
a minute the "Pacific type" had caught her stride and the red tail
lights of the train were vanishing to pin points in the night. We were
like the little tad that went out to the garden to eat worms. Nobody
loved us, and we were beautifully and artistically left.
II
A Tank Party
When he saw that it was no manner of use, the boss quit on the handicap
race and put his two armfuls down while he still had breath enough left
to talk with.
"Well," he said, in his best rusty-hinge rasp, "you've done it! Why, in
the name of common sense, couldn't you have let me go back after that
muff thing?"
The young woman was panting as if she had been doing the running, and
the girl was choking and making a noise that made me think that she was
crying. If I had been as well acquainted with her as I got to be a
little later on, I would have known that she was only trying to bottle
up a laugh that was too beautifully big to be wasted upon just three
people and a treeless desert.
It was the young woman who answered the boss.
"I--I didn't stop to think!" she fluttered, taking the blame as if she
had been the one to head the procession. "Isn't there _any_ way we can
stop that train?"
The boss said there wasn't, and I know the only reason why he didn't say
a lot of other things was because he was too much of a gentleman to say
them in the presence of a couple of women.
"But what shall we do?" the young woman went on, gasping a little.
"Isn't there any telegraph station, or--or anything?"
There wasn't. So far as we could see, the surroundings consisted of a
short side-track, a spur running off into the hills, and the water tank.
The siding switches had no lights, which argued that there wasn't even a
pump-man at the tank--as there was not, the tank being filled
automatically by a gravity pipe line running back to a natural reservoir
in the mountains.
Before the boss had a chance to answer her question about the telegraph
office he got his eye on me, and then I knew that he hadn't noticed me
before.
"You here, too?" he ripped out, and I know it did him a lot of good to
be able to unload on somebody in trousers. "Why in blue blazes didn't
you stay on that train and keep it from running away from us?"
That's it: why didn't I? What made the dog stop before he caught the
rabbit? I was trying to frame up some sort of an excuse that would sound
just a few degrees less than plumb foolish, when the young woman took up
for me. She'd had the clatter of my typewriter dinned into her pretty
ears all day, and she knew who I was, even if it was dark.
"Don't take it out on the poor boy!" she said, kind of crisp, and yet
sort of motherly. "If you feel obliged to bully some one, I'm the one
who is to blame."
"Indeed, you're not!" chipped in the stocky little girl. "_I_ was the
one who jumped off first. And I don't care: I wasn't going to lose my
perfectly good muff."
By this time the boss was beginning to get a little better grip on
himself and he laughed.
"We've all earned the leather medal, I guess," he chuckled. "It's done
now, and it can't be helped. We're stuck until another train comes
along, and perhaps we ought to be thankful that we've got Jimmie Dodds
along to chaperon us."
"But isn't there anything else we can do?" said the young woman. "Can't
we walk somewhere to where there is a station or a town with people in
it?"
I saw Mr. Norcross look down at her skirts and then at the girl's.
"You two couldn't walk very far or very fast in those things you are
wearing," he grunted. "Besides, we are in one of the desert strips, and
it is probably miles to a night wire station in either direction."
"And how long shall we have to wait for another train?" This time it was
the little girl who wanted to know.
"I wish I could tell you, but I can't," said the boss. "I'm not familiar
with the Short Line schedules." Then to the young woman: "Shall we go
and sit under the water tank? That seems to be about the nearest
approach to a waiting-room that the place affords."
We trailed off together up the track, two and two, the boss walking with
the young woman. After we'd counted a few of the cross-ties, the girl
said: "Is your name Jimmie Dodds?" And when I admitted it: "Mine is
Maisie Ann. I'm Sheila's cousin on her mother's side. I think this is a
great lark; don't you?"
"I can tell better after it's over," I said. "Maybe we'll have to stay
here all night."
"I shouldn't mind," she came back airily. "I haven't been up all night
since I was a little kiddie and our house burned down. You're just a
boy, aren't you? You must excuse me; it's so dark that I can't see you
very well."
I told her I had been shaving for three years and more, and she let out
a little gurgling laugh, as though I had said something funny. By that
time we had reached the big water tank, and the boss picked out one of
the square footing timbers for a seat. It seemed as if he were finding
it a good bit harder to get acquainted with his half of the combination
than I was with mine, but after a little the young women thawed out a
bit and made him talk--to help pass away the time, I took it--and the
little girl and I sat and listened. When the young woman finally got him
started, the boss told her all about himself, how he'd been railroading
ever since he left college, and a lot of things that I'd never even
dreamed of. It's curious how a pretty woman can make a man turn himself
inside out that way, just for her amusement.
Maisie Ann and I sat on the end of the timber; not too near to be
butt-ins, nor so far away that we couldn't hear all that was said. I
still had the cigar the boss had given me, and I sure wanted to smoke
mighty bad, only I thought it wouldn't look just right--me being the
chaperon. Along in the middle of things, Mr. Norcross broke off short
and begged the young woman's pardon for boring her with so much shop
talk.
"Oh, you're not boring me at all; I like to hear it," she protested. And
then: "You have been telling me the story of a man who has done things,
Mr. Norcross. It has been my misfortune to have to associate chiefly
with men who only play at doing things."
He switched off at that and asked her if she were warm enough, saying
that if she were not, he and I would scrap up some sage-brush or
something and make a fire. She replied that she didn't care for a fire,
that the night wasn't at all cold--which it wasn't. Then she showed that
she was human, clear down to the tips of her pretty fingers.
"You may smoke if you want to," she told the boss. "I sha'n't mind it in
the least."
At that, my little girl turned on me and said, in exactly the same tone:
"You may smoke if you want to, Mr. Dodds. I sha'n't mind it in the
least." I heard a sort of smothered chuckle from the other end of the
timber seat, and the boss lighted his cigar. Then there was more talk,
in which it turned out that the young woman and her cousin were to have
been met at Portal City by somebody she called "Cousin Basil," but there
wouldn't be any scare, because she had written ahead to say that
possibly they might stop over with some friends in one of the apple
towns.
Then Mr. Norcross said _he_ wouldn't miss anything by the drop-out but
an appointment he had with an old friend, and he guessed that could
wait. I listened, thinking maybe he would mention the name of the
friend, and after a while he did. The forwarded Portal City telegram the
boss had gotten just before we went to dinner in the dining-car was from
"Uncle John" Chadwick, the Chicago wheat king, and that left me
wondering what the mischief Mr. Chadwick was doing away out in the wild
and woolly western country where they raise more apples than they do
wheat, and more mining stock schemes than they do either.
There was another thing that I listened for, too, but it didn't come.
That was some little side mention of the young woman's husband. So far
as that under-the-tank talk went, there needn't have been any "Mr.
Macrae" at all, and I was puzzled. If she'd been wearing mourning--but
she wasn't, so I told myself that she simply couldn't be a widow.
Anyway, she was a lot too light-hearted for that.
We had been marooned for nearly an hour when I struck a match and looked
at my watch. Mr. Norcross was still doing his best to kill time for the
young woman, and he was just in the exciting part of another railroad
story, telling about a right-of-way fight on the Midland, where we had
to smuggle in a few cases of Winchesters and arm the track-layers to
keep from being shut out of the only canyon there was by the P. & S. F.,
when the little girl grabbed my arm and said: "Listen!"
I did, and broke in promptly. "Excuse me," I called to the other two,
"but I think there's a train coming."
The boss cut his story short and we all listened. It seemed that I was
wrong. The noise we heard was more like an auto running with the
cut-out open than a train rumbling.
"What do you make it, Jimmie?" came from the boss's end of the timber.
"Motor car. It's out that way," I said, pointing in the darkness toward
the east.
My guess was right. In less than a minute we saw the lights of the car,
which was turning in a wide circle to come up beside the main line track
so it would head back to the east. It stopped a little way below the
water tank and about a hundred yards north of the track, or maybe less;
anyway, we could see it quite well even when the lamps were switched off
and four men came tumbling out of it. If I had been alone on the job I
should probably have called to the men as they came tramping over to the
side-track. But Mr. Norcross had a different think coming.
"Out of sight--quick, Jimmie!" he whispered, and in another second he
had whipped the young woman over the big footing timber to a standing
place under the tank among the braces, and I had done the same for the
girl.
What followed was as mysterious as a chapter out of an Anna Katherine
Green detective story. After doing something to the switch of the unused
spur track, the four men separated. One of them went back to the auto,
and the other three walked down the main track to the lower switch of
the short siding which was on the same side of the main line as the
spur. Here the fourth man rejoined them, and the girl at my elbow told
us what he had gone back to the car for.
"He has lighted a red lantern," she whispered. "I saw it when he took it
out of the auto."
I guess it was pretty plain to all of us by this time that there was
something decidedly crooked on the cards, but if we had known what it
was, we couldn't very well have done anything to prevent it. There were
only two of us men to their four; and, besides, there wasn't any time.
The lantern-carrying man had barely reached the lower switch when we
heard the whistle of a locomotive. There was a train coming from the
west, and a few seconds later an electric headlight showed up on the
long tangent beyond the siding.
It was a bandit hold-up, all right. We saw the four men at the switch
stop the train, which seemed to be a special, since it had only the
engine and one passenger car. One of the men stood on the track waving
the red lantern; we could see him plainly in the glare of the headlight.
There wasn't much of a scrap. There were two or three pistol shots, and
then, as near as we could make out, the hold-up men, or some of them,
climbed into the engine.
What they did next was as blind as a Chinese puzzle. Before you could
count ten they had made a flying switch with the single car, kicking it
in on the siding. Before the car had come fully to a stop, the engine
was switched in behind it, coupled on, and the reversed train, with the
engine pushing the car, rattled away on the old spur that led off into
the hills; clattered away and was lost to sight and hearing in less than
a minute.
It was not until after the train was switched and gone that we
discovered that two of the bandits had been left behind. These two reset
the switches for the main track, leaving everything as they had found
it, and then crossed over to the auto. Pretty soon we saw match flares,
and two little red dots that appeared told us that they were smoking.
"What are they doing, Jimmie?" asked the boss, under his breath.
"They are waiting for the other two to come back," I ventured, taking a
chance shot at it. Then I asked him if he knew where the old spur track
led to. He said he didn't; that there used to be some bauxite mines back
in the hills, somewhere in this vicinity, but he understood they had
been worked out and abandoned.
I was just thinking that all this mystery and kidnapping and gun play
must be sort of hard on the young woman and the girl, but though my half
of the allotment was shivering a little and snuggling up just a grain
closer to me, she proved that she hadn't lost her nerve.
"Did you see the name on that car when the engine went past to get in
behind it?" she asked, turning the whispered question loose for anybody
to answer.
"No," said the boss; and I hadn't, either.
"I did," she asserted, showing that her eyes, or her wits, were quicker
than ours. "I had just one little glimpse of it. The name is
'A-l-e-x-a,'" spelling it out.
Mr. Norcross started as if he had been shot.
"The _Alexa_? That is Mr. Chadwick's private car--they've kidnapped
him!" Then he whirled short on me. "Jimmie, are you man enough to go
with me and try a tackle on those fellows over there in that auto?"
I said I was; but I didn't add what I thought--that it would probably be
a case of double suicide for us two to go up against a pair of armed
thugs with our bare hands. The boss would have done it in the hollow
half of a minute; he's built just that way. But now the young woman put
in her word.
"You mustn't think of doing such a thing!" she protested; and she was
still telling him all the different reasons why he mustn't, when we
heard the creak and grind of the stolen engine coming back down the old
spur.
After that there was nothing to do but to wait and see what was going to
happen next. What did happen was as blind as all the rest. The engine
was stopped somewhere in the gulch back of us and out of sight from our
hiding-place, and pretty soon the two men who had gone with her came
hurrying across out of the hill shadows, making straight for the auto. A
minute or two later they had climbed into the machine, the motor had
sputtered, and the car was gone.
III
Mr. Chadwick's Special
Of course, as soon as the skip-out of the four hold-up men gave us a
free hand we knew it was up to us to get busy and do something. It was a
safe bet that the _Alexa_ was carrying her owner, and in that case Mr.
John Chadwick and his train crew were somewhere back in the hills,
without an engine, and with a good prospect of staying "put" until
somebody should go and hunt them up.
Mr. Norcross had our part in the play figured out before the retreating
auto had covered its first mile.
"We've got to find out what they've done with Mr. Chadwick," he broke
out. And then: "It can't be very far to where they have left the engine,
and if they haven't crippled it--" He stopped short and slung a question
at the two women: "Will you two stay here with Jimmie while I go and see
what I can find in that gulch?"
They both paid me the compliment of saying that they'd stay with me, but
the young woman suggested that it might be just as well if we should all
go up the gulch together. So we piked out in the dark, the boss helping
Mrs. Sheila to hobo along over the cross-ties of the spur, and the
little girl stumbling on behind with me. She had got over her scare, if
she had any, and when I asked her if she didn't want an arm to grab at,
she laughed and said, No, and that it was grand; that she wouldn't miss
a single stumble for worlds.
"In all my life I've never had anything half as exciting as this happen
to me," was the way she put it, and she sure acted as if she meant to
make the most of it.
We had followed the spur track up the gulch for maybe a short quarter of
a mile when we came to the engine. There was nobody on it, and the
brigands had been good-natured enough to leave the fire-door open so
that the steam would run down gently and let the boiler cool off by
degrees. Luckily for us, the boss was an expert on engines, just as he
is on everything else belonging to a railroad, and he struck matches and
looked our find over carefully before he tried to move it. As we had
feared it might be, the big machine was crippled. There was a key gone
out of one of the connecting-rod crank-pin straps; one miserable little
piece of steel, maybe eight inches long and tapering one way, and half
an inch or so thick the other; but that was a-plenty. We couldn't make a
move without it.
I thought we were done for, but Mr. Norcross chased me up into the cab
for a lantern. With the light we began to hunt around in the short
grass, all four of us down on our hands and knees doing the
needle-in-the-haystack stunt. I had been sensible enough to show the
little girl the other connecting-rod key, so she knew exactly what to
look for, and it did me a heap of good when it turned out that she was
the one who found the lost bit of steel.
"I've got it--I've got it!" she cried; and sure enough she had. The
hold-up people had merely taken it out and thrown it aside on the
extremely probable chance that nobody would be foolish enough to look
for it so near at hand, or, looking, would be able to find it in the
dark.
It didn't take more than a minute or two, with a wrench from the
engineer's box, to put the key back in place. Then, with one to boost
and the other to pull, we got our two passengers up into the high cab,
and Mr. Norcross made them as comfortable as he could on the fireman's
box, showing them how to brace and hang on when the machine should begin
to bounce over the rough track of the old spur.
While he was doing this, I threw a few shovelfuls of coal into the
firebox and put the blower on; and when we were all set, the boss opened
the throttle and we went carefully nosing ahead over the old track,
feeling our way up the gulch and keeping a sharp lookout for the _Alexa_
as we ground and squealed around the curves.
It must have been four or five miles back in the hills to the place
where we found the private car, and a little way short of it we picked
up Mr. Chadwick's conductor, walking the ties to try to get in touch
with the civilized world once more. He looked a trifle suspicious when
he found the engine in the hands of still another bunch of strangers,
and two of them women; but as soon as he heard Mr. Norcross's name he
quit being offish and got suddenly respectful. Young as he was for a
top-rounder, the boss had a "rep," and I guess there were not very many
railroad men west of the Rockies who didn't know him, or know of him.
The conductor told us where we'd find the car, and we found it just as
he said we would: pushed in on an old mine-loading track at the end of
the spur. The other members of the crew were off and waiting for us; and
standing out on the back platform, in the full glare of the headlight as
we nosed up for a coupling, there was a big, gray-haired man, bareheaded
and dressed in rough-looking old clothes like a mining prospector.
The big man was "Uncle John" Chadwick, and if he was properly astonished
at seeing us turn up with his lost engine, he didn't let it interfere
with our welcome when we took our passengers around to the car and
lifted them one at a time over the railing and climbed up after them.
Mr. Chadwick seemed to know Mrs. Sheila; at any rate, he shook hands
with her and called her by name. Then he grabbed for the boss and fairly
shouted at him: "Well, well, Graham!--of all the lucky things this side
of Mesopotamia! How the dev--how in thunder did you manage to turn up
here?" And all that, you know.
The explanations, such as they were, came later, after the young lady,
confessing herself a bit excited and fussed up, had taken her cousin
under her arm and they had both gone to lie down in one of the
staterooms. With the women out of the way, the boss and Mr. Chadwick sat
together in the open compartment while the train crew was trundling us
back to the main line. Mr. Norcross had put me in right by telling the
wheat king who I was, so they didn't pay any attention to me.
As a matter of course, the talk jumped first to the mysterious hold-up
and kidnapping and the reason why. All either of them could say didn't
serve to throw any light on the mystery, not a single ray. There had
been no violence--the pistol shots had been merely meant to scare the
trainmen--and there had been no attempt at robbery; for that matter,
Mr. Chadwick hadn't even seen the kidnappers, and hadn't known what was
going on until after it was all over.
Mr. Norcross told what we had seen, and how we had come to be where we
were able to see it, but that didn't help out much, either. From any
point of view it seemed perfectly foolish, and the boss made mention of
that. If we hadn't happened to be there to bring the engine back, the
worst that could have befallen Mr. Chadwick and the crew of the special
would have been a few hours' bother and delay. In the course of time the
conductor would have walked out and got to a wire station somewhere,
though it might have taken him all night, and then some, to get another
engine.
Naturally, Mr. Chadwick was red-hot about it, on general principles. I
guess he wasn't used to being kidnapped. But, after all, the thing that
bothered him most was the fact that he couldn't account for it.
"I can't help thinking that it is connected with what is due to happen
to-morrow morning, Graham," he said, at the end of things. "There are
some certain scoundrels in Portal City at the present moment who
wouldn't stop at anything to gain their ends, and I am wondering now if
Dawes wasn't mixed up in it."
The boss laughed and said:
"You'll have to begin at the beginning with me: I'm too new in this
region to know even the names. Who is Dawes?"
"Dawes is a mining man in Portal City, and before I'd been an hour in
town yesterday he hunted me up and wanted me to go over to Strathcona to
look at some gold prospects he's trying to finance. I said 'No' at
first, because I was expecting you, and thought you'd reach Portal City
this morning. When you didn't show up, I knew I had twelve hours more on
my hands, and as Dawes was still hanging on, I had our trainmaster give
me a special over to Strathcona, on a promise that I'd be brought back
early this evening, ahead of the 'Flyer' from the west--the train you
were on."
Mr. Norcross nodded. "And the promise wasn't kept."
"No promise is ever kept on the Pioneer Short Line," growled the big
magnate. And then, with a beautiful disregard for the mixed figures of
speech: "Once in a blue moon the chapter of accidents hits the
bull's-eye whack in the middle, Graham. When Hardshaw wired me from
Portland, I knew you couldn't reach Portal City before this morning, at
the very earliest. That was going to cut my time pretty short, with the
big gun due to be fired to-morrow morning, and you cut it still shorter
by losing twelve hours somewhere along the road--they told me in the
despatcher's office that your train was behind a wreck somewhere up in
Oregon. But it has turned out all right, in spite of everything. You're
here, and we've got the night before us."
Again Mr. Norcross said something about beginning at the beginning.
"Just remember that I am entirely in the dark," he went on. "I didn't
see Hardshaw at all before leaving Portland; he merely forwarded your
wire, asking me to stop over in Portal City, to me on the train--and it
was handed to me just before dinner this evening. Of course, that was
enough--from anybody who has been as good a friend to me as you have."
"We'll see presently just how far that friendship rope is going to
reach," returned the wheat king, and though my back was turned to them,
I could easily imagine the quizzical twinkle of the shrewd old eyes that
went with it. Then I suppose he nodded toward me, for the boss said:
"Oh, Jimmie's all right; he knew what I had for dinner this evening, and
he'll know what I'm going to have for breakfast to-morrow morning."
With the bridle off, the big man went ahead abruptly, cutting out all
the frills.
"You finished your building contract on the Oregon Midland, Graham, and
after the road was opened for business you refused an offer of the
general managership. Would you mind telling me why you did that?"
"Not in the least. I'm rather burnt out on trying to operate American
railroads; at any rate, when it comes to trying to operate one of them
for a legitimate profit. There is nothing in it. An operating head is
now nothing more than a score-keeper for a national gambling game. The
boss gamblers around the railroad post in the Stock Exchange tell him
what he has to do and where he has to get off. Stock gambling, under
whatever name it masquerades--boosting values, buying and selling
margins, reorganizations, with their huge rake-offs for the
underwriters--is the incubus which is crushing the life out of the
nation's industries, especially in the railroad field. It makes me wish
I'd never seen a railroad track."
"Yet it is your trade, isn't it?" asked the wheat king.
"It is; but luckily I can build railroads as well as operate them; and
there are other countries besides the United States of America. I'm on
my way home to Illinois for a little visit with my mother and sisters;
and after that I think I shall close with an offer I've had from one of
the Canadian companies."
"Good boy!" chuckled the Chicago magnate. "In due time we might hope to
be reading your name in the newspapers--'Sir Graham Norcross, D.S.O.,'
or something of that sort." Then, with a sharp return to the sort of
gritting seriousness: "You've been riding over the Pioneer Short Line
since early this morning, Graham: what do you think of it?"
I couldn't see the boss's smile, but I could figure it pretty well when
he said: "There may be worse managed, worse neglected pieces of railroad
track in some of the great transcontinental lines, but if there are I
haven't happened to notice them. I suppose it is capitalized to death,
like many of the others."
"Fictitious values doubtless have something to do with it at the present
stage of the game," Mr. Chadwick admitted. "The Pioneer Short Line is
'under suspicion' on the books of the commissions, both State and
Interstate, as a heavily 'watered' corporation--which it is. Do you know
the history of the road?"
When I got up to get a match, Mr. Norcross was shaking his head and
saying: "Not categorically; no."
"Then I'll brief it for you," said the big man in the stuffed wicker
chair. "It has always been a good earning property, being largely, even
yet, without much local competition. But from the day it was completed
its securities have figured in the market only for their speculative
values. The property itself has never been considered, save as a means
to an end; the end being to enable one bunch of the Wall Street
gamesters you speak of to make a 'killing' and unload on another bunch."
"The old story," said Mr. Norcross.
"We are bumping over the net result, right now," Mr. Chadwick went on.
"The property is bled white; there is no money for betterments; we are
tied hand and foot by all sorts of legal restrictions and regulations;
and, worse than all, the people we are supposed to serve hate us until
you can smell it and taste it in every town and hamlet on the
right-of-way."
"So I have heard," put in the boss, calmly.
"That brings us down to the nib of the matter. Pioneer Short Line is
practically in the last ditch. The stock has slumped to forty and worse;
Shaffer, the general manager and the only able man we have had for
years, has resigned in disgust; and if something isn't done to-morrow
morning in Portal City, I know of at least one minority stockholder who
is going to throw the whole mess into the courts and try for a
receivership."
Mr. Norcross looked up quickly.
"Are you the minority stockholder, Uncle John?" he asked, letting
himself use the name by which Mr. Chadwick was best known in the wheat
pit.
"I am--more's the pity. I had a little lapse of sanity one fine morning
a few years ago and bought in for an investment. I've done everything I
could think of, Graham, to persuade Breck Dunton and his Wall Street
accomplices to spend just one dollar in ten of their reorganization and
recapitalization stealings on the road itself, but it's no good. All
they want is to get one more rise out of the securities, so they can
unload."
"Is there to be a stockholders' meeting in Portal City to-morrow
morning?"
"No; a directors' meeting. Dunton has been making an inspection trip
over the system with a dozen or so of his New York cronies. It's a
junketing excursion, pure and simple, but while they're here they'll get
together and go through the form of picking out a new general manager.
I'm on the board and they had to send me notice, though it's an even bet
they hoped I'd stay away. In fact, I think they scheduled the meeting
out here on the chance that the distance from Chicago would keep me from
attending it."
All this talk had taken up a good bit of time, and just as Mr. Chadwick
said that about the "even bet," our engineer was whistling for Portal
City. From where I was sitting I could see the electric lights dotting
the wide valley between the two gateway buttes from which the city gets
its name. Mr. Norcross was looking at the lights, too, when he said:
"Are you really going to spring the receivership on the Dunton people
to-morrow?"
"I'm going to give Dunton his chance. He can appoint the man I want
appointed as general manager, with full power to act, and ratify a
little plan I've got up my sleeve for providing a bit of working capital
for the road, or--he can turn me down."
"And if he does turn you down?"
"Then, by George, I'll see if I can't persuade the courts to put the
property into bankruptcy and install my man as receiver!"
"I don't envy your man his job, either way around; not the least little
morsel in the world," said the boss, quietly. And then: "Who is he,
Uncle John?"
The wheat king gave a great laugh.
"Don't tell me you haven't guessed it," he chuckled. "You're the man,
Graham."
But now Mr. Norcross had something to say for himself, sitting up
straight and shaking his head sort of sorrowfully at the big man in the
padded chair.
"No you don't, my good old friend; not in a thousand years! You'd lose
out in the end, and I'd lose out; and besides, I'm not quite ready to
commit suicide." And then to me: "Jimmie, suppose you go and tap on the
door and tell the ladies we're pulling into Portal City."
IV
The Tipping of the Scale
After all, it wasn't so very late in the night when our special pulled
up to the Portal City station platform and I turned myself into a
messenger-boy escort for the lady and the little girl whose muff had
been responsible for so many different flip-flaps in the short space of
a few hours.
I hadn't hung around while the boss was telling Mrs. Sheila and Maisie
Ann good-by. Our conductor had wired ahead from the first telegraph
station we came to and had asked to have our dunnage--the two women's,
the boss's, and mine--taken out of the "Flyer" Pullman and sent back to
Portal City on a local, and I was in the baggage-room, digging up the
put-off stuff, at the good-by minute. But I guess they didn't quarrel
any--the boss and Mrs. Sheila. She was laughing a little to herself as I
helped her down from the car, and when I asked her where she wanted to
go, she said I might ask one of the porters to carry the traps, and we'd
walk to the hotel, which was only a few blocks up the main street.
She took Maisie Ann on the other side of her and let two of the blocks
go by without saying anything more, and then she gave that quiet little
laugh again and said, "Your Mr. Norcross amuses me, Jimmie. He says I
have no business to travel without a guardian. What do you think about
it?"
I told her I hadn't any thinks coming, and she seemed to take that for a
joke and laughed some more. Then she asked me if I'd ever been in New
York, and I felt sort of small when I had to tell her that I had never
been east of Omaha in all my life. With that, she told me not to worry;
that if I stayed with Mr. Norcross I'd probably get to go anywhere I
wanted to.
Something in the way she said it made it sound like a little slam on the
boss, and of course I wasn't going to stand for that.
"There is one thing about it: the boss will make good wherever he goes,"
I hit back. "You can bet on that."
"I like your loyalty," she flashed out. "It is a fine thing in a day
that is much too careless of such qualities. And I agree with you that
your Mr. Norcross is likely to succeed; more than likely, if he will
only learn to combine a little gentle cleverness with the heavy hand."
There was no doubt about it this time; she _was_ slamming the boss, and
I meant to get at the bottom of it, right there and then.
"I don't think you have any cause to blacklist Mr. Norcross," I said.
"Hasn't he been right good and brotherly to both of you this evening?"
"Oh, I didn't mean that," she said real earnestly. "But in the stateroom
in Mr. Chadwick's car: the ventilator was open, you know, until Maisie
Ann got up and shut it, and we couldn't very well help hearing what was
said about the kidnapping. Neither Mr. Chadwick nor Mr. Norcross seemed
to be able to account for it."
"Can you account for it?" I asked, bluntly enough, I guess.
At this she smiled and said, "It would be rather presumptuous for me to
try where Mr. Norcross and Mr. Chadwick failed, wouldn't it? But maybe I
can give you just a wee little hint. If you are not well enough
acquainted with Mr. Chadwick to ask him yourself, you might tell Mr.
Norcross to ask him if there isn't some strong reason why somebody, or
perhaps a number of somebodies, wanted to keep him out of Portal City
over Sunday night and possibly a part of the Monday."
We were coming to the big electric sign that was winking out the letters
to spell "Hotel Bullard," and I was bound to have it out with her before
my chance was gone.
"See here," I put in; "you saw something more than I did, and more than
Mr. Norcross did. What was it?"
This time she took the motherly tone with me again and told me I must
learn not to be rude and masterful, like the boss. Then she gave me what
I was reaching for.
"You saw the two men who went over to the auto and smoked while they
were waiting for the other two to come back?"
I told her that I hadn't seen them very well; couldn't, with nothing but
the starlight to help out.
"Neither did I," she admitted. "But if I am not mistaken, I have seen
them many times before, and they are very well known here in Portal
City. One of them, the smaller one with the derby hat and the short
overcoat, was either Mr. Rufus Hatch or his double; and the other, the
heavy-set one, might have been Mr. Gustave Henckel, Mr. Hatch's partner
in the Red Tower Company."
This didn't help out much, but you can bet that I made a note of the two
names. We were just going into the hotel, so I didn't have a chance to
ask any more questions; and after I had paid the porter for lugging the
grips, Mrs. Sheila had made whatever arrangement she wanted to with the
clerk, and she and Maisie Ann were ready to take the elevator.
"You are going back to Mr. Chadwick's car?" she asked, when she was
telling me good-by and thanking me for coming up to the hotel with them.
I told her I was, and then she came around to the kidnapping business
again of her own accord.
"You may give Mr. Norcross the hint I gave you, if you wish," she said;
"only you must be a good boy, Jimmie, and not drag me into it. I
couldn't be positively certain, you know, that the two men were really
Mr. Hatch and Mr. Henckel. But if there is any reason why those two
wouldn't want Mr. Chadwick to reach the city at the time he was counting
on----"
"I see," I nodded; "it just puts the weight of the inference over on
that side. I'll tell the boss, when I get a good chance, and you can bet
your last dollar he won't tangle you up in it--he isn't put together
that way."
"Well, then, good-night," she smiled, giving me her hand. And then: "Mr.
Norcross says you'll be going on East to-morrow, and in that case it may
be a long time before we meet again. After a while, after he has
forgotten all about it, you may tell him from me--" She stopped and gave
me that funny little laugh again that made her look so pretty, and said:
"No, I guess you needn't, either." And with that she sort of edged the
little girl into the elevator before we could get a chance to shake
hands, and I heard her tell the boy to take them up to the mezzanine
landing.
Since I didn't have any reason to suppose that the boss was needing me,
I took my own time about going back to hunt for Mr. Chadwick's car in
the railroad yards, loafing for a while in the Bullard lobby to rubber
and look on at the people coming and going. You can tell pretty well how
a town stacks up for business if you hit it between ten and eleven
o'clock of a Sunday night and hang around its best hotel. If the town is
dead, there won't be anybody stirring around the hotel at that hour. But
Portal City seemed to be good and alive. There were lots of people
knocking about on the sidewalks and drifting in and out of the lobby.
By and by, I went down to the station and began to hunt for the _Alexa_.
The yard crew had side-tracked it on a spur down by the freight-house,
and when I had stumbled over to it the negro porter remembered me well
enough to let me in.
The boss and Mr. Chadwick were facing each other across the table, which
was all littered up with papers and maps and reports, and they hardly
noticed me when I blew in and sat down a little to one side. I had known
well enough, when Mr. Norcross had turned the new offer down, that Mr.
Chadwick wasn't going to let it go at that. It seemed that he hadn't; he
had got the boss sufficiently interested to go over the papers with
him, anyhow.
But just after I broke in, Mr. Norcross jumped up and began to pace back
and forth before the table, with his hands in his pockets.
"No, I can't see it, Uncle John," he said, still sort of stubborn and
determined. "You are trying to make me believe that I ought to take the
biggest job that has ever been set before the expert in any field: to
demonstrate, on this rotten corpse of a railroad, the solution of a
problem that has the entire country guessing at the present time;
namely, the winning of success, and public--and industrial--approval for
a carrier corporation which had continuously and persistently broken
every commandment in all the decalogues--of business; of fair-dealing
with its employees; of common honesty with everybody."
Mr. Chadwick nodded. "That is about the size of it," he said.
"I wouldn't say that it can't be done," the boss went on. "Perhaps it is
possible, for the right man. But I'm not the right man. You need
somebody who can combine the qualities of a pretty brutal slugger with
those of a fine-haired, all-things-to-all-men, diplomatic peacemaker. I
can do the slugging; I've proved it a time or two in the past. But I'm
no good at the other end of the game. When it comes to handling the
fellow with a 'pull,' I've either got to smash him or quit."
At that Mr. Chadwick nodded again and said: "That is one of the reasons
why I have reached out and picked you for the job. There will be a good
bit of the slugging needed, at first, and I guess you can acquire the
other things as you go along, can't you?"
"Not at this late day, I'm afraid. People who know me best call me a
scrapper, and I've been living up to my reputation. Yesterday, when we
were held up behind the freight wreck at Widner, I got off to see what
we were in for. The conductor of our train had spotted me from seeing my
pass, and I happened to hear him docketing me for the wrecking boss. He
said I was known on the Midland as 'Hell-and-repeat' Norcross; that it
was a habit with me to have a man for breakfast every morning."
"I can add a little something to that," Mr. Chadwick put in,
quizzically. "Lepaige, your Oregon Midland president, says you need
humanizing, and wonders why you haven't married some good woman who
would knock the rough corners off. Why haven't you, Graham?"
The boss gave a short laugh. "Too busy," he said. "Past that, we might
assume that the good woman hasn't presented herself. Let it go. The
facts still stand. I am too heavy-handed for this job of yours. I
should probably mix up with some of these grafters you've been telling
me about and get a knife in my back. That would be all in the day's
work, of course, but it would leave you right where you are now. And as
for this other thing--the industrial side of it: that's a large order; a
whaling big order. I'm not even prepared to say, off-hand, that it's the
right thing to do."
"Right or wrong, it's a thing that is coming, Graham," was the sober
reply. "If we don't meet it half-way--well, the time will come when we
of the hiring-and-firing side won't be given any option in the matter.
You may call it Utopian if you please, and add that I'm growing old and
losing my grip. But that doesn't obliterate the fact that the days of
the present master-and-man relations in the industries are numbered."
The boss shook his head. "As I say, I can't go that far with you,
off-hand; and if I could, I should still doubt that I am the man to head
your procession."
I thought that settled it, but that was because I didn't know Mr.
Chadwick very well. The big wheat king just smiled up at the boss, sort
of fatherly, and said:
"We'll let it rest until morning and give you a chance to sleep on it.
You have spoken only of the difficulties and the responsibilities,
Graham; but there is another side to it. In a way, it's an opportunity,
carrying with it the promise of the biggest kind of a reward."
"I don't see it," said the boss, briefly.
"Don't you? I do. I have an idea rambling around in my head that it is
about time some bright young fellow was demonstrating that problem you
speak of--showing the people of the United States that a railroad
needn't be regarded as an outlaw among the industries; needn't have the
enmity of everybody it serves; needn't be the prey of a lot of disloyal
and dissatisfied employees who are interested only in the figure of the
pay-day check; needn't be shot at as a wolf with a bounty on its scalp.
Let it rest at that for the present. Get your hat and we'll walk up-town
to the hotel. I want to have a word with Dunton to-night, if I can shake
him loose from his junketing bunch long enough to listen to it. Beyond
that, I want to get hold of the sheriff and put him on the track of
those hold-ups."
Here was a chance for me to butt in with the hint Mrs. Sheila had given
me, but I didn't see how I was going to do it without giving her away.
So I said the little end of nothing, just as hard as I could; and when
we got out of the car, Mr. Norcross told me to go by the station and
have our luggage sent to the hotel, and that killed whatever chance I
might have had farther along.
It was some time after eleven o'clock when I got around to the hotel
with the traps. The stir in the lobby had quieted down to make it seem a
little more like Sunday night, but an automobile party had just come in,
and some of the men were jawing at the clerk because the house wasn't
serving a midnight theater supper in the café on the Sunday.
Mr. Chadwick had disappeared, but I saw the boss at the counter waiting
for his chance at the clerk. The quarrelsome people melted away at last,
all but one--a young swell who would have been handsome if he hadn't had
the eyes of a maniac and a color that was sort of corpse-like with the
pallor of a booze-fighter. He had his hat on the back of his head, and
he was ripping it off at the clerk like a drunken hobo.
His ravings were so cluttered up with cuss-words that I couldn't get any
more than the drift of them, but it seemed that he had caught a glimpse
of somebody he knew--a woman, I took it, because he said "she"--looking
down from the rail of the mezzanine, and he wanted to go up to her. And
it appeared that the clerk had told the elevator man not to take him up
in his present condition.
The boss was growing sort of impatient; I could tell it by the way the
little side muscles on his jaw were working. When he got the ear of the
clerk for a second or so between cusses, he asked what was the matter
with the lunatic. I caught only broken bits of the clerk's half-whisper:
"Young Collingwood ... President Dunton's nephew ... saw lady ...
mezzanine ... wants to go up to her."
The boss scowled at the young fellow, who was now handing himself around
the corner of the counter to get at the clerk again, and said: "Why
don't you ring for an officer and have him run in?"
The night clerk was evidently scared of his job. "I wouldn't dare to do
that," he chittered. "He's one of the New York crowd--the railroad
people--President Dunton's nephew--guest of the house."
The young fellow had pulled himself around to our side of the counter by
this time and was hooking his arm to make a pass at Mr. Norcross,
trimming things up as he came with a lot more language. The boss said,
right short and sharp, to the clerk, "Get his room key and give it to a
boy who can show me the way," and the next thing we knew he had bashed
that lunatic square in the face and was cuffing him along to the nearest
elevator.
I guess it sort of surprised the clerk, and everybody else who happened
to see it--but not me. It was just like the boss. He came back in a few
minutes, looking as cool as a cucumber.
"What did you do with him?" asked the clerk, kind of awed and half
scared.
"Got a couple of the corridor sweepers to put him in a bath and turn the
cold water on him. That'll take the whiskey out of him. Now, if you have
a minute to spare, I'd like to get my assignment."
We hadn't more than got our rooms marked off for us when I saw Mr.
Chadwick coming across from the farther of the three elevators. He was
smiling sort of grim, as if he'd made a killing of some sort with Mr.
Dunton, and instead of heading back for his car he took the boss over to
a corner of the lobby and sat down to smoke with him.
I circled around for a while, and after a bit Mr. Norcross held up a
finger at me to bring him a match. They didn't seem to be talking
anything private, so I sat down just beyond them, so sleepy that I could
hardly see straight. Mr. Chadwick was telling about his early
experiences in Portal City, how he blew in first on top of the
Strathcona gold boom, and how he had known mighty near everybody in the
region in those days.
While he was talking, a taxi drove up and one of the old residenters
came in from the street and crossed to the elevators; a mighty handsome,
stately old gentleman, with fierce white mustaches and a goatee, and
"Southern Colonel" written all over him.
"There's one of them now; Major Basil Kendrick--Kentucky born and
raised, as you might guess," Mr. Chadwick was saying. "Old-school
Southern 'quality,' and as fine as they make 'em. He is a lawyer, but
not in active practice: owns a mine or two in Strathcona Gulch, and is
neither too rich nor too poor."
I grabbed at the name, "Basil," right away: it isn't such a very common
name, and Mrs. Sheila had said something--under the water tank, you
recollect--about a "Cousin Basil" who was to have met her at the train.
I was putting two or three little private guesses of my own together,
when one of the elevators came down and here came our two, the young
lady and the chunky little girl, with the major chuckling and smiling
and giving an arm to each. They had apparently stopped at the Bullard
only to wait until he could come after them and take them home. Mrs.
Sheila was looking just as pretty as ever, only now there wasn't a bit
of color in her face, and her eyes seemed a good deal brighter, some
way.
"Yes, indeed; the major is all right; as you'd find out for yourself if
you'd make up your mind to stay in Portal City and get acquainted with
him," Mr. Chadwick was going on; and by that time the major and the two
pretty ones had come on to where the boss and Mr. Chadwick could see
them.
I saw the boss sit up in his chair and stare at them. Then he said:
"That's Mrs. Macrae with him now. Is she a member of his family?"
"A second cousin, or something of that sort," said Mr. Chadwick. "I met
her once at the major's house out in the northern suburb last summer,
and that's how I came to know her when you put her aboard of the _Alexa_
back yonder in the gulch."
Mr. Norcross let the three of them get out and away, and we heard their
taxi speed up and trundle off before he said, "She is married, I'm told.
Where is her husband?"
Mr. Chadwick looked up as if he'd already forgotten the three who had
just crossed the lobby.
"Who--Sheila Macrae? Yes, she has been married. But there isn't any
husband--she's a widow."
For quite a while the boss sat staring at his cigar in a way he has when
he is thinking right hard, and Mr. Chadwick let him alone, being busy, I
guess, with his own little scrap that lay just ahead of him in the
coming directors' meeting. Then, all of a sudden, the boss got up and
shoved his hands into his coat pockets.
"I've changed my mind, Uncle John," he said, looking sort of absent-like
out of the window to where the major's taxi had been standing. "If you
can pull me into that deal to-morrow morning--with an absolutely free
hand to do as I think best, mind you--I'll take the job."
V
The Directors' Meeting
I was up bright and early the next morning--that is, a good bit brighter
and earlier than Mr. Norcross was--and after breakfast I took a little
sashay down Nevada Avenue to have a look at _our_ railroad. Of course, I
knew, after what the boss had said to Mr. Chadwick the night before,
just before we went to bed, that we weren't ever going to see Canada, or
even Illinois.
I'll have to admit that the look I got didn't make me feel as if we'd
found a Cullinan diamond. Down in the yards everything seemed to be at
the loosest kind of loose ends. A switching crew was making up a
freight, and the way they slammed the boxes together, regardless of
broken drawheads and the like, was a sin and a shame. Then I saw some
grain cars with the ends started and the wheat running out all along the
track, and three or four more with the air hose hanging so it knocked
along on the ties, and a lot of things like that--and nobody caring a
hoot.
There was a big repair shop on the other side of the yard tracks, and
though it was after seven o'clock, the men were still straggling over to
go to work. Down at the round-house, a wiper was spotting a big
freight-puller on the turn-table, and I'm blessed if he didn't actually
run her forward pair of truck-wheels off the edge of the table, right
while I was looking on, just as if it were all in the day's work.
In the course of time I drifted back to the office headquarters, which
were at the end of the passenger station and in a part of the same
building, down-stairs and up. A few clerks were dribbling in, and none
of them seemed to have life enough to get out of the way of an ox-team.
One fellow recognized me for a member of the big railroad family, I
guess, for he stopped and asked me if I was looking for a job.
I told him I wasn't, and gave him a cigar--just on general principles.
He took it, and right away he began to loosen up.
"If you should change your mind about the job, you just make it a case
of 'move on, Joey,' and don't stay here and try to hit this
agglomeration," he said.
"Why not?" I asked.
"It's a frost. I'm off of the Pennsy myself, and I'm ashamed to look in
the looking-glass since I came out here. The P. S. L. isn't a railroad,
at all; it's just making a bluff at being one. Besides, we're slated to
have a new general manager, and if he's any good he'll fire the last
living man of us."
"Maybe, if I change my mind, I might get a job with the new man," I
said. "Who is he?"
"Search me! I don't believe they've found anybody yet. The big people
from New York are all here now, and maybe they'll pick somebody before
they go away. If I had the nerve of a rabbit, I'd take the next train
back for Pittsburgh."
"What's your job?" I quizzed.
He grinned at me sort of good-naturedly. "You wouldn't think it to look
at me, but I'm head stenographer in the general super's office."
"You haven't got much of a boss, if he can't command any more loyalty
than you are giving him," I offered; and at that he spat on the platform
and made a face like a kid that had been taking a dose of asafoetida.
"Yah!" he snorted. "We haven't a man in the outfit, on any job where the
pay amounts to anything, that isn't somebody's cousin or nephew or
brother-in-law or something. They shoot 'em out here from New York in
bunches. You may be a spotter, for all I know, but I don't care a hang.
I'm quitting at the end of the month, anyhow--if I don't get fired this
side of that."
I grinned; I couldn't help it.
"Tell me," I broke in, "are there many more like you in the Pioneer
Short Line service?"
"Scads of 'em," he retorted cheerfully. "I can round you up a couple of
dozen fellows right here at headquarters who would go on a bat and paint
this town a bright vermilion if the new G. M., whoever he is going to
be, would clean out the whole rookery, cousins, nephews, and all."
"I think I'll have to take your name," I told him, fishing out a pencil
and a notebook--just to see what he would do.
"Huh! so you _are_ a spotter, after all, are you? All right, Mr.
Spotter. My name's May, Frederic G. May. And when you want my head, you
can find it just exactly where I told you--in the general super's
office. You're a stranger and you took me in. So long."
Wouldn't that jar you? A man out of the general offices talking that way
about his road and his own boss? I couldn't help seeing how rotten the
thing must be if it smelled that way to the men on its own pay-rolls.
After a while, after I'd loafed through the shops and around the yard
and got a few more whiffs of the decay, I strolled on back to the hotel.
Seen by daylight, Portal City seemed to be a right bright little burg,
with a cut-stone post-office and a new court house built out of pink
lava, and three or four office buildings big enough to be called
sky-scrapers anywhere outside of a real city like Portland or Seattle.
The streets were paved, and on the main one, Nevada Avenue, there was
plenty of business. Also, I tipped off a mining exchange and two pretty
nice-looking club-houses right in sight from the Bullard entrance.
There wasn't much of a crowd in the lobby, and as I didn't see anything
of Mr. Norcross or Mr. Chadwick, I sat down in a corner to wear out some
more time. Though it was now after nine o'clock, there were still a good
many people breakfasting in the café, the entrance to which was only a
few feet away from my corner.
I was wondering a little what had become of the boss--who was generally
the earliest riser on the job--when two men came bulging through the
screen doors of the café, picking their teeth and feeling in their
pockets for cigars. Right on the dot, and in the face of knowing that it
couldn't reasonably be so, I had a feeling that I'd seen those men
before. One of them was short and rather stocky, and his face had a sort
of hard, hungry look; and the other was big and barrel-bodied. The short
one was clean-shaven, but the other had a reddish-gray beard clipped
close on his fat jaws and trimmed to a point at the chin.
After they had lighted up they came along and sat down three or four
chairs away from me. They paid no attention to me, but for fear they
might, I tried to look as sleepy as an all-night bell-hop in a busy
hotel.
"The Dunton bunch got together in one of the committee rooms up-stairs a
little after eight o'clock," said the short man, in a low, rasping voice
that went through you like a buzz-saw, and it was evident that he was
merely going on with a talk which had been begun over the
breakfast-table. "Thanks to those infernal blunderers Clanahan sent us
last night, Chadwick was with them."
"I think that was choost so," said the big man, speaking slowly and with
something more than a hint of a German accent. "Beckler was choost what
you call him--a tam blunderer."
Like a flash it came over me that I was "listening in" to a talk between
the same two men who had sat in the auto at Sand Creek Siding and smoked
while they were waiting for the actual kidnappers to return. You can bet
high that I made myself mighty small and unobtrusive.
After a while the big man spoke again.
"What has Uncle Chon Chadwick up his sleeve got, do you think?"
"I don't think--I know!" was the snappy reply. "It's one of two things:
a receivership--which will knock us into a cocked hat because we can't
fool with an officer of the United States court--or a new deal all
around in the management."
"Vich of the two will it be that will come out of that commiddee room
up-stairs?"
"A new management. Dunton can't stand for a receivership, and Chadwick
knows it. Apart from the fact that a court officer would turn up a lot
of side deals that wouldn't look well for the New York crowd if they got
into the newspapers, the securities would be knocked out and the
majority holders--Dunton and his bunch--couldn't unload. Chadwick has
got him by the neck and can dictate his own terms."
"Vich will be?"
"That he will name the man who is to take Shaffer's place as general
manager of the railroad outfit. We might have stood it off for a while,
just as I said yesterday, if we could have kept Chadwick from attending
this meeting."
"But now we don't could stand it off--what then?"
"We'll have to wait and see, and size up the new man when he blows in.
He'll be only human, Henckel. And if we get right down to it we can pull
him over to our side--or make him wish he'd never been born."
The big man got up ponderously and brushed the cigar ashes off of his
bay-window. "You vait and see what comes mit the commiddee-room out. I
go up to the ovvice."
When I was left alone in the row of lobby chairs with the snappy one I
was scared stiff for fear, now that he didn't have anything else to
think of, he'd catch on to the fact that I might have overheard. But
apart from giving me one long stare that made my blood run cold, he
didn't seem to notice me much, and after a little he got up and went to
sit on the other side of the big rotunda where he could watch the
elevators going and coming.
I guess he had lots of patience, for I had to have. It was after eleven
o'clock, and I had been sitting in my corner for two full hours, when I
saw the boss coming down the broad marble stair with Mr. Chadwick. I
don't think the Hatch man saw them, or, if he did, he didn't let on.
Mr. Norcross held up a finger for me, and when I jumped up he gave me a
sheet of paper; a Pioneer Short Line president's letter-head with a few
lines written on it with a pen and a sort of crazy-looking signature
under them.
"Take that to the _Mountaineer_ job office and have five hundred of them
printed," was the boss's order. "Tell the foreman it's a rush job and we
want it to-day. Then make a copy and take it to Mr. Cantrell, the
editor, and ask him to run it in to-morrow's paper as an item of news,
if he feels like it. When you are through, come down to Mr. Chadwick's
car."
Since the thing was going to be published, and I was going to make a
copy of it, I didn't scruple to read it as I hurried out to begin a hunt
for the _Mountaineer_ office. It was the printer's copy for an official
circular, dated at Portal City and addressed to all officers and
employees of the Pioneer Short Line. It read:
"Effective at once, Mr. Graham Norcross is appointed General
Manager of the Pioneer Short Line System, with headquarters at
Portal City, and his orders will be respected accordingly.
"BRECKENRIDGE DUNTON,
"_President_."
We had got our jolt, all right; and leaving the ladder and the Friday
start out of the question, I grinned and told myself that the one other
thing that counted for most was the fact that Mrs. Sheila Macrae was a
widow.
VI
The _Alexa_ Goes East
I chased like the dickens on the printing job, because, apart from
wanting to absorb all the dope I could as I went along on the new job, I
knew I would be needed every minute right at Mr. Norcross's elbow, now
that the actual work was beginning.
He and Mr. Chadwick were deep in reports and figures and plans of all
sorts when I got back to the _Alexa_. Luncheon was served in the car,
and they kept the business talk going like a house afire while they were
eating, the hurry being that Mr. Chadwick wanted to start back for
Chicago the minute he could find out if our connecting line east would
run him special.
I could tell by the way the boss's eyes were snapping that he was
soaking up the details at the rate of a mile a minute; not that he could
go much deeper than the totals into anything, of course, in such a
gallop, but these were enough to give him his hand-holds. At two o'clock
a boy came down from the headquarters with a wire saying that the
private car could go east as a special at two-thirty, if Mr. Chadwick
were ready, and he put his O.K. on the message and sent it back.
"Now for a few unofficial things, Graham, and we'll call it a go," he
said, after the boy had gone. "You are to have an absolutely free hand,
not only in the management and the operating, but also in dictating the
policy of the company. What you say goes as it lies, and Dunton has
promised me that there shall be no appeal, not even to him."
"I imagine he didn't say that willingly," the boss put in, which was the
first intimation I had had that he wasn't present at the directors'
meeting in the Bullard.
"No, indeed; nothing was done willingly. I had to swing the big stick
and swing it hard. But I had them where they couldn't wiggle. They had
to swallow you whole or take the consequences--and the consequences were
going to cost them money. Dunton got down when he had to, and he pulled
the others into line. You are to set your own pace, and you are to have
some money for betterments. I offered to float a new loan on short-time
notes with the Chicago banks, and the board authorized it."
The boss pushed that part of it aside abruptly, as he always does when
he has got hold of the gist of a thing.
"Now, about my staff," he said. "It's open gossip all over the West that
the P. S. L. is officered by a lot of dummies and place-hunters and
relatives. I'll have to clean house."
"Go to it; that is a part of your 'free hand.' Have you the material to
draw from?"
"I know a few good men, if I can get them," said the boss thoughtfully.
"There is Upton Van Britt; he was the only millionaire in my college,
and he is simply a born operating chief. If I can persuade him to store
his autos and lay up his yacht and sell off his polo ponies--I'll try
it, anyhow. Then there is Charlie Hornack, who is the best all-around
traffic man this side of the Missouri--only his present employers don't
seem to have discovered it. I can get Hornack. The one man I can't place
at sight is a good corporation counsel. I'm obliged to have a good
lawyer, Uncle John."
"I have the man for you, if you'll take him on my say so; a young
fellow, named Ripley who has done some corking good work for me in
Chicago. I'll wire him, if you like. Now a word or two about this local
graft we touched upon last night. I don't know the ins and outs of it,
but people here will tell you that a sort of holding corporation, called
Red Tower Consolidated, has a strangle grip on this entire region. Its
subsidiary companies control the grain elevators, the fruit packeries,
the coal mines and distributing yards, the timber supply and the lumber
yards, and even have a finger on the so-called independent smelters."
The boss nodded. "I've heard of Red Tower. Also, I have heard that the
railroad stands in with it to pinch the producers and consumers."
A road engine was backing down the spur to take the _Alexa_ in tow for
the eastward run, and what was said had to be said in a hurry.
"Dig it out," barked the wheat king. "If you find that we are in on it,
it's your privilege to cut loose. The two men who will give you the most
trouble are right here in Portal City: Hatch, the president of Red
Tower, and Henckel, its vice-president. They say either of them would
commit murder for a ten-dollar bill, and they stand in with Pete
Clanahan, the city boss, and his gang of political thugs. That's all,
Graham; all but one thing. Write me after you've climbed into the saddle
and have found out just what you're in for. If you say you can make it
go, I'll back you, if it takes half of next year's wheat crop."
A minute or so later the boss and I stood out in the yard and watched
the _Alexa_ roll away toward the sunrise country, and perhaps we both
felt a little bit lonesome, just for a second or two. At least, I know I
did. But when the special had become a black smudge of coal smoke in the
distance, Mr. Norcross turned on me with the grim little smile that
goes with his fighting mood.
"You are private secretary to the new general manager of the Pioneer
Short Line, Jimmie, and your salary begins to-day," he said, briskly.
"Now let's go up to the hotel and get our fighting clothes on."
VII
"Heads Off, Gentlemen!"
Gosh all Friday--say! but the next few days did see a tear-up to beat
the band on the old Short Line! With the printing of his appointment
circular, Mr. Norcross took the offices in the headquarters building
lately vacated by Mr. Shaffer, and it was something awful to see the way
the heads went into the basket. One by one he called the Duntonites in;
the traffic manager, the general superintendent, the roadmaster, the
master-mechanic--clear on down to the round-house foreman and the
division heads.
Some few of them were allowed to take the oath of allegiance and stay,
but the place-fillers and pay-roll parasites, the cousins and the
nephews and the brothers-in-law, every last man of them had to walk
under the axe. One instance will be enough to show how it went. Van
Burgh, great-great-grandnephew of some Revolutionary big-wig and our
figurehead general superintendent, was the first man called in, and Mr.
Norcross shot him dead in half a minute.
"Mr. Van Burgh, what railroad experience did you have before you came to
the P. S. L.?" was the first bullet.
Mr. Van Burgh, a heavy-faced, youngish man with sort of world-tired
eyes, looked at his finger-nails.
"I was in the president's office in New York for a time after I left
Harvard," he drawled, a good deal as if the question bored him.
"And how long have you been here?"
"I came out lawst October."
"H'm; only six months' actual experience, eh? I'm sorry, but you can't
learn operative railroading at the expense of this management on the
Pioneer Short Line. Your resignation, to take effect at once, will be
accepted. Good-day."
Van Burgh turned red in the face, but he had his nerve.
"You're an entirely new kind of a brute," he remarked calmly. "I was
appointed by President Dunton, and I don't resign until he tells me to."
"Then you're fired!" snapped the boss, whirling his chair back to his
desk. And that was all there was to it.
Three days later, when the whole town was talking about the new "Jack,
the ripper," as they called him, Kirgan, who had been our head machinery
man on the Midland construction, tumbled in in answer to a wire. Mr.
Norcross slammed him into place ten minutes after he hit the town.
"Your office is across the tracks, Kirgan," he told him. "I've begun the
house-cleaning over there by firing your predecessor and three or four
of his pet foremen. Get in the hole and dig to the bottom. You have a
lot of soreheads to handle, here and at the division shops, and it isn't
all their fault, not by a long shot. I'll give you six months in which
to make good as a model superintendent of motive power. Get busy."
"That's me," said Kirgan, who knew the boss up one side and down the
other. "You give me the engines, and I'll keep 'em out of the shop." And
with that he went across the yard and took hold, before he had even
hunted up a place to sleep in.
Mr. Van Britt was the next man to show up. He was fine; a square-built,
stocky little gentleman who looked as if he's always had the world by
the ear and never meant to let go. Though it was a time when most men
went clean-shaven, he wore a stubby little mustache, closely clipped,
and while his jaw looked as if he could bite a nail in two, he had a
pair of twinkling, good-natured eyes that sort of took the edge off the
hard jaw.
"Well, I'm here," he said, dropping into a chair and sitting with his
legs wide apart. And then, ignoring me as if I hadn't been there:
"Graham, what the devil have you got against me, that you should drag me
out here on the edge of nowhere and make me go to work for a living?"
The boss just grinned at him and said: "It's for the good of your soul,
Upton. You've too much money. Your office is up at the end of the
corridor and your chair is empty and waiting for you. Your appointment
circular has already been mailed out."
Mr. Hornack was the last of the new office staff to fall in, though he
didn't have nearly as far to come as some of the others. He was
red-headed and wore glasses. They used to say of him on the Overland
Central that he fired his chief clerk regularly twice a week, and then
hired him over again, which was merely a roundabout way of saying that
he had a sort of meat-axe temper to go with his red hair. But they also
used to say that he could make business grow where none ever grew
before, and that's what a traffic man lives for.
When the new staff was made up, Mr. Norcross gathered all the department
heads together in his office and laid down the lines of the new policy.
He put it in just eight words: "Clean house, and make friends for the
company." Then he gave them a little talk on the conditions as he had
found them, and told them that he wanted all these conditions reversed.
It was a large order, and both Mr. Van Britt and Mr. Hornack said as
much, but the boss said it had to go just that way. There would be a
little money for betterments, but it must be spent as if every dollar
were ten.
Naturally, the big turn-over brought all sorts of disturbances at the
send-off. Some of the relieved cousins and nephews stayed in town and
jumped in to stir up trouble for the new management. The _Herald_, which
was the other morning paper, took up for the down-and-outs, and there
wasn't anything too mean for it to say about the boss and his new
appointees. Then the employees got busy and the grievance committees
began to pour in. Mr. Norcross never denied himself to anybody. The
office-door stood wide open and the kickers were welcomed, as you might
say, with open arms.
"You men are going to get the squarest deal you have ever had, and a
still squarer one a little farther along, if you will only stay on the
job and keep your clothes on," was the way the boss went at the
trainmen's committee. "We are out to make the P. S. L. the best line for
service, and the best company to work for, this side of the Missouri
River. I want your loyalty; the loyalty of every man in the service.
I'll go further and say that the new management will stand if you and
the other pay-roll men stand by it in good faith, or it will fall if you
don't."
"You'll meet the grievance committees and talk things over with them
when there's a kick coming?" said old Tom McClure, the passenger
conductor who was acting as spokesman.
"Sure I will--every time. More than that, I'll take a leaf out of
Colonel Goethal's book and keep open house here in this office every
Sunday morning. Any man in the service who thinks he has a grievance may
come here and state it, and if he has a case, he'll get justice."
Naturally, a few little talks like this, face to face with the men
themselves, soon began to put new life into the rank and file. Mr.
Norcross's old pet name of "Hell-and-repeat" had followed him down from
Oregon, as it was bound to, but now it began to be used in the sense
that most railroad men use the phrase, "The Old Man," in speaking of a
big boss that they like.
This winning of the service _esprit de corps_--if that's the
word--commenced to show results right away. The first time Mr.
Norcross's special went over the line anybody could see with half an eye
that the pay-roll men were taking a brace. Trains were running on better
time, there was less slamming and more civility, and at one place we
actually found a section foreman going along and picking up the spikes
and bolts and fish-plates that the wasters ahead of him had strewn all
along the right-of-way.
There was so much crowded into these first few weeks that I've forgotten
half of it. The work we did, pulling and hauling things into shape, was
a fright, and my end of the job got so big that the boss had to give me
help. Following out his own policy, he let me pick my man, and after I'd
had a little talk with Mr. Van Britt, I picked May, the young fellow who
had been so disgusted with his job under Van Burgh. Frederic of
Pittsburgh was all right; a little too tonguey, perhaps, but a worker
from away back, and that was what we were looking for.
Out of this frantic hustle to get things started and moving right,
anybody could have pulled a couple of conclusions that stuck up higher
than any of the rest. The boss and Mr. Van Britt were steadily winning
the rank and file over to something like loyalty on the one hand, and on
the other, wherever we went, we found the people who were paying the
freight a solid unit against us, hating us like blazes and entirely
unwilling to believe that any good thing could come out of the Nazareth
of the Pioneer Short Line.
This hatred manifested itself in a million different ways, and all of
them saw-toothed. On that first trip over the line I heard a Lesterburg
banker tell the boss, flat-footed, that the country at large would never
believe that any measure of reform undertaken by the Dunton management
would be accepted as sincere.
"You talk like an honest man, Mr. Norcross," he said, and he was saying
it right in the boss's own private car, too, mind you, "but this region
has suffered too long and too bitterly under Wall Street methods to be
won over now by a little shoulder-patting in the way of better train
schedules and things of that sort. You'll have to dig a good bit deeper,
and that you won't be allowed to do."
The boss just smiled at this, and offered the banker man a cigar--which
he took.
"When the time comes, Mr. Bigelow, I'm going to show you that I can dig
as deep as the next fellow. Where shall I begin?"
The banker laughed. "If you had a spade with a handle a mile long you
might begin on the Red Tower people," he suggested. "But, of course, you
can't do that: your New York people won't let you. There is the real nib
of the thing, Mr. Norcross. What we need is a railroad line that will
stick to its own proper business--the carrying of freight and
passengers. What we have is a gigantic holding corporation which fathers
every extortionate side-issue that can pay it a royalty!"
"Excuse me," said the boss, still as pleasant as a basket of chips,
"that may be what you have had in the past; we won't try to go behind
the returns. But it is not what you have now. From this time on, the
Short Line proposes to be just what you said it should be--a carrier
corporation, pure and simple."
"Do you mean to say that you are going to cut loose from Hatch and
Henckel and their thousand-and-one robber subsidiary companies?"
demanded the banker.
At this the boss stood up and looked the big banker gentleman squarely
in the eye.
"Mr. Bigelow, at the present moment I represent Pioneer Short Line, in
management and in its policy, as it stands to-day. I can assure you
emphatically that the railroad management has nothing whatever to do
with Red Tower Consolidated or any of its subsidiaries."
"Then you've broken with Hatch?"
"No; simply because there hasn't been anything to break, so far as I am
concerned."
The banker man dropped into the nearest chair.
"But, man alive! you can't stay here if you don't pull with the Hatch
crowd," he exclaimed; and then: "Somebody ought to have tipped you off
beforehand and not let you come here to commit suicide!"
After that they went out together; up-town to Mr. Bigelow's bank, I
guess, and as they pushed the corridor door open I heard the banker
say: "You don't know what you are up against, Mr. Norcross. That outfit
will get you, one way or another, as sure as the devil's a hog. If it
can't break you, it will hire a gang of gunmen--I wouldn't put it an
inch beyond Rufus Hatch; not a single inch."
There it was again; but as he went out the boss was laughing easily and
saying that he was raised in a gun country, and that the fear of a fight
was the least of his troubles at the present moment.
VIII
With the Strings Off
As soon as we returned from the inspection trip, the boss pulled off his
coat--figuratively speaking--and rolled up his sleeves. It wasn't his
way to talk much about what he was going to do: he'd jump in and do it
first, and then talk about it afterward--if anybody insisted on knowing
the reason why.
Mr. Van Britt was given swift orders to fill up his engineering staff
and get busy laying new steel, building new bridges and modernizing the
permanent way generally. Mr. Hornack was told to put on an extra office
force to ransack the traffic records and make reports showing the
fairness or unfairness of existing tariffs and rates, and a widespread
invitation was given to shippers to come in and air their
grievances--which you bet they did!
Sandwiched in between, there were long private conferences with Mr.
Ripley, the bright young lawyer Mr. Chadwick had sent us from Chicago,
and with a young fellow named Juneman, an ex-newspaper man who was on
the pay-rolls as "Advertising Manager," but whose real business seemed
to be to keep the Short Line public fully and accurately informed of
everything that most railroad companies try to keep to themselves.
The next innovation that came along was another young Chicago man named
Billoughby, and _his_ title on the pay-roll was "Special Agent." What he
did to earn his salary was the one thing that Juneman didn't publish
broadcast in the newspapers; it was kept so dark that not a line of it
got into the office records, and even I, who was as close to the boss as
anybody in our outfit, never once suspected the true nature of
Billoughby's job until the day he came in to make his final report--and
Mr. Norcross let him make it without sending me out on an errand.
"Well, I think I'm ready to talk Johnson, now," was the way Billoughby
began. "I've been into all the deals and side deals, and I've had it out
with Ripley on the legal points involved. Red Tower is the one outfit
we'll have to kill off and put out of business. Under one name or
another, it is engineering every graft in this country; it is even
backing the fake mining boom at Saw Horse--to which, by the way, this
railroad company is now building a branch line."
Mr. Norcross turned to me:
"Jimmie, make a note to tell Mr. Van Britt to have the work stopped at
once on the Saw Horse branch, and all the equipment brought in." And
then to Billoughby: "Go on."
"The main graft, of course, is in the grain elevators, the fruit
packeries, the coal and lumber yards and the stock yards and handling
corrals. In these public, or _quasi_-public, utilities Red Tower has
everybody else shut out, because the railroad has given them--in fee
simple, it seems--all the yard room, switches, track facilities, and the
like. Wherever local competition has tried to break in, the railroad
company has given it the cold shoulder and it has been either forced out
or frozen out."
"Exactly," said the boss. "Now tell me how far you have gone in the
other field."
"We are pretty well shaped up and are about ready to begin business.
Juneman has done splendid work, and so has Ripley. Public sentiment is
still incredulous, of course. It's mighty hard to make people believe
that we are in earnest; that we have actually gone over to their side in
the fight. They're all from Missouri, and they want to be shown."
"Naturally," said Mr. Norcross.
"We have succeeded, in a measure, though the opposition has been keeping
up a steady bombardment. Hatch and his people haven't been idle. They
have a strong commercial organization and a stout pull with the machine
element, or rather the gang element, in politics. They own or control a
dozen or more prominent newspapers in the State, and, as you know, they
are making an open fight on you and your management through these
papers. The net result so far has been merely to keep the people stirred
up and doubtful. They know they can't trust Hatch and his crowd, and
they're afraid they can't trust you. They say that the railroad has
never played fair--and I guess it hasn't, in the past."
"Not within a thousand miles," was the boss's curt comment. "But go on
with your story."
"We pulled the new deal off yesterday, simultaneously in eleven of the
principal towns along the line. Meetings of the bankers and local
capitalists were held, and we had a man at each one of them to explain
our plan and to pledge the backing of the railroad. Notwithstanding all
the doubt and dust that's been kicked up by the Hatch people, it went
like wild-fire."
"With money?" queried the boss.
"Yes; with real money. Citizens' Storage & Warehouse was launched, as
you might say, on the spot, and enough capital was subscribed to make it
a going concern. Of course, there were some doubters, and some few
greedy ones. The doubters wanted to know how much of the stock was going
to be held by officials of the railroad company, and it was pretty hard
to convince them that no Short Line official would be allowed to
participate, directly or indirectly."
"And the greedy ones?"
"They kicked on that part of the plan which provides for the local
apportionment of the stock to cover the local needs of each town only;
they wanted more than their share. Also, they protested against the
fixed dividend scheme; they didn't see why the new company shouldn't be
allowed to cut a melon now and then if it should be fortunate enough to
grow one."
Mr. Norcross smiled. "That is precisely what the Hatch people have been
doing, all along, and it is the chief grievance of these same people who
now want a chance to outbid their neighbors. The lease condition was
fully explained to them, wasn't it?"
"Oh, yes; Ripley saw to that, and copies of the lease were in the
exhibits. The new company is to have railroad ground to build on, and
ample track facilities in perpetuity, conditioned strictly upon the
limited dividend. If the dividend is increased, the leases terminate
automatically."
The boss drew a long breath.
"You've done well, and better than well, Billoughby," he said. "Now we
are ready to fire the blast. How was the proposal to take over the Red
Tower properties at a fair valuation received?"
"There was some opposition. Lesterburg, and three of the other larger
towns, want to build their own plants. They are bitter enough to want to
smash the big monopoly, root and branch. But they agreed to abide by a
majority vote of the stock on that point, and my wire reports this
morning say that a lump-sum offer will be made for the Red Tower plants
to-day."
Mr. Norcross sat back in his chair and blew a cloud of cigar smoke
toward the ceiling.
"Hatch won't sell," he predicted. "He'll be up here before night with
blood in his eye. I'm rather glad it has come down to the actual give
and take. I don't play the waiting game very successfully, Billoughby.
Keep in touch, and keep me in touch. And tell Ripley to keep on pushing
on the reins. The sooner we get at it, the sooner it will be over."
After Billoughby had gone, Mr. Norcross dictated a swift bunch of
letters and telegrams and had me turn my shorthand notes over to Fred
May for transcription. With the desk cleaned up he came at me on a
little matter that had been allowed to sleep ever since the day, now
some time back, when I had given him Mrs. Sheila's hint about the
identity of the two men who had sat and smoked in the auto that Sunday
night at Sand Creek Siding, and about the talk between the same two that
I had overheard the following morning.
"We are going to have sharp trouble with a gentleman by the name of
Hatch before very long, Jimmie," was the way he began. "I don't want to
hit him below the belt, if I can help it; but on the other hand, it's
just as well to be able to give the punch if it is needed. You remember
what you told me about that Monday morning talk between Hatch and
Henckel in the Bullard lobby. Would you be willing to go into court as a
witness and swear to what you heard?"
"Sure I would," I said.
"All right. I may have to pull that little incident on Mr. Hatch before
I get through with him. The train hold-up was a criminal act, and you
are the witness who can convict the pair of them. Of course, we'll leave
Mrs. Macrae and the little girl entirely out of it. Nobody knows that
they were there with us, and nobody need know."
I agreed to that, and this mention of Mrs. Sheila and Maisie Ann makes
me remember that I've been leaving them out pretty severely for a good
long while. They weren't left out in reality-not by a jugful. In spite
of all the rush and hustle, the boss had found time to get acquainted
with Major Basil Kendrick and had been made at home in the transplanted
Kentucky mansion in the northern suburb. I'd been there too, sometimes
to carry a box of flowers when the boss was suddenly called out of
town, and some other evenings when I had to go and hunt him up to give
him a bunch of telegrams. Of course, I didn't play the butt-in; I didn't
have to. Maisie Ann usually looked out for me, and when she found out
that I liked pumpkin pie, made Kentucky fashion, we used to spend most
of those errand-running evenings together in the pantry.
But to get back on the firing line. I wasn't around when Mr. Norcross
had his "declaration of war" talk with Hatch. Mr. Norcross, being pretty
sure he wasn't going to have that evening off, had sent me out to
"Kenwood" with a note and a box of roses, and when I got back to the
office about eight o'clock, Hatch was just going away. I met him on the
stair.
The boss was sitting back in his big swing chair, smoking, when I broke
in. He looked as if he'd been mixing it up good and plenty with Mr.
Rufus Hatch--and enjoying it.
"We've got 'em going, Jimmie," he chuckled; and he said it without
asking me how I had found Mrs. Sheila, or how she was looking, or
anything.
I told him I had met Mr. Hatch on the stair going down.
"He didn't say anything to you, did he?" he asked.
"Not a word."
"I had to pull that Sand Creek business on him, and I'm rather sorry,"
he went on. "He and his people are going to fight the new company to a
finish, and he merely came up here to tell me so--and to add that I
might as well resign first as last, because, in the end, he'd get my
goat. When I laughed at him he got abusive. He's an ugly beggar,
Jimmie."
"That's what everybody says of him."
"It's true. He and his crowd have plenty of money--stolen money, a good
deal of it--and they stand in with every political boss and gangster in
the State. There is only one way to handle such a man, and that is
without gloves. I told him we had the goods on him in the matter of Mr.
Chadwick's kidnapping adventure. At first he said I couldn't prove it.
Then he broke out cursing and let your name slip. I hadn't mentioned you
at all, and so he gave himself away. He knows who you are, and he
remembered that you had overheard his talk with Henckel in the Bullard
lobby."
I heard what he was saying, but I didn't really sense it because my head
was ram jam full of a thing that was so pitiful that it had kept me
swallowing hard all the way back from Major Kendrick's. It was this way.
When I had jiggled the bell out at the house it was Maisie Ann who let
me in and took the box of flowers and the boss's note. She told me that
Aunt Mandy, the cook, hadn't made any pie that day, so we sat in the
dimly lighted hall and talked for a few minutes.
One thing she told me was that Mrs. Sheila had company and the name of
it was Mr. Van Britt. That wasn't strictly news because I had known that
Mr. Van Britt was dividing time pretty evenly with the boss in the Major
Kendrick house visits. That wasn't anything to be scared up about. I
knew that all Mr. Norcross asked, or would need, would be a fair field
and no favor. But my chunky little girl didn't stop at that.
"I think we can let Mr. Van Britt take care of himself," she said. "He
has known Cousin Sheila for a long time, and I guess they are only just
good friends. But there is something you ought to know, Jimmie--for Mr.
Norcross's sake. He has been sending lots of flowers and things, and
Cousin Sheila has been taking them because--well, I guess it's just
because she doesn't know how not to take them."
"Go on," I said, but my mouth had suddenly grown dry.
"Such things--flowers, you know--don't mean anything in New York, where
we've been living. Men send them to their women friends just as they
pass their cigar-cases around among their men friends. But I'm afraid
it's different with Mr. Norcross."
"It is different," I said.
Then she told me the thing that made me swell up and want to burst.
"It mustn't be different, Jimmie. Cousin Sheila's married, you know."
"I know she has been married," I corrected; and then she gave me the
sure-enough knock-out.
"She is married now, and her husband is still living."
For a little while I couldn't do anything but gape like a chicken with
the pip. It was simply fierce! I knew, as well as I knew anything, that
the boss was gone on Mrs. Sheila; that he had fallen in love, first with
the back of her neck and then with her pretty face and then with all of
her; and that the one big reason why he had let Mr. Chadwick persuade
him to stay in Portal City was the fact that he had wanted to be near
her and to show her how he could make a perfectly good spoon out of the
spoiled horn of the Pioneer Short Line.
When I began to get my grip back a little I was right warm under the
collar.
"She oughtn't to be going around telling people she is a widow!" I
blurted out.
"She doesn't," was the calm reply. "People just take it for granted, and
it saves a lot of talk and explanations that it wouldn't be pleasant to
have to make. They've separated, you know--years ago, and Cousin Sheila
has taken her mother's maiden name, Macrae. If we were going to live
here always it would be different. But we are only visiting Cousin
Basil, or I suppose we are, though we've been here now for nearly a
year."
There wasn't much more to be said, and pretty soon I had staggered off
with my load and gone back to the office. And this was why I couldn't
get very deep into the Hatch business with Mr. Norcross when he told me
what he had been obliged to do about the Sand Creek hold-up.
He didn't say anything further about it, except to tell me to be careful
and not let any of the Hatch people tangle me up so that my evidence, if
I should have to give it, would be made to look like a faked-up story;
and a little before nine o'clock Mr. Ripley dropped in and he and the
boss went up-town together.
I might have gone, too. Fred May had got through and gone home, and
there was nothing much that I could do beyond filing a few letters and
tidying up a bit around my own desk. But I couldn't make up my mind
either to work or to go to bed. I wanted a chance to think over the
horrible thing Maisie Ann had told me; time to cook up some scheme by
which the boss could be let down easy.
If he had been like other men it wouldn't have been so hard. But I had a
feeling that he had gone into this love business just as he did into
everything--neck or nothing--burning his bridges behind him, and having
no notion of ever turning back. I had once heard our Oregon Midland
president, Mr. Lepaige, say that it was not good for a man always to
succeed; never to be beaten; that without a setback, now and then, a man
never learned how to bend without breaking. The boss had never been
beaten, and Mr. Lepaige was talking about him when he said this. What
was it going to do to him when he learned the truth about Mrs. Sheila?
On top of this came the still harder knock when I saw that it was up to
me to tell him. I remembered all the stories I'd ever heard about how
the most cold-blooded surgeon that ever lived wouldn't trust himself to
stick a knife into a member of his own family, and I knew now just how
the surgeon felt about it. It was up to me to whet my old Barlow and
stick it into the boss, clear up to the handle.
While I was still sweating under the big load Maisie Ann had dumped upon
me, the night despatcher's boy came in with a message. It was from Mr.
Chadwick, and I read it with my eyes bugging out. This is what it said:
"To G. NORCROSS, G. M.,
"Portal City.
"P. S. L. Common dropped to thirty-four to-day, and banks lending
on short time notes for betterment fund are getting nervous. Wire
from New York says bondholders are stirring and talking
receivership. General opinion in financial circles leans to idea
that new policy is foregone failure. Are you still sure you can
make it win?
"CHADWICK."
Right on the heels of this, and before I could get my breath, in came
the boy again with another telegram. It was a hot wire from President
Dunton, one of a series that he had been shooting in ever since Mr.
Norcross had taken hold and begun firing the cousins and nephews.
"To G. NORCROSS, G. M.,
"Portal City. RUSH.
"See stock quotations for to-day. Your policy is a failure. Am
advised you are now fighting Red Tower. Stop it immediately and
assure Mr. Hatch that we are friendly, as we have always been. If
something cannot be done to lift securities to better figure, your
resignation will be in order.
"DUNTON."
They say that misfortunes never come singly. Here were two new griefs
hurling themselves in over the wires all in the same quarter-hour,
besides the one I had up my sleeve. But there was no use dallying. It
was up to me to find the boss as quickly as I could and have the
three-cornered surgical operation over with. I knew the telegrams
wouldn't kill him--or I thought they wouldn't. I thought they'd probably
make him take a fresh strangle hold on things and be fired--if he had to
be fired--fighting it out grimly on his own line. But I wasn't so sure
about the Mrs. Sheila business. That was a horse of another color.
I had just reached for my hat and was getting ready to snap the
electrics off when I heard footsteps in the outer office. At first I
thought it was the despatcher's boy coming with another wire, but when I
looked up, a stocky, hard-faced man in a derby hat and a short overcoat
was standing in the doorway and scowling across at me.
It was Mr. Rufus Hatch, and I had a notion that the hot end of his black
cigar glared at me like a baleful red eye when he came in and sat down.
IX
And Satan Came Also
"I saw your office lights from the street," was the way the Red Tower
president began on me, and his voice took me straight back to the Oregon
woods and a lumber camp where the saw-filers were at work. "Where is Mr.
Norcross?"
I told him that Mr. Norcross was up-town, and that I didn't suppose he
would come back to the office again that night, now that it was so late.
Instead of going away and giving it up, he sat right still, boring me
with his little gray eyes and shifting the black cigar from one corner
of his mouth to the other.
"My name is Hatch, of the Red Tower Company," he grated, after a minute
or two. "You're the one they call Dodds, aren't you?"
I admitted it, and he went on.
"Norcross brought you here with him from the West, didn't he?"
I nodded and wondered what was coming next. When it did come it nearly
bowled me over.
"What pay are you getting here?"
It was on the tip of my tongue to cuss him out right there and then and
tell him it was none of his business. But the second thought (which
isn't always as good as it's said to be) whispered to me to lead him on
and see how far he would go. So I told him the figures of my pay check.
"I'm needing another shorthand man, and I can afford to pay a good bit
more than that," he growled. "They tell me you are well up at the top in
your trade. Are you open to an offer?"
I let him have it straight then. "Not from you," I said.
"And why not from me?"
Here was where I made my first bad break. All of a sudden I got so angry
at the thought that he was actually trying to buy me that I couldn't see
anything but red, and I blurted out, "Because I don't hire out to work
for any strong-arm outfit--not if I know it!"
For a little while he sat blinking at me from under his bushy eyebrows,
and his hard mouth was drawn into a straight line with a mean little
wrinkle coming and going at the corners of it.
When he got ready to speak again he said, "You're only a boy. You want
to get on in the world, don't you?"
"Supposing I do: what then?" I snapped.
"I'm offering you a good chance: the best you ever had. You don't owe
Norcross anything more than your job, do you?"
"Maybe not."
"That's better. Put on your hat and come along with me. I want to show
you what I can do for you in a better field than railroading ever was,
or ever will be. It'll pay you--" and he named a figure that very nearly
made me fall dead out of my chair.
Of course, it was all plain enough. The boss had him on the hip with
that kidnapping business, with me for a witness. And he was trying to
fix the witness. It's funny, but the only thing I thought of, just then,
was the necessity of covering up the part that Mrs. Sheila and Maisie
Ann had had in the hold-up affair that he was so anxious to bury and put
out of sight.
"I guess we needn't beat about the bushes any longer, Mr. Hatch," I
said, bracing up to him. "I haven't told the sheriff, or anybody but Mr.
Norcross, what I know about a certain little train hold-up that happened
a few weeks ago down at Sand Creek Siding; but that isn't saying that
I'm not going to."
At this he flung the stump of the black cigar out of the window, found
another in his pocket, and lighted it. If I had had the sense of a field
mouse, I might have known that I was no match for such a man; but I
lacked the sense--lacked it good and hard.
"You're like your boss," he said shortly. "You'd go a long distance out
of your way to make an enemy when there is no need of it. That hold-up
business was a joke, from start to finish. I don't know how you and
Norcross came to get in on it; the joke was meant to be on John
Chadwick. The night before, at a little dinner we were giving him at the
railroad club, he said there never was a railroad hold-up that couldn't
have been stood off. A few of us got together afterward and put up a job
on him; sent him over to Strathcona and arranged to have him held up on
the way back."
Again I lost my grip on all the common, every-day sanities. My best
play--the only reasonable play--was to let him go away thinking that he
had made me swallow the joke story whole. But I didn't have sense enough
to do that.
"Mr. Chadwick didn't take it as a joke!" I retorted.
"I know he didn't; and that's why we're all anxious now to dig a hole
and bury the thing decently. Perhaps we had all been taking a drop too
much at the club dinner that night."
At that I swelled up man-size and kicked the whole kettle of fat into
the fire.
"Of course, it was a joke!" I ripped out. "And your coming here to-night
to try to hire me away from Mr. Norcross is another. The woods are full
of good shorthand men, Mr. Hatch, but for the present I think I shall
stay right where I am--where a court subpoena can find me when I'm
wanted."
"That's all nonsense, and you know it--if you're not too much of a kid
to know anything," he snapped, shooting out his heavy jaw at me. "I
merely wanted to give you a chance to get rid of the railroad collar, if
you felt like it. And there'll be no court and no subpoena. The
poorest jack-leg lawyer we've got in Portal City would make a fool of
you in five minutes on the witness-stand. Nevertheless, my offer holds
good. I like a fighting man; and you've got nerve. Take a night and
sleep on it. Maybe you'll think differently in the morning."
Here was another chance for me to get off with a whole skin, but by this
time I was completely lost to any sober weighing and measuring of the
possible consequences. Leaning across the desk end I gave him a final
shot, just as he was getting up to go.
"Listen, Mr. Hatch," I said. "You haven't fooled me for a single minute.
Your guess is right; I heard every word that passed between you and Mr.
Henckel that Monday morning in the Bullard lobby. As I say, I haven't
told anybody yet but Mr. Norcross; but if you go to making trouble for
him and the railroad company, I'll go into court and swear to what I
know!"
He was half-way out of the door when I got through, and he never made
any sign that he heard what I said. After he was gone I began to sense,
just a little, how big a fool I had made of myself. But I was still mad
clear through at the idea that he had taken me for the other kind of a
fool--the kind that wouldn't know enough to be sure that the president
of a big corporation wouldn't get down to tampering with a common clerk
unless there was some big thing to be stood off by it.
Stewing and sizzling over it, I puttered around with the papers on my
desk for quite a little while before I remembered the two telegrams, and
the fact that I'd have to go and stick the three-bladed knife into Mr.
Norcross. When I did remember, I shoved the messages into my pocket,
flicked off the lights and started to go up-town and hunt for the boss.
After closing the outer door of the office I don't recall anything
particular except that I felt my way down the headquarters stair in the
dark and groped across the lower hall to the outside door that served
for the stair-case entrance from the street. When I had felt around and
found the brass knob, something happened, I didn't know just what. In
the tiny little fraction of a second that I had left, as you might say,
between the hearse and the grave, I had a vague notion that the door was
falling over on me and mashing me flat; and after that, everything went
blank.
X
The Big Smash
When I came to life out of what seemed like an endless succession of bad
dreams it was broad daylight and the sun was shining brightly through
some filmy kind of curtain stuff in a big window that looked out toward
the west. I was in bed, the room was strange, and my right hand was
wrapped up in a lot of cotton and bandaged.
I hadn't more than made the first restless move before I saw a sort of
pie-faced woman in a nurse's cap and apron start to get up from where
she was sitting by the window. Before she could come over to the bed,
somebody opened a door and tip-toed in ahead of nursey. I had to blink
hard two or three times before I could really make up my mind that the
tip-toer was Maisie Ann. She looked as if she might be the nurse's
understudy. She had a nifty little lace cap on her thick mop of hair,
and I guess her apron was meant to be nursey too, only it was frilled
and tucked to a fare-you-well.
I don't know whether or not I've mentioned it before, but she was always
an awfully wholesome, jolly little girl, with a laugh so near the
surface that it never took much of anything to make it come rippling up
through. But now she was as sober as a deacon--and about fourteen times
as pretty as I had ever seen her before.
"You poor, poor boy!" she cooed, patting my pillow just like my
grandmother used to when I was a little kid and had the mumps or the
measles. "Are you still roaming around in the Oregon woods?"
That brought my dream, or one of them, back; the one about wandering
around in a forest of Douglas fir and having to jump and dodge to keep
the big trees from falling on me and smashing me.
"No more woods for mine," I said, sort of feebly. And then: "Where am
I?"
"You are in bed in the spare room at Cousin Basil's. They wanted to take
you to the railroad hospital that night, but when they telephoned up
here to try to find Mr. Norcross, Cousin Basil went right down and
brought you home with him in the ambulance."
"'That night,' you say?" I parroted. "It was last night that the door
fell on me, wasn't it?"
"I don't know anything about a door, but the night that they found you
all burnt and crippled, lying at the foot of your office stairs, was
three days ago. You have been out of your head nearly all the time ever
since."
"Burnt and crippled? What happened to me, Maisie Ann?"
"Nobody knows; not even the doctors. We've been hoping that some day
you'd be able to tell us. Can't you tell me now, Jimmie?"
I told her all there was to tell, mumbling around among the words the
best I could. When she saw how hard it was for me to talk, I could have
sworn that I saw tears in the big, wide-open eyes, but maybe I didn't.
Then she told me how the headquarters watchman had found me about
midnight; with my right hand scorched black and the rest of me
apparently dead and ready to be buried. The ambulance surgeon had
insisted, and was still insisting, that I had been handling a live wire;
but there were no wires at all in the lower hall, and nothing stronger
than an incandescent light current in the entire office building.
"And you say I've been here hanging on by my eyelashes for three days?
What has been going on in all that time, Maisie Ann? Hasn't anybody been
here to see me?"
She gave a little nod. "Everybody, nearly. Mr. Van Britt has been up
every day, and sometimes twice a day. He has been awfully anxious for
you to come alive."
"But Mr. Norcross?" I queried. "Hasn't he been up?"
She shook her head and turned her face away, and she was looking
straight out of the window at the setting sun when she asked, "When was
the last time you saw Mr. Norcross, Jimmie?"
I choked a little over a big scare that seemed to rush up out of the
bed-clothes to smother me. But I made out to answer her question,
telling her how Mr. Norcross had left the office maybe half an hour or
so before I did, that night, going up-town with Mr. Ripley. Then I asked
her why she wanted to know.
"Because nobody has seen him since a little later that same night," she
said, saying it very softly and without turning her head. And then: "Mr.
Van Britt found a letter from Mr. Norcross on his desk the next morning.
It was just a little typewritten note, on a Hotel Bullard letter sheet,
saying that he had made up his mind that the Pioneer Short Line wasn't
worth fighting for, and that he was resigning and taking the midnight
train for the East."
I sat straight up in bed; I should have had to do it if both arms had
been burnt to a crisp clear to the shoulders.
"Resigned?--gave up and ran away? I don't believe that for a single
minute, Maisie Ann!" I burst out.
She was shaking her head again, still without turning her face so that I
could see it.
"I--I'm afraid it's all true, Jimmie. There were two telegrams that came
to Mr. Norcross the night he went away; one from Mr. Chadwick and the
other from Mr. Dunton. I heard Mr. Van Britt telling Cousin Sheila what
the messages were. He'd seen the copies of them that they keep in the
telegraph office."
It was on my tongue's end to say that Mr. Norcross never had seen those
two telegrams, because I had them in my pocket and was on my way to
deliver them when I got shot; but I didn't. Instead, I said: "And you
think that was why Mr. Norcross threw up his hands and ran away?"
"No; I don't think anything of the sort. I know what it was, and you
know what it was," and at that she turned around and pushed me gently
down among the pillows.
"What was it?" I whispered, more than half afraid that I was going to
hear a confirmation of my own breath-taking conviction. And I heard it,
all right.
"It was what I was telling you about, that same evening, you
remember--down in the hall when you brought the flowers for Cousin
Sheila? You told him what I told you, didn't you?"
"No; I didn't have a chance--not any real chance."
"Then somebody else told him, Jimmie; and that is the reason he has
resigned and gone away. Mr. Van Britt thinks it was on account of the
two messages from Mr. Chadwick and Mr. Dunton, and that is why he wants
to talk to you about it. But you know, and I know, Jimmie, dear; and for
Cousin Sheila's sake and Mr. Norcross's, we must never lisp it to a
human soul. A new general manager has been appointed, and he is on his
way out here from New York. Everything has gone to pieces on the
railroad, and all of Mr. Norcross's friends are getting ready to resign.
Isn't it perfectly heart-breaking?"
It was; it was so heart-breaking that I just gasped once or twice and
went off the hooks again, with Maisie Ann's frightened little shriek
ringing in my ears as she tried to hold me back from slipping over the
edge.
XI
What Every Man Knows
I wasn't gone very long on this second excursion into the woozy-woozies,
though it was night-time, and the shaded electric light was turned on
when I opened my eyes and found Mrs. Sheila sitting by the bedside. The
pie-faced nurse was gone; or at least I didn't see her anywhere; and the
change in Mrs. Sheila sort of made me gasp. She wasn't any less pretty
as she sat there with her hands clasped in her lap, but she was
different; sober, and with the laugh all gone out of the big gray eyes,
and a look in them as if she had suddenly become so wise that nobody
could ever fool her.
"You are feeling better now?" she asked, when she found me staring at
her.
I told her I guessed I was, but that my hand hurt me some.
"You have had a great shock of some kind--besides the burn, Jimmie," she
rejoined, folding up the bed covers so that the bandaged hand would rest
easier. "The doctors are all puzzled. Does your head feel quite clear
now--so that you can think?"
"It feels as if I had a crazy clock in it," I said. "But the thinking
part is all right. Have you heard anything from Mr. Norcross yet?"
"Not a word. It is all very mysterious and perplexing. We have been
hoping that you could tell us something when you should recover
sufficiently to talk. Can't you, Jimmie?"
Remembering what Maisie Ann had told me just before I went off the
hooks, I thought I might tell her a lot if I dared to. But that wouldn't
do. So I just said:
"I told Maisie Ann all I knew about Mr. Norcross. He left the office
some little time before I did--with Mr. Ripley. I didn't know where they
were going."
"They went to the hotel," she helped out. "Mr. Ripley says they sat in
the lobby until after ten o'clock, and then Mr. Norcross went up to his
rooms."
Of course, I knew that Mr. Ripley knew all about the Hatch ruction; but
if he hadn't told her, I wasn't going to tell her. She had got ahead of
me, there, though; perhaps she had been talking with the major, who
always knew everything that was going on.
"There was some trouble in connection with Mr. Hatch that evening,
wasn't there?" she asked.
"Hatch had some trouble--yes. But I guess the boss didn't have any," I
replied.
"Tell me about it," she commanded; and I told her just as little as I
could; how Hatch had had an interview with the boss earlier in the
evening, while I was away.
"It wasn't a quarrel?" she suggested.
"Why should they quarrel?" I asked.
She shook her head. "You are sparring with me, Jimmie, in some mistaken
idea of being loyal to Mr. Norcross. You needn't, you know. Mr. Norcross
has told me all about his plans; he has even been generous enough to say
that I helped him make them. That is why I can not understand why he
should do as he has done--or at least as everybody believes he has
done."
I saw how it was. She was trying to find some explanation that would
clear the boss, and perhaps implicate the Hatch crowd. I couldn't tell
her the real reason why he had run away. Maisie Ann had been right as
right about that; we must keep it to our two selves. But I tried to let
her down easy.
"Mr. Van Britt has told you about those two telegrams that came after
Mr. Norcross left the office," I said, still covering up the fact that
the telegrams hadn't been delivered--that they were probably in the
pocket of my coat right now, wherever that was. "They were enough to
make any man throw up his hands and quit, _I_ should say."
"No," she insisted, looking me straight in the eyes. "You are not
telling the truth now, Jimmie. You know Mr. Norcross better than any of
us, and you know that it isn't the least little bit like him to walk out
and leave everything to go to wreck. Have you ever known of his doing
anything like that before?"
I had to admit that I hadn't; that, on the other hand, it was the very
thing you'd least expect him to do. But at the same time I had to hang
on to my sham belief that it was the thing he _had_ done: either that,
or tell her the truth.
"Every man reaches his limit, some time!" I protested. "What was Mr.
Norcross to do, I'd like to know; with Mr. Chadwick getting scared out,
and Mr. Dunton threatening to fire him?"
"The thing he wouldn't do would be to go off and leave all of his
friends, Mr. Van Britt and Mr. Hornack, and all the rest, to fight it
out alone. You know that as well as I do, Jimmie Dodds!"
There was actually a flash of fire in the pretty gray eyes when she said
that, and her loyal defense of the boss made me love her good and hard.
I wished, clear to the bottom of my heart, that I dared tell her just
why it was that Mr. Norcross had thrown up his hands and dropped out,
but that was out of the question.
"If you won't take my theory, you must have one of your own," I said;
not knowing what else to say.
"I have," she flashed back, "and I want you to hurry and get well so
that you can help me trace it out."
"Me?" I queried.
"Yes, you. The others are all so stupid! even Mr. Van Britt and Mr.
Ripley. They insist that Mr. Norcross went east to see and talk with Mr.
Chadwick. They have found out that Mr. Chadwick left Chicago the day
after he sent that telegram, to go up into the Canadian woods to look at
some mines, or something. They say that Mr. Norcross has followed him,
and that is why they don't hear anything from him."
"What do _you_ think?" I asked.
She didn't answer right away, and in the little pause I saw a sort of
frightened look come into her eyes. But all she said was, "I want you to
hurry up and get well, Jimmie, so you can help."
"I'm well enough now, if they'll let me get up."
"Not to-night; to-morrow, maybe." Then: "Mr. Van Britt is down-stairs
with Cousin Basil. He has been very anxious to talk with you as soon as
you were able to talk. May I send him up?"
Of course I said yes; and pretty soon after she went away, our one and
only millionaire came in. He looked as he always did; just as if he had
that minute stepped out of a Turkish bath where they shave and scrub and
polish a man till he shines.
"How are you, Jimmie?" he rapped out. "Glad to see you on earth again.
Feeling a little more fit, to-night?"
I told him I didn't think it would take more than half a dozen fellows
of my size to knock me out, but I was gaining. Then he sat down and put
me on the question rack. I gave him all I had--except that thing about
the undelivered telegrams and two or three others that I couldn't give
him or anybody, and at the end of it he said:
"I've been hoping you could help out. I don't need to tell you that this
new turn things have taken has us all fought to a standstill, Jimmie.
I've known 'the boss', as you call him, ever since we were boys
together, and I never knew him to do anything like this before."
"We're in pretty bad shape, aren't we?" I suggested.
"We couldn't be in worse shape," was the way he put it. Then he told me
a little more than Maisie Ann had; how President Dunton had wired to
stop all the betterment work on the Short Line until the new general
manager could get on the ground; how the local capitalists at the head
of the new Citizens' Storage & Warehouse organization were scared plumb
out of their shoes and were afraid to make a move; and how the
newspapers all over the State were saying that it was just what they had
expected--that the railroad was crooked in root and branch, and that a
good man couldn't stay with it long enough to get his breath.
"Then the new general manager has been appointed?" I asked.
He nodded. "Some fellow by the name of Dismuke. I don't know him, and
neither does Hornack. He is on his way west now, they say."
"And there is no word from Mr. Chadwick?"
"Nothing direct. His secretary wires that he is somewhere up north of
Lake Superior, in the Canadian mining country and out of reach of the
telegraph."
"Mr. Norcross hasn't shown up at Mr. Chadwick's Chicago offices?" I
ventured.
"No. The telegraph people have been wiring everywhere and can't get any
trace of him."
"Tell them to try Galesburg. That's where his people live."
"I know," he said; and he made a note of the address on the back of an
envelope. Then he came at me again, on the "direct," as a lawyer would
say.
"You've been closer to Norcross in an intimate way than any of us,
Jimmie: haven't you seen or heard something that would help to turn a
little more light on this damnable blow-up?"
I hadn't--outside of the one thing I couldn't talk about--and I told him
so, and at this he let me see a little more of what was going on in his
own mind.
"You're one of us, in a way, Jimmie, and I can talk freely to you. I'm
new to this neck of woods, but the major tells me that the Hatch crowd
is a pretty tough proposition. Mrs. Macrae goes farther and insists that
there has been foul play of some sort. You say you weren't present when
Hatch called on Norcross at the office that night?"
"No; I came in just after Hatch went away."
"Did Norcross say anything to make you think there had been a fight?"
"He told me that Hatch was abusive and had made threats--in a business
way."
"In a business way? What do you mean by that?"
I quoted the boss's own words, as nearly as I could recall them.
"So Hatch did make a threat, then? He said that Norcross might as well
resign one time as another?"
"Something like that, yes."
"Can you add anything more?"
I could, but I didn't want to. Mr. Van Britt didn't know anything about
the Sand Creek Siding hold-up, or I supposed he didn't, and I didn't
want to be the first one to tell him. Besides, the whole business was
beside the mark. Maisie Ann knew, and I knew, that the boss, strong and
unbreakable as he was in other ways, had simply thrown up his hands and
quit because somebody had told him that Mrs. Sheila had a husband
living. So I just said:
"Nothing that would help out," and after he had talked a little while
longer our only millionaire went down-stairs again.
It's funny how things change around for a person just by giving them
time to sort of shake down into place and fit themselves together.
Nobody came up any more that night; not even the pie-faced nurse; and I
had a good chance to lie there looking up at the ceiling pattern of the
wall paper and thinking things out to a finish.
After a while the thin edge of the wedge that Mrs. Sheila had been
trying to drive into me began to take hold, just a little, in spite of
what I knew--or thought I knew. Was it barely possible, after all, that
there had been foul play of some sort? There were plenty of mysteries to
give the possibility standing-room.
In the first place, something had been done to me by somebody: it was a
sure thing that I hadn't crippled and half-killed myself all by my
lonesome. Then they had said that the boss stayed up with Mr. Ripley
that night until after ten o'clock, and had then gone up to go to bed.
That being the case, how could anybody have got to him between that time
and the leaving time of the midnight Fast Mail to tell him about Mrs.
Sheila?
Anyway it was stacked up, it made a three-cornered puzzle, needing
somebody to tackle it right away; and when I finally went to sleep it
was with the notion that, sick or no sick, I was going to turn out
early in the morning and get busy.
XII
With the Wheels Trigged
I was well enough to get up the next morning, and when I phoned to Mr.
Van Britt he sent his car out to the major's to take me down to the
office. Just before I left the house, Mrs. Sheila waylaid me, and after
telling me that I must be careful and not take cold in the burnt hand,
she put in another word about the boss's disappearance.
"I want you to remember what I said last night, Jimmie, and not let the
others talk you over into the belief that Mr. Norcross has gone away
because he was either discouraged or afraid. He wouldn't do that: you
know it, and I know it. We are his friends, you and I, and we must stand
by him and defend him when he isn't here to defend himself."
It did me good to hear her talk that way, and I wondered if she could be
the same young woman who had jumped off the train to run skittering
after Maisie Ann, and had afterward made the boss turn himself inside
out under the water tank just for her pastime. It didn't seem possible;
she seemed so many worlds older and wiser. I had been sort of getting
ready to dislike her for letting the boss get in so deep and not telling
him straight out that she was a married woman and he mustn't; but when I
saw that she was trying to be just as loyal to him as I was, it pulled
me over to her side again.
So I promised to do all the things she told me to do, and to keep her
posted as to what was going on; and then she made me feel kind of
kiddish and feckless by coming out and helping me into Mr. Van Britt's
auto.
Though the boss's disappearance was now four days old, things were still
in a sort of daze down at the railroad offices. Of course, the trains
were running yet, and, so far as anybody could see, the Short Line was
still a going proposition. But the heart was gone out of the whole
business, and the entire push was acting as if it were just waiting for
the roof to fall in--as I guess it was.
Mr. Van Britt, being the general superintendent and next in command, had
moved over into the boss's office, and Fred May was doing his shorthand
work. They wouldn't let me do anything much--I couldn't do much with my
right arm in a sling--so I had a chance to hang around and size up the
situation. If you want to know how it sized up, you can take it from me
that it was pretty bad. People all along the line were bombarding Mr.
Van Britt with letters and telegrams wanting to know what was going to
be done, and what the change in management was going to mean for the
public, and all that. On top of this, the office ante-room was full of
callers, some of them just merely curious, but most of them dead
anxious. You see, Mr. Norcross had laid out a mighty attractive
programme in the little time he had been at the wheel, and now it looked
as if it was all going to be dumped into the ditch.
Mr. Van Britt saw and talked with everybody, and when he could wedge off
a minute or two of privacy, he'd go into the third room of the suite and
thresh it out with Juneman, or Billoughby, or Mr. Ripley. From these
private talks I found out that there was still some doubt in the minds
of all four of them about the boss's drop-out--as to whether it was
voluntary or not.
Also, I found out what had been done during the four days. We had no
"company detective" at that time, and Mr. Hornack had borrowed a man
named Grimmer from his old company, the Overland Central, wiring for him
and getting him on the ground within twenty-four hours of the time of
Mr. Norcross's disappearance.
Grimmer had gone to work at once, but everything he had turned up, so
far, favored the voluntary runaway theory. Mr. Norcross's trunks were
still in his rooms at the Bullard; but his two grips were gone. And the
night clerk at the hotel, when he was pushed to it, remembered that the
boss had paid his bill up to date, that night before going up to his
rooms.
Past that, the trace was completely lost. The conductor on the Fast
Mail, eastbound, on the night in question, ought to have been the next
witness. But he wasn't. He swore by all that was good and great that Mr.
Norcross hadn't been a passenger on his train. And he would certainly
have known it if he had been carrying his general manager. Besides that,
the boss wasn't the kind of man to be lost in a crowd; he was too big
and too well known by this time to the rank and file.
Over in the other field there was absolutely nothing to incriminate the
Hatch people. So far from it, Hatch had turned up at the railroad
office, bright and early the morning after Mr. Norcross had gone. He had
asked for the boss, and failing to find him, he had hunted up Mr. Van
Britt. What he wanted, it seemed, was a chance to reopen the proposition
that had been made to him the day before--the offer of the new Citizens'
Storage & Warehouse Company to purchase the various Red Tower equipments
and plants.
Mr. Van Britt had referred him to Mr. Ripley, and to our lawyer Hatch
had made what purported to be an open confession, admitting that he had
gone to Mr. Norcross the night before, determined to fight the new
company to a finish, and that there had been a good many things said
that would better be forgotten. Now, however, he was willing to talk
straight business and a compromise. He had called his board of directors
together, and they had voted to sell their track-bordering plants to
Citizens' Storage & Warehouse if a price could be amicably agreed upon.
This was the way the matter still stood. With Mr. Norcross gone and a
new general manager coming, Mr. Ripley was afraid to make a move, and
Hatch was pressing him to get busy on the bargain and sale proposition;
was apparently as anxious now to sell and withdraw as he had at first
been to fight everything in sight.
By the morning I came on the scene the man Grimmer had, as they say,
just about done his do. He was only a sort of journeyman detective, and
had run out of clues. When he came in and talked to Mr. Van Britt and
Mr. Ripley, I could see that he fully believed in the drop-out theory,
and even the lawyer and Mr. Van Britt had to admit that the facts were
with him. The boss had written a letter saying definitely that he was
quitting; he had paid his hotel bill, and his grips were gone; and two
days later President Dunton had appointed a new general manager, which
was proof positive, you'd say, that the boss _had_ resigned and had so
notified the New York office.
When the noon hour came along, Fred May took me out to luncheon, and we
went to the Bullard café. It was pretty rich for our blood at two
dollars per, but I guess Fred thought his job was gone, anyway, and felt
reckless. Over the good things at our corner table we did a little
threshing on our own account--and got a lot more chaff and no grain.
Fred didn't want to agree with Grimmer and the facts, but there didn't
seem to be any help for it. And as for me, I had that other thing in
mind all the time--the big scary fear that somebody had got to the boss
after he had left Ripley on the night of shockings, and had just bashed
him in the face with the story of Mrs. Sheila's sham widowhood.
By and by we got around to my burned hand, and Fred told me Grimmer had
at least succeeded in clearing up whatever mystery there was about that.
The wall switch for the electric light in the lower hall at the
headquarters was right beside the outer door jamb--as I knew. It had
burned out in some way, and that was why there was no light on when I
went down-stairs. And in burning out it had short-circuited itself with
the brass lock of the door; Fred didn't know just how, but Grimmer had
explained it. I asked him if Grimmer had explained how a 110-volt light
current could cook me like a fried potato, and he said he hadn't.
The afternoon at the office was a sort of cut-and-come-again repeat of
the morning, with lots of people milling around and things going crooked
and cross-ways, as they were bound to with the boss gone and a new boss
coming. Nobody had any heart for anything, and along late in the
afternoon when word came of a freight wreck at Cross Creek Gulch, Mr.
Van Britt threw up both hands and yipped and swore like a pirate. It
just showed what a raw edge the headquarters' nerves were taking on.
Though it wasn't his business, Mr. Van Britt went out with the wrecking
train, and Fred May and I had it all to ourselves for the remaining hour
or so up to closing time. Just before five, Mr. Cantrell, the editor of
the _Mountaineer_, dropped in. He looked a bit disappointed when he
found only us two. Fred turned him over to me, and he came on in to the
private office when I asked him to, and smoked one of the boss's good
cigars out of a box that I found in the big desk.
I liked Cantrell. He was just the sort of man you expect an editor to
be; tall and thin and kind of mild-eyed, with an absent way with him
that made you feel as if he were thinking along about a mile ahead of
you when you were striking the best think-gait you ever knew of. After
the cigar was going he talked a little about my sore hand and then
switched over to the big puzzle.
"No word yet from Mr. Norcross, I suppose?" he said.
I told him there wasn't.
"It's very singular, don't you think, Jimmie?--or do you?"
"It's as singular to me, and to all of us, as it is to you," I threw in.
"Branderby"--he was one of the _Mountaineer_ reporters--"tells me that
you people have had a detective on the job. Did he find out anything?"
"Nothing worth speaking of. He is the Overland Central's 'special,' and
I guess his best hold is train robberies and things of that sort."
The editor smoked on for a full minute without saying anything more, and
he seemed to be staring absently at a steamship picture on the wall.
When he got good and ready, he began again.
"You don't need any common plain-clothes man on this job, Jimmie; you
need the best there is: a real, dyed-in-the-wool Sherlock Holmes, if
there ever were such a miracle."
"You think it is a case for a detective?"
"I do," he replied, looking straight at me with his mild blue eyes. "If
I were one of Mr. Norcross's close friends I should get the best help
that could be found and not lose a single minute about it."
Since there was nobody around who was any closer to the boss than I was,
I jumped into the hole pretty quick.
"Can you tell us anything that will help, Mr. Cantrell?" I asked.
"Not specifically; I wish I could. But I can say this: I know Mr. Rufus
Hatch and his associates up one side and down the other. They are
hand-in-glove with the political pirates who control this State. From
the little that has leaked out, and the great deal that has been
published in the Hatch-controlled newspapers all over the State during
the past few weeks, it is apparent that Mr. Norcross's removal was a
thing greatly to be desired, not only by the Red Tower people, but also
by the political bosses. That ought to be enough to make all of you
suspicious--very suspicious, Jimmie."
"It did, and does," I admitted. "But there isn't the slightest reason to
think that the Hatch crowd has made away with Mr. Norcross--reason in
fact, I mean. Hatch, himself, says that his directors are willing to
sell out, and that if Mr. Norcross were here the deal could be closed in
a day."
The tall editor got up and made ready to go. "You remember the old
saying, current in Europe in Napoleon's time, Jimmie: 'Beware of the
Russians when they retreat.' If I were in your place, or rather in Mr.
Van Britt's, I'd get an expert on this job--and I shouldn't let much
grass grow under my feet while I was about it. Call me up at the
_Mountaineer_ office if I can help." And with that he went away.
It was just a little while after this that I put on my hat and strolled
across the yard tracks to Kirgan's office in the shops. Kirgan was an
old friend, as you might say: he had been on the Oregon building job
with us and knew the boss through and through. I didn't have anything
special to say, but I kind of wanted to talk to somebody who knew. So I
loafed in on Kirgan.
I wish I could show you Mart Kirgan just as he was. You'd pick him up
anywhere for the toughest Bad Man from Bitter Creek that ever swaggered
into a saloon to throw down on some poor tenderfoot and make him dance
by shooting at his heels: big-jowled, black, with a hard jaw, sultry hot
eyes, and a pair of drooping mustaches like the penny picture-makers
used to put on One-Eyed Ike, the Terror of the Uintahs.
Really, however, Mart wasn't half as savage as he looked; he didn't have
to be, you know, looking that way. And he loved the boss like a brother.
As soon as I came in, he fired his kid stenographer on some errand or
other, and made me sit down and tell him all I knew. When I got through
he was pulling at his long mustache and wrinkling his nose as I've seen
a bulldog do when he was getting ready to bite something.
"You haven't got all the drop-out business cornered over yonder in the
general office, Jimmie," he said slowly, tilting back in his swing-chair
and glowering at me with those sultry eyes of his. "On that same night
that you're talkin' about, I stand to lose one perfectly good
Atlantic-type locomotive. At ten o'clock she was set in on the spur
below the coal chutes. At twelve o'clock, when the round-house watchman
went down there to see if her fire was banked all right, she was gone."
XIII
The Lost 1016
When Kirgan told me he was shy a whole locomotive, I began to see all
sorts of fireworks. Of course, there was nothing on earth to connect the
boss's disappearance with that of the engine which had been left
standing below the coal chutes, but the two things snapped themselves
together for me like the halves of an automatic coupling, and I couldn't
wedge them apart.
"An engine--even a little old Atlantic-type--is a pretty big thing to
lose, isn't it, Kirgan?" I asked.
Kirgan righted his chair with a crash.
"Jimmie, I've sifted this blamed outfit through an eighty-mesh screen!"
he growled. "With all the devil-to-pay that's goin' on over at the
headquarters, I didn't want to bother Mr. Van Britt, and I haven't been
advertisin' in the newspapers. But it's a holy fact, Jimmie. That
engine's faded away, and nobody saw or heard it go. I've had men out for
four days, now, lookin' and pryin' 'round and askin' questions in every
hole and corner of the three divisions. It ain't any use. The 'Sixteen's
gone!"
"But, listen," I broke in. "If anybody tried to steal it, it couldn't
pass the first telegraph station east or west without being reported.
And that isn't saying anything at all about the risk of hypering a wild
engine over the main line without orders."
"I know all that, Jimmie," he agreed. "But the fact's right here amongst
us. The Ten-Sixteen's lost."
I was still trying to pry myself loose from the notion that the loss of
the engine, and the boss's disappearance at about the same time, were in
some way connected with each other. It was no use; the idea refused to
let go.
"Look here, Kirgan," I shoved in; "can you think of any possible reason
why Mr. Norcross should write Mr. Van Britt a letter saying that he had
quit and was going east on the midnight train, and then should change
his mind and come down here and go somewhere on that engine?"
After I had said it, it sounded so foolish that I wanted to take it
back. But Kirgan didn't seem to look at it that way.
"Well, I'll be shot!" he exclaimed. "I never once thought of that! But
where the devil would he go? And how would he get there without somebody
findin' out? And why in Sam Hill would he do a thing like that, anyway?
Why, sufferin' Moses! if he wanted to go anywhere, all he had to do was
to order out his car and tell the despatcher, and _go_."
"I can't figure it out any better than you can," I confessed. "At the
same time, I can't break away from the notion. Mr. Norcross is gone, and
the Ten-Sixteen is gone, and they both dropped out between ten and
twelve o'clock on the same night. Mart, I don't believe Mr. Norcross
went east at all! I believe, when we find that engine, we'll find
_him_!"
Kirgan got out of his chair and began to walk up and down in the little
space between his desk and the drawing-board. Besides being the best
boss mechanic in the West, he was a first-class fighting man, with a
clear head and nerve to burn. When he had got as far as he could go
alone he turned on me.
"Jimmie, do you reckon this Red Tower outfit was far enough along in its
scrap with the boss to put up a job to pass him out of the game?" he
demanded.
I told him it didn't seem to fit into any twentieth-century scheme of
things, and past that I mentioned the fact that the Hatch people had
taken the back track and were now offering to sell out and stop chocking
the wheels of reform.
"I know," he put in. "But I've been readin' the papers, Jimmie, and it
ain't all Red Tower, not by a jugful. The big graft in this neck-a woods
is political, and the Red Tower gang is only set-a cogs in the
bull-wheel. Mr. Norcross was gettin' himself mighty pointedly disliked;
you know that. The way he was aimin' to run things, it was beginnin' to
look as if maybe the people of this State might wake up some day and
turn in and help him."
"I know all about that," I threw in. "But where are you trying to land,
Mart?"
"Right here. Mr. Norcross was the whole show. Take him out of it and the
whole shootin'-match would fall to pieces--as it's doin', right now.
They didn't need to slug him or shoot him up or anything like that: if
it could be made to look as if he'd jumped the job, quit, chucked it all
up, why there you are. A new boss would be sent out here, and you could
bet your sweet life he wouldn't be anybody like Mr. Norcross. Not so you
could notice it. The New York people would take blamed good care-a
that."
"You think the Dunton people are standing in with the graft?"
"Nobody could've grabbed off the motive-power job on this railroad, as I
did, Jimmie, and not think it--and be damn' sure of it. Why, Lord o'
Heavens, the Red Tower bunch was usin' us just the same as if we
belonged to 'em!--orderin' our men to do their machinery repairs,
helpin' themselves to any railroad material that they happened to need,
usin' our cars and engines on their loggin' roads and mine branches."
"You stopped all this?"
"You bet I did--between two days! They've been makin' seventeen
different kinds of a roar ever since, but I've had Mr. Van Britt and the
Big Boss behind me, so I just shoved ahead."
What Kirgan said about the Red Tower people using our rolling stock on
their private branch roads set a bee to buzzing in my brain. What if
they had stolen the 1016 to use in that way? I let the bee loose, and
Kirgan grabbed at it like a cat jumping for a grasshopper.
"Say, Jimmie, boy--you've got a pretty middlin' long head on you when
you give it room to play in," he grunted. "The string's tangled up about
as bad as it was before, but I believe you're gettin' hold of the loose
end."
"You have a blue-print of the Portal Division here, haven't you?" I
asked. "Dig it up and let's have a look at it."
He didn't know where to look for the blue-print, but just then his boy
stenographer came back and found it for us. The shop whistle had blown
and it was quitting time, so Kirgan told the boy he could go on home.
When we were alone again I unrolled the blue-print and we began to study
it carefully with an eye to the possibilities.
At first the facts threatened to bluff us. The blue-print engineers' map
was an old one, but it showed the spurs and side-tracks, the stations
and water tanks. Since the lost engine had been standing at the western
end of the Portal City yards, we didn't try to trace it eastward. To get
out in that direction it would have had to pass the round-house, the
shops, the passenger station and the headquarters building, and, even at
that time of night, somebody would have been sure to see it.
Tracing the other way--westward--we had a clear track for ten miles to
Arroyo. Arroyo had no night operator, so we agreed that the stolen
engine might easily have slipped past there without being marked down.
Eight miles beyond Arroyo we came to Banta, the first night station west
of Portal City. Here, as we figured it, the wild engine must have been
seen by the operator, if by no one else. Banta was an apple town, and
the town itself might have been asleep, but the wire man at the station
shouldn't have been.
"Let's hold Banta in suspense a bit, and allow that by some means or
other the thieves managed to get by," I suggested. "The next thing to be
considered is the fact that the Ten-Sixteen must now have been
running--without orders, we must remember--against the Fast Mail coming
east. The Mail didn't pass her anywhere--not officially, at least; if it
had, the fact would show up in some station's report to the despatcher's
office."
At this, we hunted up an official time-card and began to figure on the
"meet" proposition. The Fast Mail was due at Portal City at
twelve-twenty, and on the night in question it had been on time. Making
due time allowances for inaccuracy in the yard watchman's story, the
missing engine could hardly have left the Portal City yard much before
ten-forty-five.
The Fast Mail was scheduled at forty miles an hour. Its time at Banta
was eleven-fifty-three. Allowing the 1016 the same rate of speed in the
opposite direction, it would have passed Banta at eleven-twelve or
thereabouts. Hence there would still be forty-one minutes running time
to be divided between the eastbound train and the westbound engine. In
other words, the meeting-point, with the two running at the same speed,
would fall about twenty minutes west of Banta.
When we tried to figure this meeting-point out we were stuck. Banta lay
in the lap of an irrigated valley in the hogback, a valley which the
diverted waters of Banta Creek had turned into an orchardist's paradise.
West of the town the railroad ran through a hill country, winding around
among the spurs of the Timber Mountain range and heading for the Sand
Creek desert where Mr. Chadwick had had his adventure with the hold-ups.
Tracing the line on the blue-print, we hunted for a possible passing
point, which, according to the way we had things doped out, should have
been not more than thirteen or fourteen miles west of Banta. There was a
blind siding ten miles west, but beyond that, nothing east of Sand
Creek, which was twenty-one miles farther along; at least, there was
nothing that showed up on the map. The ten-mile siding might have served
for the passing point, but in that case the crew of the Fast Mail would
surely have seen the 1016 waiting on the siding as they came by. And
they hadn't seen it; Kirgan said they had been questioned promptly the
following morning.
Though I had been over the road with Mr. Norcross in his private car any
number of times since we had taken hold, I didn't recall the detail
topographies very clearly, and I couldn't seem to remember anything
about this siding ten miles west of Banta. So I asked Kirgan.
"That siding isn't in any such shape that the Fast Mail could get by
without seeing a 'meet' train on the side-track, is it?"
The big master-mechanic shook his head.
"Hardly, you'd think. I reckon we're up a stump, Jimmie. That siding is
part of an old 'Y' at the mouth of a gulch that runs back into the
mountains for maybe a dozen miles or so. They tell me the 'Y' was put in
for the Timber Mountain Lumber outfit when they used the gulch mouth for
their shipping point. They had one of their saw-mills up in the gulch
somewhere, but the business died out when they got the timber all cut
off."
This time I was the one who did the cat-and-grasshopper act.
"Tell me this, Mart," I put in quickly. "The Timber Mountain company is
one of the Red Tower monopolies: did it have a railroad track up that
gulch connecting with our 'Y'?"
"Why, yes; I reckon so. I'm not right sure that there ain't one there
yet. But if there is, it's been disconnected from the 'Y'. I'm sure of
that, because I went in on that 'Y' one day with the wrecker."
You'd think this would have settled it. But I hung on like a dog to a
root.
"Say, Mart," I insisted, "this 'Y' siding we're talking about is just
around where the Ten-Sixteen ought to have met the Mail; so far as we
can tell by this map it's the only place where it could have met it. And
the old gulch track would have been a mighty good hiding-place for the
stolen engine!"
"There ain't any track there," said Kirgan, shaking his head; "or,
leastwise, if there is, it hasn't any rail connection with our siding,
just as I'm tellin' you. We'll have to look farther along."
Somehow, I couldn't get it out of my head but that I was right. Our
guesses all went as straight as a string to that 'Y' siding ten miles
west of Banta, and I was sure that if I had been talking to Mr. Van
Britt I could have convinced him. But Kirgan was awfully hard-headed.
"It's supper time," he said, after we had mulled a while longer over the
map. "To-morrow, if you like, we'll take an engine and run down there.
But we ain't goin' to find anything. I can tell you that, right now."
"Yes, and to-morrow we may have the new general manager, and then you
and I and all the others will be hunting for some other railroad to work
on," I retorted.
I pretty nearly had him over the edge, but I couldn't push him the rest
of the way to save my life.
"If there was the least little scrap--a reason even to imagine that Mr.
Norcross had gone off on that stolen eight-wheeler, it would be
different, Jimmie," he protested. "But there ain't; and you know
doggoned well there ain't. Let's go up-town and hunt up something to
eat. You'll feel a heap clearer in your mind when you get a good square
meal inside o' your clothes."
We left the shop offices together, and got shut out, crossing the yard,
by a freight that was pulling in from the West. There was a yard crew
shifting on the other side of the incoming train, and rather than wait
for the double obstruction to clear itself, we walked down the shop
track, meaning to go around the lower end of things.
This detour took us past the round-house, and when we reached the
turn-table lead, the engine of the just-arrived freight came backing
down the skip-track. Seeing Kirgan, the engineer swung down from the
step at the lead switch, leaving the hostler to "spot" the engine on the
table. I knew the engineer by sight. His name was Gorcher, and he was a
reformed cow-punch'--with a record for getting out of more tight places
with a heavy train than any other man on the division.
"Here's lookin' at you, Mr. Kirgan," he said, with a sort of Happy
Hooligan grin on his smutty face. "You been passin' the word, quiet,
among the boys to keep an eye out f'r that Atlantic-type that got lost
in the shuffle, ain't you? Well, I found her."
"What's that--where?" snapped Kirgan, in a tone that made a noise like
the pop of a whip-lash.
"You know that old gravel pit that digs into the hill a mile west of the
old 'Y' on the Timber Mountain grade? Well, she's there; plumb at the
far end o' that gravel track, cold _and_ dead."
"When did you see her?"
"Just now--comin' in. We had to cut and double, comin' up Timber
Mountain hill. 'Stead o' pullin' all the way up to the 'Y' and losin'
more time, I doubled in on that old gravel track. There she was, as big
as a house."
"Crippled?" Kirgan rapped out.
"Not as we could see; just dead. She's got her nose shoved a piece into
the gravel bank, but she ain't off the rail."
Kirgan nodded. "That counts one for you, Billy. Who else saw her?"
"Nobody but the boys on our train, I reckon."
"All right. Don't spread it. And get hold of the others and tell 'em not
to spread it. Want to make a little overtime?"
"I ain't kickin' none."
"That's business. After you've had your supper, call up your fireman and
report to me here at the round-house. We'll take a light engine and go
down along and get that runaway."
This seemed to settle Kirgan's half of the puzzle. We hadn't taken the
gravel track into our calculations simply because it wasn't marked on
the map we had been studying; but that merely meant that the pit had
been opened some time after the map had been made.
When Gorcher had gone into the round-house to wash up and tell his
fireman to report back, Kirgan and I crossed the yard and headed for
town. I left the master-mechanic at the door of a Greek eat-shop that he
patronized and went on up to the Bullard. There had been nothing more
said about connecting the boss's disappearance with that of the stolen
engine, and the idea seemed too ridiculous to hold on to, anyway. Mr.
Norcross had said, in the letter to Mr. Van Britt, that he was going to
quit; and, so far as we knew--or didn't know, rather--he had done it and
had taken his grips and gone to the midnight Mail.
Against this, of course, there was the Mail conductor's positive
assertion that he hadn't carried the boss. But conductors are no more
infallible than other people, and once in a blue moon in going through a
train they miss a passenger. I remembered the one thing that might have
made the boss desperate. If somebody had slammed the Mrs. Sheila story
at him there was reason enough for a blow-up.
I was just getting around to my piece of canned pumpkin pie--which
wasn't half as good as the kind Maisie Ann fed me out at the
major's--when the kid from the despatcher's office came into the
grill-room, stretching his neck as if he were looking for somebody. When
he got his eye on me he came across to my corner and handed me a
telegram. It was from Mr. Chadwick, under a Chicago date line, and it
was addressed "To the General Manager's Office," just like that. There
were only nine words in it, but they were all strictly to the point:
"What's gone wrong? Where is Mr. Norcross? Answer quick."
I saw in half a second at least a part of what had happened. Mr.
Chadwick was back from his Canadian trip, and somebody--the New York
people, perhaps--had wired him that a new general manager had been
appointed for Pioneer Short Line. The old wheat king's quick shot at our
office showed that he wasn't in the plot, and that, whatever else had
become of him, _Mr. Norcross hadn't as yet turned up in Chicago_!
Gee! but that brought on more talk--a whaling lot of it. I meant to find
out, right away, if Mr. Van Britt had come back from the Cross Creek
wreck. He was the man to answer Mr. Chadwick's wire. But an interruption
butted in suddenly, just as I was signing the dinner check. The head
waiter, who knew me from having seen me so often with the boss, came
over to say that I was wanted quick at the telephone.
It was Mrs. Sheila on the wire, and I could tell by the way her voice
sounded that she was mightily excited.
"I've been calling you on every phone I could think of," was the way she
began; and then: "Where is Mr. Van Britt?"
I told her about the wreck, and said I was afraid he hadn't got back
yet. I heard something that sounded like a muffled and half-impatient,
"Oh, dear!" and then she went on. "I have just had a phone message from
Mr. Cantrell, the editor of the _Mountaineer_. He called the house to
try to find Major Kendrick. He has heard something which may explain
about Mr. Norcross. He said he didn't want to put it on the wire."
That was enough for me. "I'll go right over to the _Mountaineer_
office," I told her; and in just about two shakes of a dead lamb's tail,
I was standing at Mr. Cantrell's elbow in his little den on the third
floor of the newspaper building across the Avenue.
"Mrs. Macrae telephoned you?" he asked, pushing his bunch of copy paper
aside.
"Yes; just a minute ago."
"I'll give you what I have, and you may do what you please with it. One
of our young men--Branderby--has a clue; a very slight one. He has
discovered--in some way that he didn't care to explain over the
phone--that there was a plot of some kind concocted in the back room of
a dive on lower Nevada Avenue on the night Mr. Norcross disappeared.
From what Branderby says, I take it that the plot was overheard, in
part, at least, by some habitue of the place who was too drunk to get it
entirely straight and intelligible. The plotters were four of Clanahan's
men, and, as Branderby got it, they were planning to steal a
locomotive. Do you know anything about that?"
"I do. The engine was stolen all right, that very night. Kirgan, our
master-mechanic, has known it was gone, but he has been keeping quiet in
hopes he'd be able to find the engine without making any public stir
about it."
"The story, as it has been handed on to Branderby, is pretty badly
muddled," the editor went on. "There was something in it about an
attempt to wreck and rob the Fast Mail, and something else about sending
a note to somebody at the Bullard--a note that 'would do the business,'
was the way it was put."
"That note was sent to Mr. Norcross!" I broke in excitedly, taking a
running jump at the guess.
"If you will wait until Branderby comes in, he may be able to give you
more of the particulars," Cantrell was beginning to say; but good
gosh!--I couldn't wait. I was scared stiff for fear I shouldn't be able
to get back to the round-house before Kirgan started out on that
engine-rescuing trip.
"That's enough," I gasped; "I'm gone!" and I tumbled down the two
flights of stairs and sprinted for the railroad yard, reaching the
round-house not one half-second too soon. Kirgan was there, with Gorcher
and two firemen. They had a light engine out on the tank track and were
filling her with water.
It was Kirgan himself who gave me a hand up the steps to the high
foot-plate. Gorcher was oiling around and the two firemen were up on the
tender.
"They took Mr. Norcross with them on the Ten-Sixteen!" was all I could
say and then I guess my late electric knock-out got in its work to pay
for the quick sprint down from the newspaper office, for I keeled over
into Kirgan's arms and sort of half fainted, it seemed.
Because, when I came to, right good again, Kirgan had me up on the
fireman's box, with an arm around me to hold me there: Billy Gorcher was
on the other side of the cab, niggling at the throttle; and the light
engine was clicking it off about fifty miles an hour on the straight
piece of track between Portal City and Arroyo.
XIV
A Close Call
Billy Gorcher did some swift wheel-rolling on the stretch of straight
track where our "betterment" campaign had already begun to get in its
good work. We had orders against a fast freight coming eastward at
Banta, and we made the eighteen miles in a little over twenty minutes,
shooting in on the siding at Banta just as the headlight of the freight
was showing up in the western hills beyond the town.
From Banta on, we took it a bit easier--had to. The track was pretty
crooked among the hills and Gorcher hit the curves like a man who knew
his trade and didn't mean to put us into the ditch.
At the "Y" siding we stopped--without going on to the gravel track where
Gorcher had seen the lost 1016--and Kirgan and I got off with a lantern.
This was because, on the way down, I had managed to tell the big
master-mechanic about the Cantrell talk, though I hadn't succeeded in
making him believe that it accounted for Mr. Norcross's drop-out. Just
the same he humored me by having Billy Gorcher stop, and now he was
trying to make me take it sort of slow and easy as we stumbled out
toward the stem of the "Y." That was Kirgan's way. He was as hard as
nails with a gang of men, but he could be as soft-hearted as any woman
when a fellow was all in. And he knew I wasn't half "at myself" yet,
physically.
"Don't you get too much hope up, Jimmie," he was saying, as we humped
along around the crooking track of the "Y." "We ain't goin' to find
anything out yonder but a rusty loggin' track and that broken rail
connection. You see, I've been here before, and I know."
He was as right as could be. When we reached the end of the "Y" there
was the broken connection, just as he'd said. The old saw-mill track was
still there, leading off in the dark up the gulch, but the two switch
rails had been taken out and the switch itself was as rusty as if it
hadn't been used in years.
"What you heard from Mr. Cantrell may have been all true enough," Kirgan
said, while I stood swallowing hard and staring down at the broken rail
connection, "only it didn't have anything to do with the Big Boss. Them
thugs was probably plannin' to wreck the Mail, all right, and they came
down here to do it. The Lord only knows why they didn't do it; p'raps
there wasn't time enough, after they'd got the 'Sixteen in on the gravel
track."
I only just about half heard what he was saying. He had the lantern, and
its light fell squarely upon a cross-tie a foot or two beyond where we
were standing. It was the last tie in the empty string from which the
two rails had been taken up to break the connection with the lighter
saw-mill track steel, and what I was looking at was a fresh spike hole;
fresh beyond all question of doubt because there was a clean new
splinter of the wood sticking up beside it--a splinter that had been
broken out when the spike was pulled.
I took the lantern from Kirgan in my one good hand, and he stood there
waiting for me while I walked on out to the chopped-off end of the
saw-mill track, examining the loose ties as I went along. There were
fresh spike holes in some of the others; just one here and there. But
that was enough. After I had knelt to hold the lantern close to the
rails of the rusty timber track I knew my hunch was all right.
"Come here, Mart!" I called, and when he came, I showed him the new
holes and new wheel-marks on the old rusty rails of the timber track
that proved as clear as daylight that an engine or a train had been over
them away this side of the rains and the snows that had rusted them.
Kirgan didn't say a word--not to me. He just took one look at the rubbed
rails and then yelled back to Gorcher to run out on the "Y." What
followed went like clockwork. There were tools, a spike-puller and a
driving-maul, on the light engine's tender, and while the two firemen
were throwing them off, Kirgan made a couple of swift measurements with
his pocket tape.
"These two, right here, boys," he ordered, indicating a pair of rails in
the other leg of the "Y," and in less than no time the two rails were up
and relaid to bridge the gap of the broken connection.
Gorcher moved the engine carefully over the temporary connection, with
Kirgan watching to see that she didn't ditch herself. When the crossing
was safely made we all climbed on, and Gorcher began to feel his way
cautiously out over the saw-mill track. Kirgan hadn't explained
anything, but that didn't matter. We didn't know where we were going,
but we were on our way.
I suppose we poked along into the black heart of the Timber range for as
much as five or six miles before the engine headlight showed us the
remains of the old saw-mill camp lying in a little pocket-like valley
from the sides of which all the mill timber had been cut. The camp had
been long deserted. There were perhaps a dozen shacks of all sizes and
shapes, and with a single exception they were all dilapidated and
dismantled, some with the roofs falling in.
The one exception was the stout log building which had probably served
as the mill-gang commissary and store. It stood a little back on the
slope, and was on the opposite side of the creek from the mill site and
sleeping-shacks. The ties at this end of the line were so rotten with
age that our engine was grinding a good half of them to powder as she
edged up, and a little below the switch that had formerly led in to the
mill, Kirgan gave Gorcher the stop signal.
After we had piled off, there wasn't any question raised as to what we
should do. Kirgan had taken a hammer from Gorcher's tool-box, and he was
the one who led the way straight across the little creek and up the hill
to the commissary. I had the lantern, but it wasn't needed. From where
the engine was standing, the headlight flooded the whole gulch basin
with its electric beam, picking out every detail of the deserted
saw-mill camp.
When we reached the log commissary we found the windows all boarded up
and the door fastened with a strong hasp and a bright new brass
padlock--the only new thing in sight. Kirgan swung his hammer just once
and the lock went spinning off down the slope and fell with a splash
into the creek. Then he pushed the door open with his foot, and shoved
in; and for just one half-second I was afraid to follow--afraid of what
we might find in that gloomy looking log warehouse, with its blinded
windows and locked door.
I thank the good Lord I had my scare for nothing. While I was nerving
myself and stumbling over the threshold behind Kirgan with the lantern,
I heard the boss's voice, and it wasn't the voice of any dead man, not
by a long shot! From what he said, and the way he was trimming it up
with hot ones, it was evident that he took us for some other crowd that
he'd been cussing out before.
The light of the lantern showed us a long room, bare of furnishings, and
dark and musty from having been shut up so tight. In the far end there
were a couple of bunks built against the log wall. On what had once been
the counter of the commissary there was a lot of canned stuff and a box
of crackers that had been broken open, and on a bench by the door there
was a bucket of water and a tin cup.
The boss was sitting up in one of the bunks, and he was still tearing
off language in strips at us when we closed in on him. He recognized
Kirgan first, and then Gorcher. I guess he couldn't see me very well
because I was holding the lantern. When he found out who we were, he
stopped swearing and got up out of the bunk to put his hand on Mart
Kirgan's shoulder. That was the only break he made to show that he was a
man, like the rest of us. The next minute he was the Big Boss again,
rapping out his orders as if he had just pushed his desk button to call
us in.
"You've got an engine here, I suppose?" he snapped, at Kirgan. "Then
we'll get out of this quick. What day of the week is it?"
I told him it was Friday, and by his asking that, I knew he must have
been so roughly handled that he had lost count of time. The next order
was shot at the two firemen.
"You boys kick that packing-box to pieces and then pull the straw out of
that bunk and touch a match to it. We'll make sure that they'll never
lock anybody else up in this damned dog-hole."
The two young huskies obeyed the order promptly. In half a minute the
dry slab stuff that the bunks were built of was ablaze and the boss
herded us to the door. In the open he stopped and looked around as if he
had half a mind to burn the rest of the deserted lumber camp, but if he
had any such notion he thought better of it, and a minute or so later we
were all climbing into the cab of the waiting engine.
I had one last glimpse of the commissary as Gorcher released the air and
the backing engine slid away around the first curve. It was sweating
smoke through the split-shingle roof, and the open door framed a square
of lurid crimson. I guess the boss was right. "They," whoever they were,
wouldn't ever lock anybody else up in that particular shack.
We had to run so slowly down the old track to the "Y" that there was
plenty of chance for the boss to talk, if he had wanted to. But
apparently he didn't want to. He sat on the fireman's seat, with an arm
back of me to hold me on, just as Kirgan had sat on the way up, and
never opened his head except once to ask me what was the matter with my
wrapped-up hand. When I told him, he made no comment, and didn't speak
again until we had stopped on the leg of the "Y" to let Kirgan and his
three helpers put the borrowed rails back into place. That left just the
two of us in the cab, and I thought maybe he would tell me some of the
particulars, but he didn't. Instead, he made me tell him.
"You say it's Friday," he began abruptly. "What's been going on since
Monday night, Jimmie?"
I boiled it down for him into just as few words as possible; about the
letter he had left for Mr. Van Britt, how everybody thought he had
resigned, how Mrs. Sheila and the major were two of the few who weren't
willing to believe it, how Mr. Chadwick had been out of reach, how the
railroad outfit was flopping around like a chicken with its head chopped
off, how President Dunton had appointed a new general manager who was
expected now on any train, how Gorcher had discovered the lost 1016 on
the old disused gravel-pit track a mile below us, and, to wind up with,
I slipped him Mr. Chadwick's telegram which had come just as I was
finishing my supper in the Bullard grill-room, and those two others that
had come on the knock-out night, and which had been in my pocket ever
since.
He heard me through without saying a word, and when I gave him the
telegrams he read them by the light of the gauge lamp--also without
saying anything. But when the men had the "Y" rails replaced he took
hold of things again with a jerk.
"Kirgan, you'll want to see to getting that dead engine out of the
gravel pit yourself. Take one of the firemen and go to it. It's a short
mile and you can walk it. Jimmie and I want to get back to Portal City
in a hurry, and Gorcher will take us." And then to Gorcher: "We'll run
to Banta ahead of Number Eighteen and get orders there. Move lively,
Billy; time's precious."
The orders were carried out precisely as they were given. Kirgan took
one of the huskies and tramped off in the darkness down the main line,
and Gorcher, turning our engine on the "Y," headed back east. This time
he wasn't so awfully careful of the curves and sags as he had been
coming up, and we made Banta at a record clip. While he was in the Banta
wire office, getting orders for Portal City, Mr. Norcross took the
time-card out of its cage in the cab and fell to studying it by the
light of the gauge lamp. Gorcher came back pretty soon with his
clearance, which gave him the right to run to Arroyo as first section of
Number Eighteen.
The boss blew up like a Roman candle when he saw that train order. It
meant that we were to take the siding at Arroyo with the freight that
was just behind us, and wait there for the westbound "Flyer," the
"Flyer" being due in Portal City from the east at 9:15, and due to leave
there, coming west, at 9:20. I didn't realize at the moment why the boss
was so sizzling anxious to cut out the delay which would be imposed on
us by the wait at Arroyo, but the anxiety was there, all right.
"Billy, it's eighteen miles to Portal, and you've got twenty minutes to
make it against the 'Flyer's' leaving time," he ripped out. "Can you do
it?"
Gorcher said he could, if he didn't have to lose any more time getting
his order changed.
"Let her go!" snapped the boss. "I'm taking all the responsibility."
That was enough for Gorcher, and the way we hustled out of the Banta
yard was a caution. By the time we hit the last set of switches the old
"Pacific-type" was lurching like a ship at sea, and once out on the long
grass-country tangents she went like a shot out of a gun. Of course,
with nothing to pull but her own weight she had plenty of steam, and all
Gorcher had to do was to keep her from choking herself with too much of
it.
He did it to the queen's taste; and in exactly eight minutes out of
Banta we tore over the switches at Arroyo. That left us ten miles to go,
and twelve minutes in which to make them. It looked pretty easy, and it
would have been if the night crew hadn't been switching in the lower
Portal City yard when we finished the race and Gorcher was whistling for
the town stop. There was a hold-out of perhaps two minutes while the
shifter was getting out of our way, and when we finally went clattering
up through the yard, the "Flyer," a few minutes late, was just pulling
in from the opposite direction.
A yardman let us in on the spur at the end of the headquarters building,
and the boss was off in half a jiffy. "Come along with me, Jimmie," he
commanded quickly, and I couldn't imagine why he was in such a tearing
hurry. Pushing through the platform crowd, made up of people who were
getting off the "Flyer" and those who were waiting to get on, he led the
way straight up-stairs to our offices.
Of course, there was nobody there at that time of night, and the place
was all dark until we switched the electrics on. There was a little
lavatory off the third room of the suite, and Mr. Norcross went in and
washed his face and hands. In a minute or two he came out, put on his
office coat, opened up his desk, lighted a cigar and sat down at the
desk as though he had just come in from a late dinner at the club. And
still he had me guessing.
The guess didn't have to wait long. While I was making a bluff at
uncovering my typewriter and getting ready for business there was a
heavy step in the hall, and a red-faced, portly gentleman with fat eyes
and little close-cropped English side-whiskers came bulging in. He had a
light top-coat on his arm, and his tan gloves were an exact match for
his spats.
"Good evening," he said, nodding sort of brusquely at the boss. "I'm
looking for the general manager's office."
"You've found it," said the boss, crisply.
The tan-gloved gentleman looked first at me and then at Mr. Norcross.
"You are the chief clerk, perhaps?" he suggested, pitching the query in
the general direction of the big desk.
"Hardly," was the curt rejoinder. "My name is Norcross. What can I do
for you?"
If I didn't hate slang so bad, I should say that the portly man looked
as if he were going to throw a fit.
"Not--not Graham Norcross?" he stammered.
"Well, yes; I am 'Graham'--to my friends. Anything else?"
The portly gentleman subsided into a chair.
"There is some misunderstanding about this," he said, his voice
thickening a little--with anger, I thought. "My name is Dismuke, and I
am the general manager of this railroad."
"I wouldn't dispute the name, but your title is away off," said Mr.
Norcross, as cool as a handful of dry snow. "Who appointed you, if I may
ask?"
"President Dunton and the board of directors, of course."
"The same authority appointed me, something like three months ago," was
the calm reply. "So far as I know, I am still at the head of the
company's staff in Portal City."
The gentleman who had named himself Dismuke puffed out his cheeks and
looked as if he were about to explode.
"This is a devil of a mess!" he rapped out. "I understood--we all
understood in New York--that you had resigned!"
"Well, I haven't," retorted the boss shortly. And then he stuck the
knife in good and deep and twisted it around. "There is a commercial
telegraph wire in the Hotel Bullard, where I suppose you will put up,
Mr. Dismuke, and I'm sure you will find it entirely at your service. If
you have anything further to say to me I hope it will keep until after
this office opens in the morning. I am very busy, just now."
I mighty nearly gasped. This Dismuke was the new general manager,
appointed, doubtless in all good faith, by the president and sent out
to take charge of things. And here was the boss practically ordering him
out of the office--telling him that his room was better than his
company!
The portly man got out of his chair, puffing like a steam-engine.
"We'll see about this!" he threatened. "You've been here three months
and you haven't done anything but muddle things until the stock of the
company isn't worth much more than the paper it's printed on! If I can
get a clear wire to New York, you'll have word from President Dunton
to-morrow morning telling you where you get off!"
To this Mr. Norcross made no reply whatever, and the heavy-footed
gentleman stumped out, saying things to himself that wouldn't look very
well in print. When the hall door below gave a big slam to let us know
that he was still going, the boss looked across at me with a sour grin
wrinkling around his eyes.
"Now you know why I made Gorcher break all the rules of the service
getting here, Jimmie," he said. "From what you told me down yonder on
the old 'Y,' I gathered that my successor was not yet on the ground, but
that he was likely to be at any minute. That's why I wanted to beat the
'Flyer' in. Possession is nine points of the law, and in this case it
was rather important that Mr. Dismuke shouldn't find the outfit without
a head and these offices of ours unoccupied." He rose, stretched his
arms over his head like a tired boy, and reached for the golf cap he
kept to wear when he went out to knock around in the shops and yard.
"Let's go up to the hotel and see if we can break into the café, Jimmie,"
he finished up. "Later on, we'll wire Mr. Chadwick; but that can wait.
I haven't had a square meal in four days."
XV
The Machine
With everybody supposing he had resigned and left the country, I guess
there were all kinds of a nine-minutes' wonder in Portal City, and all
along the Short Line, when the word went out that Mr. Norcross was back
on the job and running it pretty much the same as if nothing had
happened.
We, of the general offices, didn't hear much of the comment, naturally,
because we were all too busy to sit in on the gossip game, but no doubt
there was plenty of it: the more since the boss--a bit grimmer than
usual--hadn't much to say about his drop-out; little even to the members
of his staff, and nothing at all for publication. I suppose he broke
over to the major, to Cantrell, and, of course, to Mrs. Sheila; but
these were all in the family, too, as you might say.
After supper, on the night of his return from the hide-out, he had sent
a long code message to Mr. Chadwick, and a short one to President
Dunton; and though I didn't see the reply to either, I guess Mr.
Chadwick's answer, as least, was the right kind, because our
track-renewing campaign went into commission again with a slam, and all
the reform policies took a sure-enough fresh start and began to hump
themselves, with Juneman working the newspapers to a finish.
We heard nothing further from Mr. Dismuke, the portly gentleman in the
tan spats, though he still stayed on at the Bullard. We saw him
occasionally at meal times, and twice he was eating at the same table
with Hatch and Henckel. That placed him all right for us, though I guess
he didn't need much placing. I kind of wished he'd go away. His staying
on made it look as if there might be more to follow.
I wondered a little at first that Mr. Norcross didn't take the clue that
Branderby, the _Mountaineer_ reporter, had given us and tear loose on
the gang that had trapped him. He didn't; or didn't seem to. From the
first hour of the first day he was up to his neck pushing things for the
new company formed for the purpose of putting Red Tower out of business,
and he wouldn't take a minute's time for anything else.
Of course, it says itself that Hatch never made any more proposals about
selling the Red Tower plants to the Citizens' Storage & Warehouse people
after the boss got back. That move went into the discard in a hurry, and
the Consolidation outfit was busy getting into its fighting clothes,
and trying to chock the wheels of the C. S. & W. with all sorts of legal
obstacles.
Franchise contracts with the railroad were flashed up, and injunctions
were prayed for. Ripley waded in, and what little sleep he got for a
week or two was in Pullman cars, snatched while he was rushing around
and trying to keep his new clients, the C. S. & W. folks, out of jail
for contempt of court. He did it. Little and quiet and smooth-spoken, he
could put the legal leather into the biggest bullies the other side
could hire. Luckily, we were an inter-state corporation, and when the
local courts proved crooked, Ripley would find some way to jerk the case
out of them and put it up to some Federal judge.
Around home in Portal City things were just simmering. Between two days,
as you might say, and right soon after Mr. Norcross got back, we
acquired a new chum on the headquarters force. He was a young fellow
named Tarbell, who looked and talked and acted like a cow-punch just in
from riding line. He was carried on Mr. Van Britt's pay-roll as an
"extra" or "relief" telegraph operator; though we never heard of his
being sent out to relieve anybody.
I sized this new young man up, right away, for a "special" of some sort,
and the proof that I was right came one afternoon when Ripley dropped
in and fell into a chair to fan himself with his straw hat like a man
who had just put down a load that he had been carrying about a mile and
a half farther than he had bargained to.
"Thank the Lord, the last of those injunction suits is off the docket,"
he said, drawing a long breath and wagging his neat little head at the
boss. "I'll say one thing for the Hatch people, Norcross; they're
stubborn fighters. It makes me sweat when I remember that all this is
only the preliminary; that the real fight will come when Citizens'
Storage & Warehouse enters the field as a business competitor of the
Consolidated. That is when the fur will fly."
"We'll beat 'em," predicted the boss. "They've got to let go. How about
our C. S. & W. friends? Are they still game?"
"Fine!" asserted the lawyer. "That man Bigelow, at Lesterburg, is a host
in himself. After he had pulled his own 'local' into shape, he went out
and helped the others organize. The stock is over-subscribed everywhere,
now, and C. S. & W. is a going concern. The building boom is on. I
venture to say there are over two thousand mechanics at work at the
different centers, rushing up the buildings for the new plants, at this
moment. You ought to have a monument, Norcross. It's the most original
scheme for breaking a monopoly that was ever devised."
The boss was looking out of the window sort of absently, chewing on his
cigar, which had gone out.
"Ripley, I wonder what you'd say if I should tell you that the idea is
not mine?" he said, after a little pause.
"Not yours?"
"No; it, or at least the germ of it, was given to me by a woman; a woman
who knows no more about business details than you do about driving white
elephants."
"I'd like to be made acquainted with the lady," said Ripley, with a
tired little smile. "Such germs are too valuable to be wasted on mere
lumber yards and fruit packeries and grain elevators and the like."
"You'll meet her some day," laughed the boss, with a sort of happy lilt
in his voice that fairly made me sick--knowing what I did; and knowing
that he didn't know it. Then he switched the subject abruptly: "About
the other matter, Ripley: I know you've been pretty busy, but you've had
Tarbell nearly a week. What have you found out?"
"We've gone into it pretty thoroughly, and I think we've got at the
bottom of it, finally. I can tell you the whole story now."
The boss got up, closed the door leading to May's room, and snapped the
catch against interruptions.
"Let's have it," he directed.
Ripley briefed the general situation as it stood on the night of the
engine theft in a few terse sentences. Aside from the fight on Red Tower
Consolidated, the new railroad policies were threatening to upset all
the time-honored political traditions of the machine-governed State. An
election was approaching, and the railroad vote and influence must be
whipped into line. As the grafters viewed it, the threatened revolution
was a one-man government, and if that man could be removed the danger
would vanish.
Beyond that, he gave the story of the facts, so far as they had been
ferreted out by Tarbell. The orders had apparently come from political
headquarters in the State capital, but the execution details had been
turned over to Clanahan, the political boss of Portal City. Clanahan's
gangsters and crooks had been at work for some time before the plot
climaxed. They had tapped our wires and were thus enabled to intercept
our messages and keep in touch.
The plot itself was simple. At a certain hour of a given night an
anonymous letter was to be sent to Mr. Norcross, telling him that a gang
of noted train robbers was stealing an engine from the Portal City yard
for the purpose of running down the line and wrecking the Fast Mail,
which often carried a bullion express-car. If the boss should fall for
it--as he did, when the time came--and go in person to stop the raid, he
was to be overpowered and spirited away, a forged letter purporting to
be a notice of his resignation was to be left for Mr. Van Britt, and a
fake telegram, making the same announcement, was to be sent to President
Dunton in New York. Nothing was left indefinite but the choosing of the
night.
"I suppose Hatch was to give the word," said the boss, who had been
listening soberly while the lawyer talked.
"That is the inference. Any night when you were in town would answer.
The engine to be stolen was the one which brings the Strathcona
accommodation in at eight-thirty each evening, and which always stands
overnight in the same place--on the spur below the coal chutes. Hence,
it was always available. Hatch probably gave the word after his talk
with you, but the time was made even more propitious by the arrival of
the two telegrams; the one from Mr. Chadwick, and the one from Mr.
Dunton, both of which they doubtless intercepted by means of the tapped
wires."
Mr. Norcross looked up quickly.
"Ripley, did Dunton know what was going to be done to me?"
"Oh, I think not. It wasn't at all necessary that he should be taken in
on it. He has been opposing your policies all along, and had just sent
you a pretty savage call-down. He didn't want you in the first place,
and he has been anxious to get rid of you ever since. The plotters knew
very well what he would do if he should get a wire which purported to be
your resignation. He would appoint another man, quick, and all they
would have to do would be to make sure that you were well off stage, and
would stay off until the other man could take hold."
"It worked out like a charm," admitted the boss, with a wry smile. "I
haven't been talking much about the details, partly because I wanted to
find out if this young fellow, Tarbell, was as good as the major's
recommendation of him, and partly because I'm honestly ashamed, Ripley.
Any man of my age and experience who would swallow bait, hook, and line
as I did that night deserves to get all that is coming to him."
"You can tell me now, can't you?" queried the attorney.
"Oh, yes; you have it all--or practically all. I fell for the anonymous
letter about the Mail hold-up, and while I don't 'rattle' very easily,
ordinarily, that was one time when I lost my head, just for the moment.
The obvious thing to do--if any attention whatever was to be paid to the
anonymous warning--was to telephone the police and the round-house. I
did neither because I thought it might be too slow. The letter was
urgent, of course; it said that Black Ike Bradley and his gang were
already in the railroad yard, preparing to steal the engine."
"So you made a straight shoot for the scene of action?"
"I did; down the back streets and across the lower end of the plaza. As
it appeared--or rather as it was made to appear--I was barely in time.
There were men at the engine, and when I sprinted across the yard they
were ready to move it out to the main line. I yelled at them and ran
in."
"You must have been beautifully rattled; to go up against a gang of
thugs that way, alone and unarmed," was the lawyer's comment.
"I was," the boss confessed soberly. "Of course, I didn't have a ghost
of a show. Three of them tackled me the moment I came within reach. I
got one of the three on the point of the jaw, and they had to leave him
behind; but there were enough more of them. Before I fairly realized
what was happening, they had me trussed up like a Christmas turkey,
gagged with my own handkerchief, and loaded into the cab of the engine.
From that on, it was all plain sailing."
"Then they took you to the old lumber camp?"
"As fast as the engine could be made to turn her wheels. They were
running against the Mail, and they knew it. Arroyo has no night
operator, and when we sneaked through the Banta yard and past the
station, the operator there was asleep. I saw him, with his head in the
crook of his arm, at the telegraph table in the bay window as we
passed."
Ripley grinned. "We've been giving that young fellow the third
degree--Van Britt and I. He claims that he was doped; that somebody
dropped something into his supper coffee at the station lunch counter.
His story didn't hang together and Van Britt fired him. But go on."
"We ran out to the Timber Mountain 'Y'," the boss resumed, "and from
that on up the old saw-mill line. The rail connections were all in
place, and I knew from this that preparations had been made beforehand.
At the mill stop they untied my legs and made me walk up the hill to the
commissary. When they took the gag out, I said a few things and asked
them what they were going to do with me. They wouldn't tell me anything
except that I was to be locked up for a few days."
"You knew what that meant?"
"Perfectly. My drop-out would be made to look as if I had jumped the
job, and Dunton would appoint a new man. After that, I could come back,
if I wanted to. Whatever I might do or try to do would cut no figure,
and no explanation I could make would be believed. I had most obligingly
dug my own official grave, and there could be no resurrection."
"What then?" pressed Ripley, keenly interested, as anybody could see.
"When they took the clothes-line from my arms there was another scrap.
It didn't do any good. They got the door shut on me and got it locked.
After that, for four solid days, Ripley, I was made to realize how
little it takes to hold a man. I had my pocket-knife, but I couldn't
whittle my way out. The floor puncheons were spiked down, and I couldn't
dig out. They had taken all my matches, and I couldn't burn the place. I
tried the stick-rubbing, and all those things you read about: they're
fakes; I couldn't get even the smell of smoke."
"The chimney?"
"There wasn't any. They had heated the place, when it was a commissary,
with a stove, and the pipe hole through the ceiling had a piece of sheet
iron nailed over it. And I couldn't get to the roof at all. They had
me."
Ripley nodded and said, snappy-like: "Well, we've got them now--any time
you give the word. Tarbell has a pinch on one of the Clanahan men and he
will turn State's evidence. We can railroad every one of those fellows
who carried you off."
"And the men higher up?" queried the boss.
"No; not yet."
"Then we'll drop it right where it is. I don't want the hired tools; no
one of them, unless you can get the devil that crippled Jimmie Dodds,
here."
They went on, talking about my burn-up. Listening in, I learned for the
first time just how it had been done. Tarbell, through his hold upon the
welshing Clanahan striker, had got the details at second-hand. Hatch's
assassin--or Clanahan's--must have had it all doped out and made ready
before Hatch had made the break at trying to bribe me.
Anyway, a lead had been taken from a power wire at the corner of the
street and hooked over the outer door-knob. And inside I had been given
a sheet of copper to stand on for a good "ground," the copper itself
being wired to a water pipe running up through the hall. Tarbell had
afterward proved up on all this, it seemed, finding the insulated wire
and the copper sheet with its connections hidden in a small rubbish
closet under the hall stair, just where a fellow in a hurry might chuck
them.
"Tarbell is a striking success," Mr. Norcross put in, along at the end
of things. "We'll keep him on with us, Ripley."
"You'd better," said the level-eyed young attorney, significantly. "From
the way things are stacking up, you'll presently need a personal
body-guard. I suppose it's no use asking you to carry a gun?"
"Hardly," laughed the boss. "I've never done it yet, and it's pretty
late in the day to begin."
Past this there was a little more talk about the C. S. & W. deal, and
about what the Hatch crowd would be likely to try next; and when it was
finished, and Ripley was reaching for his hat, the boss said: "There is
no change in the orders: we've got 'em going now, and we'll keep 'em
going. Drive it, Ripley; drive it for every ounce there is in you. Never
mind the election talk or the stock quotations. This railroad is going
to be honest, if it never earns another net dollar. We'll win!"
"It's beginning to look a little that way, now," the lawyer admitted,
with his hand on the door knob. "Just the same, Norcross, there is
safety in numbers, and our numbers are precisely one; one man"--holding
up a single finger. "As before, the pyramid is standing on its head--and
you are the head. The other people have shown us once what happens when
you are removed. For God's sake, be careful!"
I don't know whether the boss took that last bit of advice to heart or
not. If he didn't, he was a bigger man than even I had been taking him
for--with the crooks of a whole State reaching out for him, and with the
knowledge which he must have had, that the next time they came gunning
for him they'd shoot to kill.
It was late in the afternoon when Ripley made his visit, and pretty soon
after he went away the boss and I closed up our end of the shop and left
May pecking away at his typewriter on a lot of routine stuff. I don't
know what made me do it, but as I was passing Fred's desk on the way
out, stringing along behind the boss, I stopped and jerked open one of
the drawers. I knew beforehand what was in the drawer, and pointed to
it--a new .38 automatic. Fred nodded, and I slipped the gun into my
left-hand pocket, wondering as I did it, if I could make out to hit the
broad side of a barn, shooting with that hand, if I had to.
A half-minute later I had caught up with Mr. Norcross, and together we
left the building and went up to the Bullard for dinner.
XVI
In the Coal Yard
I knew, just as well as could be--without being able to prove it--that
we were shadowed on the trip up from the railroad building to the hotel,
and it made me nervous. There could be only one reason now for any such
dogging of the boss. The grafters were not trying to find out what he
was doing; they didn't need to, because he was advertising his
doings--or Juneman was--in the newspapers. What they were trying to do
was to catch him off his guard and do him up--this time to stay done up.
It was safe to assume that they wouldn't fumble the ball a second time.
Mr. Ripley had stood the thing fairly on its feet when he said that our
campaign was purely a one-man proposition, so far as it had yet gone.
People who had met the boss and had done business with him liked him;
but the old-time prejudice against the railroad was so widespread and so
bitter that it couldn't be overcome all at once. Juneman, our publicity
man, was doing his best, but as yet we had no party following in the
State at large which would stand by us and see that we got justice.
I was chewing these things over while we sat at dinner in the Bullard
café, and I guess Mr. Norcross was, too, for he didn't say much. It
isn't altogether comfortable to be a marked man in a more or less
unfriendly country, and I shouldn't wonder if the boss, big and
masterful as he was, felt the pressure of it. I don't know whether he
knew anything about the shadowing business I speak of or not, but he
might have. We hadn't more than given our dinner order when one of
Hatch's clerks, a cock-eyed chap named Kestler, came in and took a table
just far enough from ours to be out of the way, and near enough to
listen in if we said anything.
When we finished, Kestler was just getting his service of ice-cream; but
I noticed that he left it untouched and got up and followed us to the
lobby. It made me hot enough to want to turn on him and knock his
crooked eye out, but of course, that wouldn't have done any good.
After Mr. Norcross had bought some cigars at the stand he said he
guessed he'd run out to Major Kendrick's for a little while; and with
that he went up to his rooms. Though the major was the one he named, I
knew he meant that he was going to see Mrs. Sheila. I remembered what he
had said to Ripley about a woman's giving him germ ideas and such
things, and I guess it was really so. Every time he spent an evening at
the major's he'd come back with a lot of new notions for popularizing
the Short Line.
When he said that, about going out to the major's, Kestler was near
enough to overhear it, and so he waited, lounging in the lobby and
pretending to read a paper. About half-past seven the boss came down and
asked me to call a taxi for him. I did it; and Kestler loafed around
just long enough to see him start off. Then he lit out, himself, and
something in the way he did it made me take out after him.
I expected to see him turn up-town to the second cross street where the
Red Tower had its general offices on the fourth floor of the Empire
Building. But instead, he turned the other way, and the first thing I
knew I was trailing him through the railroad yard and on down past the
freight house toward the big, fenced-in, Red Tower coal yards.
At the coal yard he let himself in through a wicket in the wagon gates,
and I noticed that he used a key and locked the wicket after he got
inside. I put my eye to a crack in the high stockade fence and saw that
the little shack office that was used for a scale-house was lighted up.
My burnt hand was healing tolerably well by this time and I could use it
a little. There was a slack pile just outside of the big gate, and by
climbing to the top of it I got over the fence and crept up to the
scale-house.
A small window in one end of the shack, opened about two inches at the
bottom, answered well enough for a peep-hole. Three men were in the
little box of a place--three besides Kestler; Hatch, his barrel-bodied
partner, Henckel, and one other. The third man looked like a glorified
barkeep'. He was of the type I have heard called "black Irish," fat,
sleek, and well-fed, with little pin-point black eyes half buried in the
flesh of his round face, and the padded jaw and double chin shaved to
the blue. The night was warm and he had his hat off. Through the crack
in the window I could smell the pomatum with which his hair was
plastered into barkeep' waves to match the tightly curled black
mustaches.
I knew this third man well enough, by sight; everybody in Portal City
knew him--decent people only too well when it came to an election
tussle. He was the redoubtable Pete Clanahan, dive-keeper, and political
boss.
Kestler was talking when I glued eye and ear to the window crack; was
telling the three how he had shadowed Mr. Norcross from the railroad
headquarters to the Bullard, and how he stayed around until he had seen
the boss take a taxi for Major Kendrick's. This seemed to be all that
was wanted of him, for when he was through, Hatch told him he might go
home. After the cock-eyed clerk was gone, Hatch lighted a fresh cigar
and put it squarely up to the Irishman.
"It's no use being mealy-mouthed over this thing, Pete," he grated in
that saw-mill voice of his. "We've got to get rid of this man. You've
asked us to shadow him and keep you posted, and we have--and you've done
nothing. Every day's delay gives him that much better hold. We can choke
him off by littles in the business game, of course; we have Dunton and
the New Yorkers on our side, and this coöperative scheme he has launched
can be broken down with money. Such things never hold together very
long. But that doesn't help you political people out; and your stake in
the game is even bigger than ours."
Clanahan looked around the little dog-kennel of a place suspiciously.
"'Tis not here that we can talk much about thim things, Misther Hatch,"
he said cautiously.
"Why not?" was the rasping question. "There's nobody in the yard, and
the gates are locked. It's a damned sight safer than a back room in one
of your dives--as we know now to our cost."
Clanahan threw up his head with a gesture that said much. "Murphy's the
man that leaked on that engine job--and he'll leak no more."
"Well," said Hatch, with growing irritation, "what are you holding back
for now? We stood to win on the first play, and we would have won if
your people hadn't balled it by talking too much. One more day and
Dismuke would have been in the saddle. That would have settled it."
"Yah; and Mister Dismuke still here in Portal City remains," put in
Henckel.
The dive-keeper locked his pudgy fingers across a cocked knee.
"'Tis foine, brave gintlemen ye are, you two, whin ye've got somebody
else to pull th' nuts out av th' fire for ye!" he said. "Ye'd have us
croak this felly f'r ye, and thin ye'd stand back and wash yer hands
while some poor divil wint to th' rope f'r it. Where do we come in, is
what I'd like to know?"
"You are already in," snapped Hatch. "You know what the Big Fellow at
the capital thinks about it, and where you'll stand in the coming
election if you don't put out this fire that Norcross is kindling.
You're yellow, Clanahan. That's all that is the matter with you. Put
your wits to work. There are more ways of killing a cat than by choking
it to death with butter."
"Tell me wan thing!" insisted the dive-keeper, boring the chief grafter
with his pin-point eyes. "Do you stand f'r it if we do this thing up
right?"
Hatch's eyes fell, and Henckel's big body twisted uneasily in the chair
that was groaning under his beer-barrel weight. There was silence for a
little space, and I could feel the cold sweat starting out all over me.
I hadn't dreamed of stumbling upon anything like this when I started
out to shadow Kestler. They were actually plotting to murder the boss!
It was Hatch who broke the stillness.
"It's up to you, Clanahan, and you know it," he declared. "You've had
your tip from the Big Fellow. The railroad people must be made to get
into the fight in the coming election, and get in on the right side. If
they don't; and if Norcross stays and keeps his fire burning; you
fellows lose out. So shall we; but what we lose will be a mere drop in
the bucket; and, as I have said, we stand to get it back, after this
coöperative scheme has had time to burn itself out."
Clanahan sat back in his chair and shoved his hands into his pockets.
"Ye'd sthring me as if I was a boy!" he scoffed. "'Tis your own game
fr'm first to last. D'ye think I'm not knowing that? 'Tis bread and
butther and th' big rake-off for you, and little ye care how th'
election goes. Suppose we'd croak this man in th' hot par-rt av th'
p'litical fight; what happens? Half th' noospaypers in th' State'd play
him up f'r a martyr to th' cause av good governmint, and we'd all go to
hell in a hand-basket!"
I was cramped and sore and one of my legs had gone to sleep, but I
couldn't have moved if I had wanted to. My heart was skipping beats
right along while I waited for Hatch's answer. When it came, the
drumming in my ears pretty nearly made me lose it.
"Clanahan," he began, as cold as an icicle. "I didn't get you down here
to argue with you. We've got your number--all your different
numbers--and they are written down in a book. You've bungled this thing
once, and for that reason you've got it to do over again. We haven't
asked you to 'croak' anybody, as you put it, and we are not asking it
now."
"'Tis domned little you lack av asking it," retorted the dive-keeper.
"Listen," said Hatch, leaning forward with his hands on his knees.
"Besides keeping cases on Norcross here, we've been digging back into
his record a few lines. Every man has his sore spot, if you can only
find it, Clanahan--just as you have yours. What if I should tell you
that Norcross is wanted in another State--for a crime?"
"Nobody would believe ut," was the prompt rejoinder. "If he's wanted he
c'u'd be had."
"Wait," Hatch went on. "Before he came here he was chief of construction
on the Oregon Midland. There was a right-of-way fight back in the
mountains--fifty miles from the nearest sheriff--with the P. & S. F.
Norcross armed his track-layers, and in the bluffing there was a man
killed."
Though it was a warm night, as I have said, the cold chills began to
chase themselves up and down my back. What Hatch said was perfectly
true. In the right-of-way scrap he was talking about, there had been a
few wild shots fired, and one of them had found a P. & S. F. grade
laborer. I don't believe anybody had ever really blamed the boss for it.
He had given strict orders that we were only to make a show of force;
and, besides, the other fellows were armed, too, and had armed first.
But there _had_ been a man killed.
While I was shivering, Clanahan said: "Well, what av it?"
"Norcross was responsible for that man's death. If he was having trouble
over his right-of-way, his recourse was to the law, and he took the law
into his own hands. Nothing was ever done about it, because nobody took
the trouble to prosecute. A week ago we sent a man to Oregon to look up
the facts. He succeeded in finding a brother of the dead man, and a
warrant has now been sworn out for Norcross's arrest."
"Well?" said Clanahan again. "Ye have the sthring in yer own hand; why
don't ye pull it?"
"That's where you come in," was the answer. "The Oregon justice issued
the warrant because it was demanded, but he refused to incur, for his
county, the expense of sending a deputy sheriff to another State, or to
take the necessary steps to have Norcross extradited. If Norcross could
be produced in court, he would try him and either discharge him or bind
him over, as the facts might warrant. He took his stand upon the ground
that Norcross was only technically responsible, and told the brother
that in all probability nothing would come of an attempt to prosecute."
"Thin ye've got nothing on him, after all," the Irishman grunted.
"Yes," Hatch came back; "we have the warrant, and, in addition to that,
we have you, Pete. A word from you to the Portal City police
headquarters, and our man finds himself arrested and locked up--to wait
for a requisition from the Governor of Oregon."
"But you said th' requisition wouldn't come," Clanahan put in.
Hatch was sitting back now and stroking his ugly jaw.
"It might come, Pete, if it had to: there's no knowing. In the meantime
we get delay. There'll be _habeas corpus_ proceedings, of course, to get
him out of jail, but there's where you'll come in again; you've got your
own man in for City Attorney. And, after all, the delay is all we need.
With Norcross in trouble, and in jail on a charge of murder, the
railroad ship'll go on the rocks in short order. The Norcross management
is having plenty of trouble--wrecks and the like. With Norcross locked
up, New York will be heard from, and Dismuke will step in and clean
house. That will wind up the reform spasm."
"'Tis a small chance," growled the chief of the ward heelers. "Th'
high-brow vote is stirrin', and there'll be some to say it's
persecution--and say it where it'll be heard. I'll talk it over with the
Big Fellow."
Again Hatch leaned forward and put his hands on his knees.
"You'll do nothing of the sort, Pete. You'll act, and act on your own
responsibility. If you don't, somebody may wire the sheriff of Silver
Bow County, Montana, that the man he knew in Butte as Michael Clancy
is...."
The dive-keeper put up both hands as if to ward off a blow.
"'Tis enough," he mumbled, speaking as if he had a bunch of dry cotton
in his mouth. "Slip me th' warrant."
Hatch went to a small safe and worked the combination. When the door was
opened he passed a folded paper to Clanahan. Through all this talk,
Henckel had said nothing, and I suspected that Hatch had him there
solely for safety's sake, and to provide a witness. With the paper in
his pocket, Clanahan got up to go. It was time for me to make a move.
It's curious how an idea will sometimes lay hold of you and knock out
reason and common sense and everything else. Clanahan had in his pocket
a piece of paper that simply meant ruin to Mr. Norcross, and the blowing
up of all the plans that had been made and all the work that had been
done. If he should be allowed to get up-town with that warrant, the end
of everything would be in sight. But how was I to prevent it?
I saw where the Irishman had put the warrant; in the right-hand, outside
pocket of his coat. The pocket wasn't deep enough, and about an inch of
the folded paper showed white against the black of his coat. The three
men were on their feet, and Hatch was reaching for the wall switch which
controlled the single incandescent lamp hanging from the ceiling of the
scale-house. If I could only think of some way to blow the place up and
snatch the paper in the confusion.
Up to that minute I had never thought once of the pistol I had taken
from Fred May's drawer, though it was still sagging in my left hip
pocket. When I did think of it I dragged it out with some silly notion
of trying to hold the three men up at the door of the shack as they came
out. Hatch's stop to light a cigar and to hand out a couple to the
other two gave me time to chuck that notion and grab another. With the
muzzle of the automatic resting in the crack of the opened window I took
dead aim at the incandescent lamp in the ceiling and turned her loose
for the whole magazineful.
Since the first bullet got the lamp and left the place black dark, I
couldn't see what was happening in the close little room. But whatever
it was, there was plenty of it. I could hear them gasping and yelling
and knocking one another down as they fought to get the door open.
Sticking the empty pistol back into my pocket I jumped to get action,
hurting my sore hand like the mischief in doing it.
Hatch was the first man out, but the big German was so close a second
that he knocked his smaller partner down and fell over him. Clanahan
kept his feet. He had a gun in his hand that looked to me, in the
darkness, as big as a cannon. I was flattened against the side of the
scale shack, and when the dive-keeper tried to side-step around the two
fallen men who were blocking the way, I snatched the folded paper from
his pocket; snatched it and ran as if the dickens was after me.
That was a bad move--the runaway. If I had kept still there might have
been a chance for me to make a sneak. But when I ran, and fell over a
pile of loose coal, and got up and ran again, they were all three after
me, Clanahan taking blind shots in the dark with his cannon as he came.
Naturally, I made straight for the wagon gate, and forgot, until I was
right there, that it, and the wicket through one of the leaves, were
both locked. As I shook the wicket, a bullet from Clanahan's gun spatted
into the woodwork and stuck a splinter into my hand, and I turned and
sprinted again, this time for the gates where the coal cars were pushed
in from the railroad yard. These, too, were shut and locked, and when I
ducked under the nearest gondola I realized that I was trapped. Before I
could climb the high fence anywhere, they'd get me.
They came up, all three of them, puffing and blowing, while I was hiding
under the gondola.
"It's probably that cow-boy spotter of Norcross's, but he can't get
away," Hatch was gritting--meaning Tarbell, probably. "The gates are
locked and we can plug him if he tries to climb the fence. There's a gun
in the scale-house. You two look under these cars while I go and get
it!"
It was up to me to move again. Henckel was striking matches and holding
them so that Clanahan could look under the cars, and I could feel, in
anticipation, the shock of a bullet from the big gun in the
dive-keeper's fat fist as I crawled cautiously out on the far side.
Creeping along behind the string of coal cars I came presently to the
great gantry crane used for unloading the fuel. It was a huge traveling
machine, straddling the tracks and a good part of the yard, and the
clam-shell grab-bucket was down, resting on its two lips on the ground.
At first I thought of climbing to the frame-work of the crane and trying
to hide on the big bridge beam. Then I saw that the two halves of the
clam-shell bucket were slightly open, just wide enough to let me squeeze
in. If they were looking for a full-sized man--Tarbell, for instance,
who was as husky as a farm-hand--they'd never think of that crack in the
bucket; and in another second I had wriggled through the V-shaped
opening and was sitting humped up in one of the halves of the
clam-shell.
That was a mighty good guess. When Hatch came back with his gun, they
combed that coal yard with a fine-tooth comb, using a lantern that Hatch
had gotten from somewhere and missing no hole or corner where a man
might hide, save and excepting only the one I had preempted.
As it happened, the search wound up finally under the crane, with the
three standing so near that I could have reached out of the crack
between the bucket halves and touched them.
"Der tuyfel has gone mit himself ofer der fence, yes?" puffed Henckel.
And then: "Vot for iss he shoot off dem pistols, ennahow?"
Clanahan confessed, I suppose because he knew he would have to, sooner
or later.
"It was a hold-up," he growled. "Th' warrant's gone out av my pocket."
Hatch's comment on this was fairly blood-curdling in its profanity. And
I could see, in imagination, just how he thrust that bad jaw of his out
when he whirled upon the Irishman.
"Then it's up to you to get him some other way, you blundering son of a
thief!" he raged. "I don't care what you do, but if you don't make this
country too hot to hold him, it's going to get too hot to hold you!" And
what more he was going to say, I don't know, for at that moment a
belated police patrol began pounding at the gates on the town side and
wanting to know what all the shooting was about.
It was after they had all gone away, leaving the big coal yard in
silence and darkness, that I got mine, good and hard. Sitting all
bunched up in the grab-bucket and waiting for my chance to climb out and
make a get-away, the common sense reaction came and saw what I had done.
With the best intentions in the world, in trying to kill off the chance
offered to the enemy by the Oregon warrant and the trumped-up charge of
murder, I had merely saved the boss an arrest and a possible legal
tangle and had put him in peril of his life.
XVII
The Man at the Window
Of course, the first thing I did, the morning after that adventure in
the coal yard, was to tell the boss all about it, and I was just foxy
enough to do it when Mr. Ripley was present. Mr. Norcross didn't say
much; and, for that matter, neither did the lawyer, though he did ask
the boss a question or two about the real facts in the Midland
right-of-way squabble.
But I noticed, after that, that our man Tarbell was continually turning
up at all sorts of times, and in all sorts of odd places, so I took it
that Ripley had given him his tip, and that he was sort of body-guarding
Mr. Norcross on the quiet, though I am sure the boss didn't know
anything about that part of it--he was such a square fighter himself
that he probably wouldn't have stood for it if he had.
Meanwhile, things grew warmer and warmer in the tussle we were making to
pull the old Short Line out of the mud; warmer in a number of ways,
because, in addition to the fight for the public confidence, we began
just then to have a perfect epidemic of wrecks.
The boss turned the material trouble over to Mr. Van Britt and devoted
himself pretty strictly to the public side of things. Everywhere, and on
every occasion--at dinners at the different chambers of commerce, and
public banquets given to this, that, or the other visiting big-wig--he
was always ready to get on his feet and tell the people that the true
prosperity of the country carried with it the prosperity of the
railroads; that the two things were one and inseparable; and that, when
it came right down to basic facts, the railroads were really a part of
the progress machinery of the country at large and should be regarded,
not as alien tax-collectors, but as contributors to the general
prosperity and welfare.
I went with him on a good many of the trips he made to be "among those
present" at these gatherings--and so, by the way, did Tarbell--and it
was plain to be seen that the new idea was gradually gathering a little
headway. By this time, also, Red Tower Consolidated was beginning to
find out what it meant to have active competition. The C. S. & W. people
were hammering their new plants into working shape, and they were
getting the patronage, both of the producers and consumers, hand over
fist.
Engineered by Billoughby, the railroad was simply playing the part of
the good big brother to these new middlemen. Track facilities and yard
service were granted freely; and while no discrimination was permitted
as against the Red Tower people, the friendly attitude of the road
counted for something, as it was bound to; hence, the C. S. & W. got the
business right from the jump, enlarging its field as it went along, and
gathering in all the little side monopolies like the ice-plants, and
city lighting installations, and so on. This, by the way, was in line
with the new slogan put out by the boss and his boosters: "Own your own
Utilities."
As to the political struggle which was now ripping the State wide open
from end to end, the boss was steel and iron on the side of
non-interference. He never allowed himself to say a public word on
either side; never spoke of the campaign at all except to assert
everywhere and at all times that the railroad was not in politics, and
never would be again.
This was the key-word given to the different members of the staff to be
passed on down the line to every official in authority. We were to be
like Cæsar's wife--above suspicion. We were neither to make nor meddle
in the campaign, and any department head or other officer or employee
caught trying to swing the railroad vote would be fired on the spot.
On one of our trips over the road we had a call from Mr. Anson Burrell,
the gubernatorial candidate who was making the race against the
machine. He was a cattle magnate of the modern sort; a big,
viking-looking man, with a Yale degree, and with a record as clean as a
hound's tooth. When he came into the private car he seemed to fill it,
not only with his presence, but with the fresh keen air of the grazing
uplands.
"I'm glad to have a chance to meet you on your own ground, Mr.
Norcross," he said, giving the boss a hand-grip that looked mighty
hearty and sincere. "I've been waiting for an opportunity to tell you
how much we appreciate the stand you have taken. For the first time in
its history, the railroad is keeping out of the political fight; I know
it, and the people are beginning to find it out, too. You may not mean
it that way, but it is the strongest card you could play. You need just
legislation, and there is no better way to get it than by not trying to
influence it."
The boss met him half-way on that, of course, and said what he ought to;
and they talked along that line for the full half-hour that our special
stopped in the town where Mr. Burrell had caught us. In a way, it was a
sort of temptation to take sides. Mr. Burrell made it pretty plain that
if the railroad continued to behave itself, and if the reform party got
in, there would be easier legislation, and perhaps some of the old
hard-and-fast intrastate rate laws repealed. But the boss wasn't the
man to drop his candy in the dirt, and he kept right on laying down the
law to everybody in the service; we were to let the campaign absolutely
alone, and every man was to vote as he thought best.
As time went on, I was a little surprised to see that Hatch and his
gunmen side partners under Pete Clanahan made no further move; at least,
not toward keeping cases on Mr. Norcross. Though Tarbell and I still
went everywhere with him, we saw no more shadowers. I put it up that
perhaps they were lying quiet because they knew that somebody had
overheard their talk in the coal yard scale-house and they were waiting
for the thing to blow over a little. All of us who were on the inside
felt that the move was only postponed, and that when it did come it
would be a center shot. But there was nothing we could do. We could only
hang on and keep a sharp eye to windward.
During those few pre-election weeks the New York end of us seemed to
have petered out completely. We heard nothing more from President
Dunton, worse than an occasional wire complaint about the number of
wrecks we were having, though the stock was still going down, point by
point, and, so far as a man up a tree could see, we were making no
attempt to show net earnings--were turning all our money into
betterments as fast as it came in. I knew that couldn't go on. Without a
flurry of some sort, the New Yorkers would never be able to break even,
to say nothing of a profit, and I looked every day for a howl that would
tear things straight up the back.
While all these threads were weaving along, I'm sorry to say that I
hadn't yet drummed up the courage to tell the boss the truth about Mrs.
Sheila. He kept on going to the major's every chance he had, and Maisie
Ann was making life miserable for me because I hadn't told him--calling
me a coward and everything under the sun. I told her to tell him
herself, and she retorted that I knew she couldn't: that it was my job
and nobody else's. We fussed over it a lot; and because I most always
contrived some excuse to chase out to the Kendrick house at the boss's
heels--merely to help Tarbell keep cases on him--there were plenty of
chances for the fussing.
It was on one of these chasing trips to "Kenwood" that the roof fell in.
The major had gone out somewhere--to the theater, I guess--taking his
wife and Maisie Ann, and the boss and Mrs. Sheila were sitting together
in the major's den, with a little coal blaze in the basket grate because
the nights were beginning to get a bit chilly.
As usual when they were together, they made no attempt at privacy: the
den doorway had no door, nothing but one of those Japanese curtains
made out of bits of bamboo strung like beads on a lot of strings. I had
butted in with a telegram--which might just as well have stood over
until the next morning, if you want to know. After I had delivered it,
Mrs. Sheila gave me that funny little laugh of hers and told me to go
hunt in the pantry and see if I could find a piece of pie, and the boss
added that if I'd wait, he'd go back to town with me pretty soon.
I found the pie, and ate it in the dining-room, making noise enough
about it so that they could know I was there if they wanted to. But they
went right on talking, and paid no attention to me.
"Do you know, Sheila"--they had long since got past the "Mr." and
"Mrs."--"you've been the greatest possible help to me in this
rough-house, all the way along," the boss was saying. "And I don't
understand how you, or any woman, can plan so clearly and logically to a
purely business end. I was just thinking to-night as I came out here:
you have given me nearly every suggestion I have had that was worth
anything; more than that, you have held me up to the rack, time and
again, when I have been ready to throw it all up and let go. Why have
you done it?"
I heard the little laugh again, and she said: "It is worth something to
have a friend. Odd as it may seem, Graham, I have been singularly
poverty-stricken in that respect. And I have wanted to see you succeed.
Though you are still calling it merely a 'business deal,' it is really a
mission, you know, crammed full of good things to a struggling world. If
you do succeed--and I am sure you are going to--you will leave this
community, and hundreds of others, vastly the better for what you are
doing and demonstrating."
"But that is a man's point of view," the boss persisted. "How do you get
it? You are all woman, you know; and your mixing and mingling--at least,
since I have known you--has all been purely social. How do you get the
big overlook?"
"I don't know. I was foolish and frivolous once, like most young girls,
I suppose. But we all grow older; and we ought to grow wiser. Besides,
the woman has the advantage of the man in one respect; she has time to
think and plan and reason things out as a busy man can't have. Your
problem has seemed very simple to me, from the very beginning. It asked
only for a strong man and an honest one. You were to take charge of a
piece of property that had been abused and knocked about and used as a
means of extortion and oppression, and you were to make it good."
"Again, that is a man's point of view."
"Oh, no," she protested quickly. "There is no sex in ethics. Women are
the natural house-cleaners, perhaps, but that isn't saying that a man
can't be one, too, if he wants to be."
At this, the boss got up and began to tramp up and down the room; I
could hear him. I knew she'd been having the biggest kind of a job to
keep him shut up in this sort of abstract corral, when all the time he
was loving her fit to kill, but apparently she had been doing it,
successfully. There wasn't the faintest breath of sentiment in the air;
not the slightest whiff. When she began again, I could somehow feel that
she was just in time to prevent his breaking out into all sorts of
love-making. I shouldn't wonder if that was the way it had been from the
beginning.
"The time has come, now, when you must take another leaf out of my
book," she said, with just the proper little cooling tang in her voice.
"Up to the present you have been hammering your way to the end like a
strong man, and that was right. But you have been more or less
reckless--and that isn't right or fair or just to a lot of other
people."
The tramping stopped and I heard him say: "I don't know what you mean."
"I mean that matters have come to such a pass now that you can't afford
to take any risks--personal risks. The enmity that caused you to be
kidnapped and carried away into the mountains still exists, and exists
in even greater measure. It hasn't stopped fighting you for a single
minute, and if the plan it is now trying doesn't work, it will try
another and a more desperate one."
"You've been talking to Ripley," he laughed. "Ripley wants me to become
a gun-toter and provide myself with a body-guard. I'd look well,
wouldn't I? But what do you mean by 'the plan it is now trying'?"
She hesitated a little, and then said: "I shall make no charges, because
I have no proof. But I read the newspapers, and Mr. Van Britt tells me
something, now and then. You are having a terrible lot of wrecks."
"That is merely bad luck," he rejoined easily, adding: "And the wrecks
have nothing to do with my personal safety."
"Rashness is no part of true courage," she interpolated, calmly. "As a
private individual you might say that your life is your own, and that
you have a perfect right to risk it as you please. But as the general
manager of the railroad, with a lot of your friends holding office under
you, you can't say that. Besides, you are fighting for a cause, and that
cause will stand or fall with you."
"You ought to be a member of this new reform legislature that some of
our good friends think is coming up the pike," he chuckled; but she
ignored the good-natured gibe and made him listen.
"I was visiting a day or two at the capital last week, and there are
influences at work that you don't know about. It has grown away past and
beyond any mere fight with the Hatch people. If the opposition can't
make your administration a failure, it won't hesitate to get rid of you
in the easiest way that offers."
There was silence in the major's den for a minute or so, and then the
boss said:
"As usual, you know more than you are willing to tell me."
"Perhaps not," was the prompt answer. "Perhaps I am only the
onlooker--who can usually see things rather better than the persons
actually involved. Hitherto I have urged you to be bold, and then again
to be bold. Now I am begging you to be prudent."
"In what way?"
"Careful for yourself. For example: you walked out here this evening;
don't do that any more. Come in a taxi--and don't come alone."
I couldn't see his frown of disagreement, but I knew well enough it was
there.
"There spoke the woman in you," he said. "If I should show the white
feather that way, they'd have some excuse for potting me."
There was a silence again, and I got up quietly and crossed the
dining-room to the big recessed window where I stood looking out into
the darkness of the tree-shaded lawn. It was pretty evident that Mrs.
Sheila knew a heap more than she was telling the boss, just as he had
said, and I couldn't help wondering how she came to know it. What she
said about the increased number of wrecks looked like a pointer. Was she
in touch with the enemy in some way?
I knew that Major Kendrick heard all the gossip of the streets and the
clubs, and that he carried a good bit of it home; but that wouldn't
account for much inside knowledge of the real thing in Mrs. Sheila. Then
my mind went back in a flash to what Maisie Ann had told me. Was the
husband who ought to be dead, and wasn't, mixed up in it in any way?
Could it be possible that he was one of those who were in the fight on
the other side, and that she was still keeping in touch with him?
Pretty soon I heard the murmur of their voices again, but now I was so
far away from the bamboo-screened door that I couldn't hear what they
were saying. I wished they would break it off so the boss could go. It
was getting late, and there had been enough said to make me wish we were
both safely back in the hotel. It's that way sometimes, you know, in
spite of all you can do. You hear a talk, and you can't help reading
between the lines. I knew, as well as I knew that I was alive, that
Mrs. Sheila meant more than she had said: perhaps more than she had
dared to say.
It was while I was standing there in the big window, sweating over the
way the talk in the other room was dragging itself out, that I saw the
man on the lawn. At first I thought it was Tarbell, who was never very
far out of reach when the boss was running loose. But the next minute I
saw I was mistaken. The man under the trees looked as if he might be an
English tourist. He had on a long traveling coat that came nearly to his
heels, and his cap was the kind that has two visors, one in front and
the other behind.
Realizing that it wasn't Tarbell, I stood perfectly still. The house was
lighted with gas, and the dining-room chandelier had been turned down,
so there was a chance that the skulker under the trees wouldn't see me
standing in the corner of the box window. To make it surer, I edged away
until the curtain hid me. I was just in time. The man had crept out of
his hiding-place and was coming up to the window on the outside. As he
passed through the dim beam of light thrown by the turned-down
chandelier, I saw that he had a pistol in his hand, or a weapon of some
kind; anyway, I caught the glint of the gas-light on dull steel.
That stirred me up good and plenty. I still had the gun I had taken out
of Fred May's drawer; I had carried it ever since the night when it had
mighty nearly got me killed off in the Red Tower coal yard. I fished it
out and made ready, thinking, of course, that the skulker must certainly
be one of Clanahan's gunmen. I still had that idea when I felt, rather
than saw, that the man was pulling himself up to the window so that he
could take a look into the dining-room.
The look satisfied him, apparently, for the next second I heard him drop
among the bushes; and when I stood up and looked out again I could just
make him out going around toward the back of the house. Thanks to Maisie
Ann and the pantry excursions, I knew the house like a book, and without
making any noise about it I slipped through the butler's pantry and got
a look out of a rear window. My man was there, and he was working his
way sort of blindly around to the den side of the place.
I guess maybe I ought to have given the alarm. But I knew there was only
one window in the major's den room, and that was nearly opposite the
screened doorway. So I ducked back into the dining-room and took a stand
where I could see the one window through the door-curtain net-work of
bamboo beads. I was so excited that I caught only snatches of what Mrs.
Sheila was saying to the boss, but the bits that I heard were a good
deal to the point.
"No, I mean it, Graham ... it is as I told you at first ... there is no
standing room for either of us on that ground ... and you must not come
here again when you know that I am alone.... No, Jimmie _isn't_ enough!"
I wrenched the half-working ear-sense aside and jammed it into my eyes,
concentrating hard on the window at which I expected every second to see
a man's face. If the man was a murderer, I thought I could beat him to
it. He would have to look in first before he could fire; and the boss
and Mrs. Sheila were at the other end of the room, sitting before the
little blaze in the grate.
The suspense didn't last very long. A hand came up first to push the
window vines aside. It was a white hand, long and slender, more like a
woman's than a man's. Then against the glass I saw the face, and it gave
me such a turn that I thought I must be going batty.
Instead of the ugly mug of one of Clanahan's gunmen, the haggard face
framed in the window sash was a face that I had seen once--and only
once--before; on a certain Sunday night in the Bullard when the
loose-lipped mouth belonging to it had been babbling drunken curses at
the night clerk. The man at the window was the dissipated young rounder
who had been pointed out as the nephew of President Dunton.
XVIII
The Name on the Register
So long as I was holding on to the notion that the man outside was one
of Clanahan's thugs, hanging around to do the boss a mischief, I thought
I knew pretty well what I should do when it came to the pinch. Would I
really have hauled off and shot a man in cold blood? That's a tough
question, but I guess maybe I could have screwed myself up to the
sticking point, as the fellow says, with a sure-enough gunman on the
other side of that window--and the boss's life at stake. But when I saw
that it was young Collingwood, that was a horse of another color.
What on earth was the President's nephew doing, prowling around Major
Kendrick's house after eleven o'clock at night, lugging a pistol and
peeking into windows? I could see him quite plainly now, in spite of the
beaded bamboo thing in the intervening doorway. He had both hands on the
sill and was trying to pull himself up so that he could see into the end
of the room where the fireplace was.
Just for the moment, there wasn't any danger of a blow-up. Unless he
should break the glass in the window, he couldn't get a line on either
the boss or Mrs. Sheila--if that was what he was aiming to do. All the
same, I kept him covered with the automatic, steadying it against the
door-jamb. There had been enough said in that room to set anybody's
nerves on edge; or, if it hadn't been said, it had been meant.
While the strain was at its worst, with the man outside flattening his
cheek against the window-pane to get the sidewise slant, I heard the
boss get out of his chair and say: "I'm keeping you out of bed, as
usual; look at that clock! I'll go and wake Jimmie, and we'll vanish."
Just as he spoke, two things happened: a taxi chugged up to the gate and
stopped, and the man's face disappeared from the window. I heard a quick
padding of feet as of somebody running, and the next minute came the
rattle of a latch-key and voices in the hall to tell me that the major
and his folks were getting home. I had barely time to pocket the pistol
and to drop into a chair where I could pretend to be asleep, when I felt
the boss's hand on my shoulder.
"Come, Jimmie," he said. "It's time we were moving along," and in a
minute or two, after he had said good-night to the major and Mrs.
Kendrick, we got out.
At the gate we found the taxi driver doing something to his motor. With
the scare from which I was still shaking to make my legs wobble, I
grabbed at the chance which our good angel was apparently holding for
us.
"Let's ride," I suggested; and when we got into the cab, I saw a man
stroll up from the shadow of the sidewalk cottonwoods and say something
to the driver; something that got him an invitation to ride to town on
the front seat with the cabby when the car was finally cranked and
started. I had a sight of our extra fare's face when he climbed up and
put his back to us, and I knew it was Tarbell. But Mr. Norcross didn't.
When we reached the Bullard the boss went right up to his rooms, but I
had a little investigation to make, and I stayed in the lobby to put it
over. On the open page of the hotel register, in the group of names
written just after the arrival of our train from the West at 7:30, I
found the signature that I was looking for, "Howard Collingwood, N. Y."
Putting this and that together, I concluded that our young rounder had
come in from the West--which was a bit puzzling, since it left the
inference that he wasn't direct from New York.
Waiting for a good chance at the night clerk, I ventured a few
questions. They were answered promptly enough. Young Mr. Collingwood
_had_ come in on the 7:30. But he had been in Portal City a week
earlier, too, stopping over for a single day. Yes, he was alone, now,
but he hadn't been on the other occasion. There was a man with him on
the earlier stop-over, and he, also, registered from New York. The clerk
didn't remember the other man's name, but he obligingly looked it up for
me in the older register. It was Bullock, Henry Bullock; and from the
badness of the hand-writing the clerk said, jokingly, that he'd bet Mr.
Bullock was a lawyer.
I suppose it was up to me to go to bed. It was late enough, in all
conscience, and nobody knew better than I did the early-rising,
early-office-opening habits of Mr. Graham Norcross, G.M. Just the same,
after I had marked that Mr. Collingwood's room-key was still in its box,
I went over to a corner of the lobby and sat down, determined to keep my
eyes open, if such a thing were humanly possible, until our rounder
should show up.
That determination let me in for a stubborn fight against the sleep
habit which ran along to nearly one o'clock. But finally my patience, or
whatever you care to call it, was rewarded. Just after the baggage
porter had finished sing-songing his call for the night express
westbound, my man came in on the run. He was still wearing the cap with
two visors, and the long traveling coat was flapping about his legs.
When he rushed over to the counter and began to talk fast to the night
clerk, I wasn't very far behind him. He was telling the clerk to get his
grips down from the room, adjectively quick, and to hold the hotel auto
so that he could catch the midnight westbound. While the boy was gone
for the grips, my man made a straight shoot for the bar, and when I next
got a sight of him--from behind one of the big onyx-plated pillars of
the bar-room colonnade--he was pouring neat liquor down his throat as if
it were water and he on fire inside.
That was about all there was to it. By the time Collingwood got back to
the clerk's counter, the boy was down with the bags. The regular train
auto had gone to the station with some other guests, but the clerk had
found a stray taxi, and it was waiting. Collingwood looked up sort of
nervously at the big clock, and paid his bill. And while the clerk was
getting his change, he grabbed the pen out of the counter inkstand, and
made out as if he was shading in a picture, or something, on the open
register.
A half-minute later he was gone, striding out after the grip-carrying
lobby boy as straight as if he had been walking a tight-rope, and never
showing his recent bar visit by so much as the shudder of an eye-lash.
When the taxi purred away I turned to the open register to see what our
maniac had been drawing in it. What he had done was completely to
obliterate his signature. He had scratched it over until the past master
of all the hand-writing experts that ever lived couldn't have told what
the name was.
XIX
The Hoodoo
It was while we were eating breakfast the next morning in the Bullard
café--the boss and I--that we got our first news of the Petrolite wreck.
The story was red-headlined in the _Morning Herald_--the Hatch-owned
paper--and besides being played up good and strong in the news columns,
there was an editorial to back the front-page scream.
At two o'clock in the morning a fast westbound freight had left the
track in Petrolite Canyon, and before they could get the flagman out, a
delayed eastbound passenger had collided with the ruins. There were no
lives lost, but a number of people, including the engineman, the postal
clerks and the baggageman on the passenger, were injured.
The editorial, commenting on the wire stuff, was sharply critical of the
Short Line management. It hinted broadly that there had been no such
thing as discipline on the road since Mr. Shaffer had left it; that the
rank and file was running things pretty much as it pleased; and with
this there was a dig at general managers who let old and time-tried
department heads go to make room for their rich and incompetent college
friends--which was meant to be a slap at Mr. Van Britt, our own and only
millionaire.
Unhappily, this fault-finding had a good bit to build on, in one way. As
I have said, we were having operating troubles to beat the band. With
the rank and file apparently doing its level best to help out in the new
"public-be-pleased" program, it seemed as if we couldn't worry through a
single week without smashing something.
Latterly, even the newspapers that were friendly to the Norcross
management were beginning to comment on the epidemic of disasters, and
nothing in the world but the boss's policy of taking all the editors
into his confidence when they wanted to investigate kept the rising
storm of criticism somewhere within bounds.
Mr. Norcross had read the paper before he handed it over to me, and
afterward he hurried his breakfast a little. When he reached the office,
Mr. Van Britt was waiting for the chief.
"We've got it in the neck once more," he gritted, flashing up his own
copy of the _Herald_. "Did you read that editorial?"
The boss nodded and said: "It's inspired, of course; everything you see
in that sheet takes its color from the Red Tower offices."
"I know; but it bites, just the same," was the brittle rejoinder.
"Never mind the newspaper talk," the boss interjected. "How bad is the
trouble this time?"
"Pretty bad. I've just had Brockman on the wire from Alicante. The
freight is practically a total loss; a good half of it is in the river.
Kirgan says he can pick the freight engine up and rebuild it; but the
passenger machine is a wreck."
"How did it happen?"
"It's like a good many of the others. Nobody seems to know. Brockman put
the freight engine crew on the rack, and they say there was a small
boulder on the track--that it rolled down the canyon slope just ahead of
them as they were turning a curve. They struck it, and both men say that
the engine knocked it off into the river apparently without hurting
anything. But two seconds later the entire train left the track and
piled up all over the right-of-way."
"The engineer and fireman weren't hurt?"
"No; they both jumped on the high side. But, of course, they were pretty
badly shaken up. Riggs, the fireman, got out of the raffle first and
tried to flag the passenger train, but he was too late."
The boss was sitting back in his chair and making little rings on the
desk blotter with the point of his letter-opener.
"Upton, these knock-outs have got to be stopped."
"Good Lord!" exclaimed the little millionaire; "you don't have to tell
me that! If we can't stop 'em, Uncle Dunton will have plenty of good
reasons for cleaning us all out, lock, stock, and barrel! I was talking
with Carter, in the claim office, this morning. Our loss and damage
account for the past month is something frightful!"
"It is," said the boss gravely. And then: "Upton, we're not altogether
as bright as we might be. Has it never occurred to you that we are
having too much bad luck to warrant us in charging it all up to the
chapter of accidents?"
Mr. Van Britt blew his cheeks out until the stubby, cropped mustache
bristled like porcupine quills.
"So you've been getting your pointer, too, have you?" he threw in.
Mr. Norcross didn't answer the question directly.
"Put Tarbell on the job, and if he needs help, let him pick his own
men," he directed. "We want to know why that boulder tumbled down ahead
of Number Seventeen, and I want to see Tarbell's report on it. Keep at
it night and day, Upton. The infection is getting into the rank and file
and it's spreading like a sickness. You've railroaded long enough to
know what that means. If it becomes psychological, we shall have all the
trouble we need."
"I know," nodded the superintendent. "I went through a siege of that
kind on the Great Southwestern, one winter. It was horrible. Men who had
been running trains year in and year out, and never knowing that they
had any nerves, went to pieces if you'd snap your fingers at them."
"That's it," said the boss. "We don't want to fall into that ditch.
Things are quite bad enough, as they are."
This ended it for the time. The Petrolite Canyon wreck was picked up,
the track was cleared, and once more our trains were moving on time. But
anybody could see that the entire Short Line had a case of "nerves."
Kirgan, Kirgan the cold-blooded, showed it one afternoon when I went
over to his office to return a bunch of blue-prints sent in for the
boss's approval. The big master-mechanic had a round-house foreman "on
the carpet" and was harrying him like the dickens for letting an engine
go out with one of her truck safety chains hanging loose.
Ever since we had gone together on the rescue run to Timber Mountain,
Mart and I had been sort of chummy, and after the foreman had gone away
with his foot in his hand, I joshed Kirgan a little about the way he had
hammered the round-house man.
"Maybe I did, Jimmie," he said, half as if he were already sorry for the
cussing out. "But the shape we're getting into is enough to make an
angel bawl. Why, Great Moses! a crew can't take an engine out here in
the yard to do a common job o' switchin' without breakin' something 'r
hurtin' somebody!"
"Bad medicine," I told him. "It's worrying the bosses, too. What's doing
it, Mart?"
"Maybe you can tell," he growled. "It's a hoodoo--that's what _it_ is.
Seven engines in the shops in the last nine days, and three more that
haven't been fished out-a the ditch yet. I wish Mr. Van Britt 'd fire
the whole jumpy outfit!"
It didn't seem as though firing was needed so much as a dose of nerve
tonic of some sort. Tarbell was working hard on the problem, quietly,
and without making any talk about it, and Kirgan was giving him all the
men he asked for from the shops; quick-witted fellows who were up in all
the mechanical details, and who made better spotters than outsiders
would because they knew the road and the ropes. But it was no use. I saw
some of Tarbell's reports, and they didn't show any crookedness. It
seemed to be just bad luck--one landslide after another of it.
Meanwhile, New York had waked up again. President Dunton had been off
the job somewhere, I guess, but now he was back, and the things he wired
to the boss were enough to make your hair stand on end. I looked every
day to see Mr. Norcross pitch the whole shooting-match into the fire
and quit, cold.
He'd never taken anything like Mr. Dunton's abuse from anybody before,
and he couldn't seem to get hardened to it. But he was loyal to Mr.
Chadwick; and, of course, he knew that Mr. Dunton's hot wires were meant
to nag him into resigning. Then there was Mrs. Sheila. I sort of
suspected she was holding him up to the rack, every day and every minute
of the day. No doubt she was.
It was one evening after he had been out to the major's for just a
little while, and had come back to the office, that he sent for Mr. Van
Britt, who was also working late. There was blood on the moon, and I saw
it in the way the boss's jaw was working.
"Upton," he began, as short as pie-crust, "have you thought of any way
to break this wreck hoodoo yet?"
Mr. Van Britt sat down and crossed his solid little legs.
"If I had, I shouldn't be losing sleep at the rate of five or six hours
a night," he rasped.
"There's one thing that we haven't tried," the boss shot back. "We've
been advertising it as bad luck, keeping our own suspicions to ourselves
and letting the men believe what they pleased. We'll change all that. I
want you to call your trainmen in as fast as you can get at them. Tell
them--from me, if you want to--that there isn't any bad luck about it;
that the enemies of this management are making an organized raid on the
property itself for the purpose of putting us out of the fight. Tell
them the whole story, if you want to: how we're trying our best to make
a spoon out of a spoiled horn, and how there is an army of grafters and
wreckers in this State which is doing its worst to knock us out of the
box."
Mr. Van Britt uncrossed his legs and sat staring for a second or two.
Then he whistled and said: "By Jove! Have you caught 'em with the goods,
at last?"
"No," was the curt reply. "Call it a ruse, if you like: it's
justifiable, and it will work. If you give the force something tangible
to lay hold of, it will work the needed miracle. It is only the
mysterious that terrifies. Railroad employees, as a whole, are perfectly
intelligent human beings, open to conviction. The management which
doesn't profit by that fact is lame. If you do this and appeal to the
loyalty of the men, you will make a private detective out of every man
in the train service, and every one of them keen to be the first to
catch the wreckers. You can add a bit of a reward for that, if you like,
and I'll pay it out of my own bank account."
For a full minute our captive millionaire didn't say a word. Then he
grinned like a good-natured little Chinese god.
"Who gave you this idea of taking the pay-roll into your confidence,
Graham?" he asked softly.
For the first time in all the weeks and months I'd been knowing him, the
boss dodged; dodged just like any of us might.
"I've been talking to Major Kendrick," he said. "He is a wise old man,
Upton, and he hears a good many things that don't get printed in the
newspapers."
I could see that this excuse didn't fool Mr. Van Britt for a single
instant, and there was a look in his eye that I couldn't quite
understand. Neither could I make much out of what he said.
"We'll go into that a little deeper some day, Graham--after this
epileptic attack has been fought off. This idea--which you confess isn't
your own--is a pretty shrewd one, and I shouldn't wonder if it would
work, if we can get it in motion before the hoodoo breaks us wide open.
And, as you say, the accusation is justifiable, even if we can't prove
up against the Hatch outfit. That turned-over rail in Petrolite Canyon,
for example, might have been helped along by----"
It was Kelso, Mr. Van Britt's stenographer, who smashed in with the
interruption. He was in his shirt-sleeves, as if he'd just got up from
his typewriter, and he rushed in with his mouth open and his eyes like
saucers.
"They--they want you in the despatcher's office!" he panted, jerking the
words out at Mr. Van Britt. "Durgin has let Number Five get by for a
head-ender with the 'Flyer,' and he's gone crazy!"
XX
The Helpless Wires
When Bobby Kelso shot his news at us we all made a quick break for the
despatcher's office, the boss in the lead. It was a big bare room
flanking Mr. Van Britt's quarters at the western end of the second floor
corridor and the windows looked out upon the yard twinkling with its red
and yellow and green switch lights.
Durgin, the night despatcher, had been alone on the train desk, and the
only other operators on duty were the car-record man and the young
fellow who acted as a relief on the commercial wire. When we got there,
we found that Tarbell had happened to be in the office when Durgin blew
up. He was sitting in at the train key, trying to get the one
intermediate wire station between the two trains that had failed to get
their "meet" orders, and this was the first I knew that he really was
the expert telegraph operator that his pay-roll description said he was.
Durgin looked like a tortured ghost. He was a thin, dark man with a
sort of scattering beard and limp black hair; one of the clearest-headed
despatchers in the bunch, and the very last man, you'd say, to get
rattled in a tangle-up. Yet here he was, hunched in a chair at the
car-record table in the corner, a staring-eyed, pallid-faced wreck, with
the sweat standing in big drops on his forehead and his hands shaking as
if he had the palsy.
Morris, the relief man, gave us the particulars, such as they were,
speaking in a hushed voice as if he was afraid of breaking in on
Tarbell's steady rattling of the key in the Crow Gulch station call.
"Number Four"--Four was the eastbound "Flyer"--"is five hours off her
time," he explained. "As near as I can get it, Durgin was going to make
her 'meet' with Number Five at the blind siding at Sand Creek tank. She
ought to have had her orders somewhere west of Bauxite Junction, and
Five ought to have got hers at Banta. Durgin says he simply forgot that
the 'Flyer' was running late: that she was still out and had a 'meet' to
make somewhere with Five."
Brief as Morris's explanation was, it was clear enough for anybody who
knew the road and the schedules. The regular meeting-point for the two
passenger trains was at a point well east of Portal City, instead of
west, and so, of course, would not concern the Desert Division crew of
either train, since all crews were changed at Portal City. From Banta
to Bauxite Junction, some thirty-odd miles, there was only one telegraph
station, namely, that at the Crow Gulch lumber camp, seven miles beyond
the Timber Mountain "Y" and the gravel pit where the stolen 1016 had
been abandoned.
Unluckily, Crow Gulch was only a day station, the day wires being
handled by a young man who was half in the pay of the railroad and half
in that of the saw-mill company. This young man slept at the mill camp,
which was a mile back in the gulch. There was only one chance in a
thousand that he would be down at the railroad station at ten o'clock at
night, and it was on that thousandth chance that Tarbell was rattling
the Crow Gulch call. If Five were making her card time, she was now
about half-way between Timber Mountain "Y" and Crow Gulch. And Four, the
"Flyer," had just left Bauxite--with no orders whatever. Which meant
that the two trains would come together somewhere near Sand Greek, one
of them, at least, running like the mischief to make up what time she
could.
Mr. Van Britt was as good a wire man as anybody on the line, but it was
the boss who took things in hand.
"There is a long-distance telephone to the Crow Gulch saw-mill; have you
tried that?" he barked at Tarbell.
The big young fellow who looked like a cow-boy--and had really been one,
they said--glanced up and nodded: "The call's in," he responded.
"'Central' says she can't raise anybody."
"What was Four's report from Bauxite?"
"Four hours and fifty-two minutes off time."
"That will bring them together somewhere in the hill curves this side of
Sand Creek," the boss said to Mr. Van Britt; "just where there is the
least chance of their seeing each other before they hit." Then to
Tarbell: "Try Bauxite and find out if there is a pusher engine there
that can be sent out to chase the 'Flyer'."
Tarbell nodded without breaking his monotonous repetition of the Crow
Gulch call.
"I did that first," he put in. "There's an engine there, and they're
getting her out. But it's a slim chance; the 'Flyer' has too good a
start."
For the next three or four minutes the tension was something fierce. The
boss and Mr. Van Britt hung over the train desk, and Tarbell kept up his
insistent clatter at the key. I had an eye on Durgin. He was still
hunched up in the record-man's chair, and to all appearances had gone
stone-blind crazy. Yet I couldn't get rid of the idea that he was
listening--listening as if all of his sealed-up senses had turned in to
intensify the one of hearing.
Just about the time when the suspense had grown so keen that it seemed
as if it couldn't be borne a second longer, Morris, who was sitting in
at the office phone, called out sharply: "Long-distance says she has
Crow Gulch lumber camp!"
Mr. Van Britt jumped to take the phone, and we got one side of the
talk--our side--in shot-like sentences:
"That you, Bertram? All right; this is Van Britt, at Portal City. Take
one of the mules and ride for your life down the gulch to the station!
Get that? Stop Number Five and make her take siding quick. Report over
your own wire what you do. _Hurry!_"
By the time Mr. Van Britt got back to the train desk, the boss had his
pencil out and was figuring on Bertram's time margin. It was now
ten-twelve, and Five's time at Crow Gulch was ten-eighteen. The Crow
Gulch operator had just six minutes in which to get his mule and cover
the rough mile down the gulch.
"He'll never make it," said Tarbell, who knew the gulch road. "Our only
chance on that lay is that Five may happen to be a few minutes late--and
she was right on the dot at Banta."
There was nothing to do but wait, and the waiting was savage. Tarbell
had a nerve of iron, but I could see his hand shake as it lay on the
glass-topped table. The boss was cool enough outwardly, but I knew that
in his brain there was a heart-breaking picture of those two fast
passenger trains rushing together in the night among the hills with no
hint of warning to help them save themselves. Mr. Van Britt couldn't
keep still. He had his hands jammed in the side pockets of his coat and
was pacing back and forth in the little space between the train desk and
the counter railing.
At the different tables in the room the sounders were clicking away as
if nothing were happening or due to happen, and above the spattering din
and clatter you could hear the escapement of the big standard-time clock
on the wall, hammering out the seconds that might mean life or death to
two or three hundred innocent people.
In that horrible suspense the six minutes pulled themselves out to an
eternity for that little bunch of us in the despatcher's office who
could do nothing but wait. On the stroke of ten-eighteen, the time when
Five was due at Crow Gulch on her schedule, Tarbell tuned his relay to
catch the first faint tappings from the distant day-station. Another
sounder was silent. There was hope in the delay, and Morris voiced it.
"He's there, and he's too busy to talk to us," he suggested, in a hushed
voice; and Disbrow, the car-record man, added: "That's it; it'd take a
minute or two to get them in on the siding."
The second minute passed, and then a third, and yet there was no word
from Bertram. "Call him," snapped the boss to Tarbell, but before the
ex-cowboy's hand could reach the key, the sounder began to rattle out a
string of dots and dashes; ragged Morse it was, but we could all read it
only too plainly.
"Too late--mule threw me and I had to crawl and drag a game leg--Five
passed full speed at ten-nineteen--I couldn't make it."
I saw the boss's hands shut up as though the finger nails would cut into
the palms.
"That ends it," he said, with a sort of swearing groan in his voice; and
then to Tarbell: "You may as well call Kirgan and tell him to order out
the wrecking train. Then have Perkins make up a relief train while
you're calling the doctors. Van Britt, you go and notify the hospital
over your own office wire. Have my private car put into the relief, and
see to it that it has all the necessary supplies. And you'd better
notify the undertakers, too."
Great Joash! but it was horrible--for us to be hustling around and
making arrangements for the funeral while the people who were to be
gathered up and buried were still swinging along live and well, half of
them in the crookings among the Timber Mountain foot-hills and the other
half somewhere in the desert stretches below Sand Creek!
Tarbell had sent Disbrow to the phone to call Kirgan, and Mr. Van Britt
was turning away to go to his own office, when the chair in the corner
by the car-record table fell over backwards with a crash and Durgin came
staggering across the room. He was staring straight ahead of him as if
he had gone blind, and the sweat was running down his face to lose
itself in the straggling beard.
When he spoke his voice seemed to come from away off somewhere, and he
was still staring at the blank wall beyond the counter-railing.
"Did I--did I hear somebody say you're sending for the undertakers?" he
choked, with a dry rattle in his throat; and then, without waiting for
an answer: "While you're at it, you'd better get one for me ... there's
the money to pay him," and he tossed a thick roll of bank bills, wrapped
around with a rubber band, over to Tarbell at the train desk.
Naturally, the little grand-stand play with the bank roll made a
diversion, and that is why the muffled crash of a pistol shot came with
a startling shock to everybody. When we turned to look, the mischief was
done. Durgin had crumpled down into a misshapen heap on the floor and
the sight we saw was enough to make your blood run cold.
You see, he had put the muzzle of the pistol into his mouth, and--but
it's no use: I can't tell about it, and the very thought of that thing
that had just a minute before been a man, lying there on the floor
makes me see black and want to keel over. What he had said about sending
for an extra undertaker was right as right. With the top of his head
blown off, the poor devil didn't need anything more in this world except
the burying.
XXI
Billy Morris Explains
Somebody has said, mighty truthfully, that even a death in the family
doesn't stop the common routine; that the things that have to be done
will go grinding on, just the same, whether all of us live, or some of
us die. Disbrow had jumped from the telephone at the crash of Durgin's
shot, and for just a second or so we all stood around the dead
despatcher, nobody making a move.
Then Mr. Norcross came alive with a jerk, telling Disbrow to get back on
his job of calling out the wreck wagons and the relief train, and
directing Bobby Kelso to go to another 'phone and call an undertaker to
come and get Durgin's body. Tarbell turned back to the train desk to
keep things from getting into a worse tangle than they already were in,
and to wait for the dreadful news, and the boss stood by him.
This second wait promised to be the worst of all. The collision was due
to happen miles from the nearest wire station; the news, when we should
get it, would probably be carried back to Bauxite Junction by the pusher
engine which had gone out to try to overtake the "Flyer." But even in
that case it might be an agonizing hour or more before we could hear
anything.
In a little while Disbrow had clicked in his call to Kirgan, and when
the undertaker's wagon came to gather up what was left of the dead
despatcher, the car-record man was hurriedly writing off his list of
doctors, and Mr. Van Britt had gone down to superintend the making up of
the relief train. True to his theory, which, among other things, laid
down the broad principle that the public had a right to be given all the
facts in a railroad disaster, Mr. Norcross was just telling me to call
up the _Mountaineer_ office, when Tarbell, calmly inking time reports
upon the train sheet, flung down his pen and snatched at his key to
"break" the chattering sounder.
Mr. Van Britt had come up-stairs again, and he and the boss were both
standing over Tarbell when the "G-S" break cleared the wire. Instantly
there came a quick call, "G-S" "G-S," followed by the signature, "B-J"
for Bauxite Junction. Tarbell answered, and then we all heard what
Bauxite had to say:
"_Pusher overtook Number Four three miles west of Sand Creek and has
brought her back here. What orders for her?_"
Somebody groaned, "Oh, thank God!" and Mr. Van Britt dropped into a
chair as if he had been hit by a cannon ball. Only the boss kept his
head, calling out sharply to Disbrow to break off on the doctors' list
and to hurry and stop Kirgan from getting away with the wrecking train.
Then, as curtly as if it were all merely a matter of routine, he told
Tarbell what to do; how he was to give the "Flyer" orders to wait at
Bauxite for Number Five, and then to proceed under time-card regulations
to Portal City.
When it was all over, and Tarbell had been given charge of the
despatching while a hurry call was sent out for the night relief man,
Donohue, to come down and take the train desk, there was a little
committee meeting in the general manager's office, with the boss in the
chair, and Mr. Van Britt sitting in for the other member.
"Of course, you've drawn your own conclusions, Upton," the boss began,
when he had asked me to shut the door.
"I guess so," was the grave rejoinder. "I'm afraid it is only too plain
that Durgin was hired to do it. What became of the money?"
"I have it here," said the boss, and he took the blood-money bank-roll
from his pocket and removed the rubber band. "Count it, Jimmie," he
ordered, passing it to me.
I ran through the bunch. It was in twenties and fifties, and there was
an even thousand dollars.
"That is the price of a man's life," said Mr. Van Britt, soberly, and
then Mr. Norcross said, "Who knows anything about Durgin? Was he a
married man?"
Mr. Van Britt shook his head.
"He had been married, but he and his wife didn't live together. He had
no relatives here. I knew him in the southwest two years ago. He'd had
domestic trouble of some kind, and didn't mix or mingle much with the
other men. But he was a good despatcher, and two months ago, when we had
an opening here, I sent for him."
"You think there is no doubt but that he was bribed to put those trains
together to-night?"
"None in the least--only I wish we had a little better proof of it."
"Where did he live?"
"He boarded at Mrs. Chandler's, out on Cross Street. Morris boards
there, too, I believe."
The boss turned to me.
"Jimmie, go and get Morris."
I carried the call and brought Morris back with me. He was a cheerful,
red-headed fellow, and everybody liked him.
"It isn't a 'sweat-box' session, Morris," said the boss, quietly, when
we came in and the relief operator sat down, sort of half scared, on the
edge of a chair. "We want to know something more about Durgin. He
roomed at your place, didn't he?"
Morris admitted it, but said he'd never been very chummy with the
despatcher; that Durgin wasn't chummy with anybody. Then the boss went
straight to the point, as he usually did.
"You were present and saw all that happened in the other room. Can you
tell us anything about that money?" pointing to the pile of bills on my
desk.
Billy Morris wriggled himself into a little better chair-hold. "Nothing
that would be worth telling, if things hadn't turned out just as they
have," he returned. "But now I guess I know. I left Mrs. Chandler's this
evening about seven o'clock to come on duty, and Durgin was just ahead
of me. Some fellow--a man in a snuff-colored overcoat and with a soft
hat pulled down so that I couldn't see his face--stopped Durgin on the
sidewalk, and they talked together."
"Go on," said Mr. Van Britt.
"I didn't hear what was said; I was up on the stoop, trying to make Mrs.
Chandler's broken door latch work to hold the door shut. But I saw the
overcoated man pass something to Durgin, and saw Durgin put whatever it
was into his pocket. Then the other man dodged and went away, and did it
so quick that I didn't see which way he went or what became of him. I
walked on down the steps after I had got the door to stay shut and tried
to overtake Durgin--just to walk on down here with him. But I guess he
must have run after he left the corner, for I didn't see anything more
of him until I got to the office."
"He was there when you came in?" It was Mr. Norcross who wanted to know.
"Yes. He had his coat off and was at work on the train sheet."
"That was a little after seven," said Mr. Van Britt. "What happened
between that and ten o'clock?"
"Nothing. Disbrow was busy at his table, and I had some work to do,
though not very much. I don't think Durgin left his chair, or said
anything to anybody until he jumped up and began to walk the floor,
taking on and saying that he'd put Four and Five together on the single
track. Just then, Tarbell came in and jumped for the train key, and I
ran out to give the alarm."
There was silence for a little time, and then the boss said, "That's
all, Morris; all but one thing. Do you think you would recognize the man
in the snuff-colored overcoat, if you should see him again?"
"Yes, I might; if he had on the same coat and hat."
"That will do, then. Keep this thing to yourself, and if the newspaper
people come after you, send them to Mr. Van Britt or to me."
After Morris had gone, Mr. Van Britt shook his head sort of savagely.
"It's hell, Graham!" he ripped out, bouncing to his feet and beginning
to tramp up and down the room. "To think that these devils would take
the chance of murdering a lot of totally innocent people to gain their
end! What are you going to do about it?"
"I don't know yet, Upton; but I am going to do something. This state of
affairs can't go on. The simplest thing is for me to throw up the job
and let the Short Line drop back into the old rut. I'm not sure that it
wouldn't save a good many lives in the end if I should do it. And yet it
seems such a cowardly thing to do--to resign under fire."
Mr. Van Britt had his hand on the door-knob, and what he said made me
warm to my finger-tips.
"We're all standing by you, Graham; all, you understand--to the last man
and the last ditch. And you're not going to pitch it up; you're going to
stay until you have thrown the harpoon into these high-binders, clear up
to the hitchings. That's my prophecy. The trouble's over for to-night,
and you'd better go up to the hotel and turn in. There is another day
coming, or if there isn't, it won't make any difference to any of us.
Good-night."
XXII
What the Pilot Engine Found
For a time after the suicide of the off-trick-despatcher the wreck
epidemic paused. Acting upon Mr. Norcross's suggestion, Mr. Van Britt
called his trainmen in, a crew at a time, and gave them the straight
tip; and after that the hoodoo died a natural death, and a good many
pairs of eyes all along the Short Line were keeping a sharp lookout for
the trouble-makers.
In the meantime, Tarbell, still digging faithfully, managed to turn up a
few facts that were worth something. In the Petrolite case he found a
lone prospector living in a shack high up on the farther side of the
canyon who told him that late in the evening of the day preceding the
wreck he had seen two men climbing the slope from which the boulder had
been dislodged, and that one of them was carrying a pick. Also, further
investigation seemed to prove that the rail which the blow of the rock
was supposed to have knocked loose had been previously weakened, either
by drawing some of the spikes, or by unscrewing the nuts on the bolts at
the joints.
In another field, and this time under Ripley's instructions, our
ex-cow-punch' had been able to set and bait a trap. By diligent search
he had found the man Murphy, the Clanahan henchman, who, under pressure,
had given away the Timber Mountain plot which had climaxed in the
kidnapping of the boss. This man had been deliberately shot in a
bar-room brawl and left for dead. But he had crawled away and had got
out of town to live and recover at a distant cattle ranch in the
Limberton Hills.
When Tarbell discovered him he had cut out the booze, had grown a beard,
and was thirsting for vengeance. Tarbell brought him back to Portal
City, and presently there began to be developments. Murphy knew all the
ropes. In a little time, Ripley, with Tarbell's help, was loaded for
bear. One chilly October afternoon the lawyer came down to our office to
tell Mr. Norcross that the game was cornered.
"All you have to do now is to give the word," was the way Ripley wound
up. "You refused to do it on a former occasion because we couldn't get
the men higher up. This time we can nail Clanahan, and a good few of the
political gangsters and bosses in the other towns along the line. What
do you say?"
The boss looked up with the little horse-shoe frown wrinkling between
his eyes.
"Can we get Hatch and Henckel?"
"No; not yet."
"Very well; then you may lock those papers up in your safe and we'll
wait. When you can see your way clear to a criminal trial, with Rufus
Hatch and Gustave Henckel in the prisoner's dock, we'll start the legal
machinery: but not before."
By now we were right on the eve of the State election. As far as anybody
could see, the railroad had stayed free and clear of the political
fight. The boss had kept his promise to maintain neutrality and was
still keeping it.
At the appointed time the big day dawned, and the political wind-up held
the center of the stage. So far as we were concerned, it passed off very
quietly. From the wire gossip that dribbled in during the day it
appeared that the railroad vote was heavy, though there were neither
charges nor counter-charges to indicate which way it had been thrown.
Along in the afternoon the newspaper offices began to put out bulletins,
and by evening the result was no longer doubtful. For the first time in
years the power of the political machine had been smashed decisively at
the polls, and on the following morning the _Mountaineer_ announced the
election of Governor Burrell, with a safe working majority in both
houses of the Legislature for the Independents.
Naturally, there was all sorts of a yell from the other side of the
fence. Charges were freely made, now, that the railroad had deliberately
ditched its friends, and all that. Also there were the bluest kind of
predictions for the future, most of them winding up with the assertion
that there could be no such thing as true prosperity for the country
while the Short Line continued under its present management.
It was on the third day after the election, rather late in the
afternoon, that the boss had a call from a mining promoter named Dawes,
representing a bunch of mine owners at Strathcona who were having
trouble with the smelter.
I was busy at the time and didn't pay much attention to what was said,
but I got the drift of it. The smelter, one of the few Hatch monopolies
which hadn't been shaken loose as yet, was located in the gulch six
miles below Strathcona, and it was served exclusively by its own
industrial railroad, which it was using as a lever to pry an excessive
hauling charge out of the mine owners. Wouldn't Mr. Norcross try to do
something about it?
The boss said he'd do anything he could, and asked what the mine owners
wanted. Dawes said they wanted help; that they were going to hold a mass
meeting in Strathcona the following morning at nine o'clock. Would it,
or wouldn't it, be possible for Mr. Norcross to be present at that
meeting?
Of course, the boss said he'd go. It meant the better part of a night's
run, special, in the private car, but that didn't make any difference.
Dawes went away, and before we broke off to go to dinner at the railroad
club, I was given a memorandum order for the special.
At the club I found that Mr. Norcross had an invited guest--Major
Kendrick. For a week or two Mrs. Sheila had been visiting at the State
capital, and the major's wife and Maisie Ann were with her. So the good
old major was sort of unattached, and glad enough, I took it, to be a
guest at anybody's table.
For a while the table talk--in which, of course, Jimmie Dodds hadn't any
part whatever--circled around the late landslide election, and what
Governor Burrell's party would do, now that it had the say-so. But by
and by it got around to the railroad situation.
"You're putting up a mighty good fight, Graham, my son, but it isn't
over yet--not by a jugful, suh"--this isn't just the way the major said
it, but it's as near as I can come to his soft Southern drawl with the
smothered "r's." "I've known Misteh Rufus Hatch for a good many yeahs,
and he has the perseve'ance of the ve'y devil. With all that has been
done, you must neveh forget, for a single hou'uh, that youh admirable
reform structchuh stands, as yet, upon the life of a single man. Don't
lose sight of that, Graham."
The boss looked up kind of curiously.
"You and Sheila seem to think that that point needs emphasizing more
than any other," he commented.
The major's fine old eyes twinkled gravely.
"You are mighty safe in payin' strict attention to whatever the little
gyerl tells you, Graham, my boy," he asserted. "She has a way of gettin'
at the heart of things that puts us meah men to shame--she has, for a
fact, suh."
"She has been very helpful to me," the boss put in, with his eyes in his
plate. "In fact, I may say that she has herself suggested a good many of
the moves in the railroad game. It's marvelous, and I can't understand
how she can do it."
They went on for a while, singing Mrs. Sheila's praises over in a good
many different ways, and I thought, wherever she might happen to be just
then, her pretty little ears ought to be burning good and hard. To hear
them talk you would have thought she was another Portia-person, and then
some.
The dinner wore itself out after a while, and when the waiter brought
the cigars, the boss was looking at his watch.
"I'm sorry I can't stay and smoke with you, major," he said, pushing his
chair back. "But the business grind never lets up. I'm obliged to go to
Strathcona to-night."
I don't know what the major was going to say to this abrupt break-away:
the after-dinner social cigar was a sort of religious ceremony with him.
But whatever he was going to say, he didn't say it, for at that moment a
telegraph boy came in and handed him a message. He put on his other
glasses and read the telegram, with his big goatee looking more than
ever like a dagger and the fierce white mustaches twitching. At the end
of things he folded the message and put it into his pocket, saying, sort
of soberly:
"Graham, there are times when Sheila's intuhferences are mighty neah
uncanny; they are, for a fact, suh. This wire is from her. What do you
suppose it says?"
Of course, the boss said he couldn't suppose anything about it, and the
major went on.
"She tells me, in just seven words, not to let you go to Strathcona
to-night. Now what do you make of that? How on top of God's green earth
did she know, away off yondeh at the capital, that you were meaning to
go to Strathcona to-night?"
Mr. Norcross shook his head. Then he said: "There are wires--both
kinds--though I don't know why anybody should telegraph or telephone the
capital that I expect to attend a mine-owners' meeting to-morrow
morning in the big gold camp. That's why I'm going, you know."
"But this warning," the major insisted. "There's a reason for it,
Graham, as sure as you are bawn!"
Again the boss shook his head.
"Between you two, you and Sheila, I'm due to acquire a case of nerves. I
don't know what she has heard, but I can't afford to dodge a business
appointment. I have wired the Strathcona people that I shall be there
to-morrow morning, and it is too late to make other arrangements. Sheila
has merely overheard an echo of the threats that are constantly being
made by the Hatch sympathizers. It's the aftermath of the election, but
it's all talk. They're down and out, and they haven't the nerve to
strike back, now."
That ended matters at the club, and the boss and I walked down to the
headquarters. The special, with Buck Chandler on the smart little
eight-wheeler that we always had for the private-car trips, was waiting,
and at the last minute I thought I wasn't going to get to go.
"There's no need of your putting in a night on the road, Jimmie," said
the boss, with the kindly thought for other people's comfort that never
failed him. But after I had begged a little, telling him that he'd need
somebody to take notes in the mine meeting, he said, "All right," and we
got aboard and gave the word to Maclise, the conductor, to get his
clearance and go.
A few minutes later we pulled out and the night run was begun. Like
every other car the boss had ever owned, the "05" was fitted up as a
working office, and since he had me along, he opened up a lot of claim
papers upon which the legal department was giving him the final say-so,
and we went to work.
For the next two hours I was so busy that I didn't know when we passed
the various stations. There were no passenger trains to meet, and the
despatcher was apparently giving us "regardless" rights over everything
else, since we made no stops. At half-past nine, Mr. Norcross snapped a
rubber band over the last of the claim files, lighted a pipe, and told
me I might go to bed if I wanted to; said that he was going himself
after he'd had a smoke. Just then, Chandler whistled for a station, and,
looking out of a window, I saw that we were pulling into Bauxite, the
little wind-blown junction from which the Strathcona branch led away
into the northern mountains.
Wanting a bite of fresh air before turning in, I got off when we made
the stop and strolled up to the engine. Maclise was in the office,
getting orders for the branch, and Chandler was squatting in the gangway
of the 815 and waiting. Up ahead of us, and too far away for me to read
the number on her tender, there was a light engine. I thought at first
it was the pusher which was kept at Bauxite to help heavy freights up
the branch grades, and I wondered what it was doing out on the branch
"Y" and in our way.
"What's the pusher out for, Buck?" I asked.
Chandler grinned down at me.
"You ain't so much of a railroad man as you might be, Jimmie," he said.
"That ain't the pusher."
"What is it, then?"
"It's our first section, runnin' light to Strathcona."
Maybe Chandler was right, that I wasn't much of a railroad man, but I
savvied the Short Line operating rules well enough to know that it
wasn't usual to run a light engine, deadheading over the road, as a
section of a special. Also, I knew that Buck knew it.
With that last little talk over the club dinner-table fresh in mind, I
began to wonder, but instead of asking Chandler any more questions about
the engine out ahead, I asked him if I might ride a piece with him up
the branch; and when he said "Sure," I climbed up and humped myself on
the fireman's box.
Maclise got his orders in due time and we pulled out. I noticed that
when he gave Chandler the word, he also made motions with his lantern to
the engine up ahead and it promptly steamed away, speeding up until it
had about a half-mile lead and then holding it. That seemed funny, too.
Though it is a rule that is often broken on all railroads, the different
sections of a train are supposed to keep at least five minutes apart,
and our "first" wasn't much more than a minute away from us at any time.
Another thing that struck me as being funny was the way Chandler was
running. It was only sixty mountain miles up the branch to the big gold
camp, and we ought to have been able to make it by one o'clock, taking
it dead easy. But the way Buck was niggling along it looked as if it
might be going to take us all night.
Just the same, nothing happened. The first ten miles was across a desert
stretch with only a slightly rising grade, and it was pretty much all
tangent--straight line. Beyond the ten-mile station of Nippo we hit the
mountain proper, climbing it through a dry canyon, with curves that
blocked off everything fifty feet ahead of the engine, and grades that
would have made pretty good toboggan slides. The night was fine and
starlit, but there was no moon and the canyon shadows loomed like huge
walls to shut us in.
On the reverse curves I could occasionally get a glimpse of the red tail
lights of the engine which ought, by rights, to have been five full
minutes ahead of us. It was still holding its short lead, jogging along
as leisurely as we were.
With nothing to do and not much to see, I got sleepy after a while, and
about the time when I was thinking that I might as well climb back over
the tender and turn in, I dozed off right there on the fireman's
box--which was safe enough, at the snail's pace we were running. When I
awoke it was with the feeling that I hadn't been asleep more than a
minute or two, but the facts were against me. It was nearly one o'clock
in the morning, and we had worried through the thirty-five miles of
canyon run and were climbing the steep talus of Slide Mountain.
At first I didn't know what it was that woke me. On my side of the
engine the big mountain fell away, miles it seemed, on a slope on which
a man could hardly have kept his footing, and where a train, jumping the
track, would roll forever before it would stop in the gorges at the
bottom. While I was rubbing my eyes, the eight-wheeler gave another
little jerk, and I saw that Chandler was slowing for a stop; saw this
and got a glimpse of somebody on the track ahead, flagging us down with
a lantern.
A minute later the brakes had been set and Buck and I were off. As we
swung down from the engine step, Maclise joined us, and we went to meet
the man with the lantern. He was the fireman of the engine ahead, and
when we got around on the track I saw that our "first section" was
stopped just a little way farther on.
"What is it, Barty?" said Maclise, when we came up to the fireman.
"It's them hell-fired wreckers again," was the gritting reply. "Rail
joint disconnected and sprung out so's to let us off down the mountain."
I thought it was up to me to go back and tell the boss, but there wasn't
any need of it. The stop or the slow running or something had roused
him, and he was up and dressed and coming along beside the engine. When
he came up, Maclise told him why we were stopping. He didn't say
anything about the rail break, but he did ask, sort of sharp and quick,
what engine that was up ahead.
I don't know what Maclise told him. Chandler turned to go back to his
engine, and the rest of us were moving along the other way, the boss
setting the pace with Maclise at his elbow. Three rail-lengths ahead of
the stopped light engine we came to the break. The head engineer and
another man were down on their hands and knees examining it, and when
they stood up at our coming, I saw that the other man was Mr. Van Britt.
"What?" said the boss; "you here?"
Our only millionaire nodded.
"I ride the line once in a while--just to see how things are going," he
returned crisply.
The boss didn't say anything more, but he knelt to look at the break. It
was a trap, all right, set, beyond all question of doubt, to catch the
private-car special. The fish-plates had been removed from a joint in
the left-hand rail and the end of the downhill rail had been sprung out
to make a derailing switch, which was held in position by the insertion
of one of the fish-plates between the rail-webs. If we had hit the trap,
going at even ordinary mountain-climbing speed, there would have been
nothing left to tell the tale but a heap of scrap at the bottom of the
thousand-foot dump.
There wasn't very much talk made by anybody. Under Mr. Van Britt's
directions the engineer and fireman of the pilot engine brought tools
and the break was repaired. All they had to do was to spring the bent
rail back into place and spike it, and bolt the fish-plates on again.
While they were doing it the boss stood aside with Mr. Van Britt, and I
heard what was said. Mr. Van Britt began it by saying, "We don't need
any detectives this time. You are on your way to Strathcona to put a
crimp in the smelter squeeze--the last of the Red Tower monopolies--so
Dawes told me. He was probably foolish enough to tell others, and the
word was pasted to scrag you before you could get to it. This trap was
set to catch your special."
"Evidently," barked the boss; and then: "How did you happen to be here
on that engine, Upton?"
"I've been ahead of you all the way up from Portal City," was the calm
reply. "I thought it might be safer if you had a pilot to show you the
way. I guess I must have had a hunch."
The boss turned on him like a flash.
"You had something more than a hunch: what was it--a wire?"
Mr. Van Britt gritted his teeth a little, but he told the truth.
"Yes; a friend of ours tipped me off--not about the broken track, of
course, but just in a general way. I knew you'd bully me if I should
tell you that I was going to run a pilot ahead of you, so I didn't tell
you."
The break was repaired and the men were taking the tools back to the
engine. As we turned to follow them, Mr. Norcross said: "Just one more
question, Upton. Did your wire come from the capital?"
But at this Mr. Van Britt seemed to forget that he was talking to his
general manager.
"It's none of your damned business where it came from," he snapped back;
and that ended it.
XXIII
The Major's Premonition
Notwithstanding the slow run and the near-disaster on Slide Mountain, we
had our meeting with the Strathcona mine owners the following morning;
and that much of the special train trip served its purpose, anyway. The
boss met the miners a good bit more than half-way, and gave them their
relief--and the Hatch-owned smelter its knock-out--by promising that our
traffic department would make an ore tariff to the independent smelter
on the other side of the range low enough to protect the producers.
They tried to give him an ovation for that--the Strathcona men--did give
him a banquet luncheon at the Shaft-House Grill, a luxurious club fitted
up with rough beams and rafters to make it look like its name. And on
account of the banquet it was nearly three o'clock in the afternoon
before we got away for the return to Portal City.
We had seen nothing of Mr. Van Britt during the day, and until we came
to start out I thought maybe he had gone back to Portal City on the
regular train. But at the station I saw the pilot engine just ahead of
us again, and though I couldn't be quite sure, I thought I caught a
glimpse of our athletic little general superintendent on the fireman's
box.
The boss was pretty quiet all the way on the run down the mountain to
Bauxite, and, for a wonder, he didn't pitch into the work at the desk.
Instead, he sat in one of the big wicker chairs facing a rear window,
smoking, and apparently absorbed in watching the crooked track of the
branch unreel itself and race backward as we slid down the grades.
I could tell pretty well what he was thinking about. For six months he
had been working like a horse to pull the Short Line out of the mudhole
of contempt and hostility into which a more or less justly aroused
public enmity had dumped it; and now, just as he was beginning to get it
up over the edge, he had been plainly notified that he was going to be
killed if he didn't let go.
On the reverse curves he could see the pilot engine feeling its way down
the mountain ahead of us, and I guess that gave him another twinge. It's
tough on a man to think that he can't ride over his own railroad without
being hedged up and guarded. But the really tough part of it was not so
much the mere fact of getting killed. It was the other and sharper fact
that, just as the way seemed to be opening out to better things for the
Short Line, a mis-set switch or a bullet in the dark would knock the
entire hard-built reform experiment into a cocked hat.
There was every reason, now, to hope that the experiment was going to be
a success, at least, at our end of it, if it could go on just a little
farther. Slowly but surely the new policy was winning its way with the
public. Traffic was booming, and almost from the first the Interstate
Commerce inspectors had let us alone, just as the police will let a man
alone when there is reason to believe that he has taken a brace and is
trying his best to walk straight.
Also, for the drastic intrastate regulations--the laws about headlights,
and safety devices, and grade crossings, and full crews, and the making
of reports to this, that, and the other State official; laws which, if
enforced to the letter would have left the railroad management with
little to do but to pay the bills; for these something better was to be
substituted. We had Governor-elect Burrell's assurance for this. He had
met the boss in the lobby of the Bullard the day after the election, and
I had heard him say:
"You have kept your promise, Norcross. For the first time in its
history, your railroad has let a State campaign take its course without
bullying, bribery, or underhanded corruption. You'll get your reward. We
are going to have new laws, and a Railroad Commission with authority to
act both ways--for the people when it's needed, and for the carriers
when they need it. If you can show that the present laws are unjust to
your earning powers, you'll get relief and the people of this
commonwealth will cheerfully pay the bills."
Past all this, though, and even past the murderous machinations of the
disappointed grafters, there was the old sore: the original barrier that
no amount of internal reform could break down. There could be no
permanent prosperity for the Short Line while its majority stock was
controlled by men who cared absolutely nothing for the property as a
working factor in the life and activities of the region it served.
That was the way Mrs. Sheila had put it to the boss, one evening along
in the summer when they were sitting out on the Kendricks' porch, and I
had butted in, as usual, with a bunch of telegrams that didn't matter.
She had said that the experiment _couldn't_ be a success unless the
conditions could be changed in some way; that so long as the railroads
were owned or controlled by men of the Mr. Dunton sort and used as
counters in the money-making game, there would never be any real peace
between the companies and the people at large.
I knew that the boss had taken that saying of hers for another of the
inspirations, and that he believed it clear through to the bottom. But I
guess he didn't see any way as yet in which the Duntons could be shaken
out, or just what could be made to happen if they were shaken out.
It was at Bauxite Junction that we picked up Mr. Hornack. He had been
down in the sugar-beet country on a business trip, and had come up as
far as Bauxite on a freight, after the Sedgwick operator had told him
that our special was on the way home from Strathcona, and that he could
catch it at the Junction.
I was glad when I saw him come in. I had just been thinking that it
wasn't healthy for the boss to be grilling there at the car window so
long alone, and I knew Mr. Hornack would keep him talking about
something or other all the rest of the way in.
For a little while they talked business, and I took my chance to stretch
out on the leather lounge behind their chairs and kind of half doze off.
By and by the business talk wound itself up and I heard Mr. Hornack say:
"I saw Ripley going in on Number Six this morning, and he had company;
Mrs. Macrae, and the major's wife, and the husky little-girl cousin.
They've been visiting at the capital, so they told me, and I expect the
major will be mighty glad to see them back."
I didn't hear what Mr. Norcross said, if he said anything at all, but if
I had been stone deaf I think I should have heard the thing that Mr.
Hornack said when he went on.
"I heard something the other day in Portal City that seems pretty hard
to believe, Norcross. It was at one of Mrs. Stagford's 'evenings,' and I
was sitting out a dance with a certain young woman who shall be
nameless. We were speaking of the Kendricks, and she gave me a rather
broad hint that Mrs. Macrae isn't a widow at all; that her husband is
still living."
My heavens! I had figured out a thousand ways in which the boss might
get wised up to the dreadful truth, but never anything like this; to
have it dropped on him that way out of a clear sky!
For a minute or two he didn't say anything, but when he did speak, I saw
that the truth wasn't going to take hold.
"That is gossip, pure and simple, Hornack. The Kendricks are my friends,
and I have been as intimate in their household as any outsider could be.
It's merely idle gossip, I can assure you."
"Maybe so," said Mr. Hornack, sort of drawing in his horns when he saw
how positive the boss was about it. "I'm not beyond admitting that the
young woman who told me is a little inclined that way. But the story was
pretty circumstantial: it went so far as to assert that 'Macrae' wasn't
Mrs. Sheila's married name at all, and to say that her long stay with
her Western cousins was--and still is--really a flight from conditions
that were too humiliating to be borne."
"I don't care what was said, or who said it," the boss cut in brusquely.
"It's ridiculous to suppose that any woman, and especially a woman like
Sheila Macrae, would attempt to pass herself off as a widow when she
wasn't one."
"I know," said the traffic manager, temporizing a little. "But on the
other hand, I've never heard the major, or any one else, say outright
that she was a widow. It seems to be just taken for granted. It stirred
me up a bit on Van Britt's account. You don't go anywhere to mix and
mingle socially, but it's the talk of the town that Upton is in over his
head in that quarter."
I shut my eyes and held my breath. Mr. Hornack hadn't the slightest idea
what thin ice he was skating over, or how this easy mention of Mr. Van
Britt might be just like rubbing salt into a fresh cut. By this time it
was growing dark, and we were running into Portal City, and I was mighty
glad that it couldn't last much longer. The boss didn't speak again
until the yard switches were clanking under the car, and then he said:
"Upton is well able to take care of himself, Hornack, and I don't think
we need worry about him," and then over his shoulder to me: "Jimmie,
it's time to wake up. We're pulling in."
As he always did on a return from a trip, Mr. Norcross ran up to his
office to see if there was anything pressing, before he did anything
else. May was still at his desk, and in answer to the boss's question he
shook his head.
"No; nobody that couldn't wait," he said, referring to the day's
callers. "Mr. Hatch was up with a couple of men that I didn't know, but
he only wanted to inquire if you would be in the office this evening
after dinner. I told him I'd find out when you came, and let him know by
'phone."
I thought, after all that had happened, Hatch certainly had his nerve to
want to come and make a talk with the man his hired assassins were
trying to murder. But if Mr. Norcross took that view of it, he didn't
show it. On the contrary, he told Fred it would be all right to
telephone Hatch; that he was coming down after dinner and the office
would be open, as usual.
When things got that far along I slipped out and went to Mr. Van Britt's
office at the other end of the hall. Bobby Kelso was there, holding the
office down, and I asked him where I could find Tarbell. Luckily, he was
able to tell me that Tarbell was at that moment down in the station
restaurant, eating his supper; so down I went and butted in with my
story of the Hatch call, and how it was to be repeated a little later
on.
"I'll be there," said Tarbell; and with that load off my mind, I mogged
off up-town to the club to get my own dinner.
When I broke into the grill-room at the railroad club, I found that Mr.
Norcross had beaten me to it by a few minutes; that he had already
ordered his dinner at a table with Major Kendrick. I suppose, by good
rights, I ought to have gone off into a corner by myself, but I saw that
the boss had tipped a chair at the end of the table where I usually sat,
so I just went ahead and took it.
Coming in late, that way, I didn't get the first of the talk, but I took
it that the boss had been saying something about his rare good luck in
having the major for a table-mate two days in succession.
"The honoh is mine, my deah boy," the genial old Kentuckian was telling
him as I sat down. "They told me in the despatchuh's office that youh
special was expected in, so I telephoned Sheila and the madam not to
wait for me."
"Then you stayed down town purposely to see me?" asked the boss.
"In a manneh, yes. I was by way of picking up a bit of information late
this afte'noon that I thought ought to be passed on to you without any
great delay."
The boss looked up quickly. "What is it, Major?" he inquired. "Are you
going to tell me that something new has broken loose?"
"I wish I might be that he'pfully definite--I do so, Graham. But I
can't. It's me'uhly a bit of street talk. They're telling it, oveh at
the Commercial Club, that Hatch and John Marshall--you know him,--that
Sedgwick stock jobbeh who has been so active in this Citizens' Storage &
Warehouse business--have finally come togetheh."
"In a business way, you mean?"
The major gave a right and left twist to his big mustaches and shrugged
one shoulder.
"They are most probably calling it business," he rejoined.
The boss nodded. "I know what has happened. In spite of the fact that
the local people know that their economic salvation depends upon a wide
and even distribution of their C. S. & W. stock, there has been a good
bit of buying and selling and swapping around. I remember you prophesied
that in a little while we'd have another trust in the hands of a few
men. You may recollect that I didn't dispute your prediction. I merely
said that our ground leases--the fact that all of the C. S. & W. plants
and buildings are on railroad land--would still give us the whip-hand
over any new monopoly that might be formed."
"Yes, suh; I remember you said that," the major allowed.
"Very good. Marshall and his pocket syndicate may have acquired a voting
control in C. S. & W., and they may be willing now to patch up an
alliance with Hatch. But in that case the new monopoly will still lack
the one vital ingredient: the power to fix prices. If there is a new
combine, and it tries to make the producers and merchants pay more than
the agreed percentages for storage and handling----"
"I know," the major cut in. "You-all will rise up in the majesty of youh
wrath and put it out of business by terminating the leases. I hope you
may: I sutt'inly do hope you may. But you'll recollect that I didn't
advise you on that point, suh. You took Misteh Ripley's opinion. Maybe
the cou'ts will hold with you, but, candidly, Graham, I doubt it--doubt
it right much."
The boss didn't seem to be much scared up over the doubt. He just smiled
and said we'd be likely to find out what was in the wind, and that
before very long. Then he spoke of Hatch's afternoon call at our
offices, and mentioned the fact that the Red Tower president would
probably try again, later in the evening.
The major let the business matter drop, and he was working his way
patiently through the salad course when he looked up to say:
"Was there anything in youh trip to Strathcona to warrant Sheila's
little telegraphic dangeh signal, Graham?"
"Nothing worth mentioning," said the boss, without turning a hair; doing
it, as I made sure, because he didn't want Mrs. Sheila to be mixed up in
the plotting business, even by implication.
The major didn't press the inquiry any farther, and when he spoke again
it was of an entirely different matter.
"Away along in the beginning, somebody--I think it was John
Chadwick--spoke of you as a man with a sawt of raw-head-and-bloody-bones
tempeh, Graham: what have you done with that tempeh in these heah latteh
days?"
This time the boss's smile was a good-natured grin.
"Temper is not always a matter of temperament, Major. Sometimes it is
only a means to an end. Much of my experience has been in the
construction camps, where I have had to deal with men in the raw. Just
the same, there have been moments within the past six months when I have
been sorely tempted to burn the wires with a few choice words of the
short and ugly variety and throw up my job."
"Which, as you may say, brings us around to President Dunton," put in
the old lawyer shrewdly. "He is still opposing youh policies?"
"Up to a few weeks ago he was still hounding me to do something that
would boost the stock, regardless of what the something should be, or of
its effect upon the permanent value of the property."
Again the major held his peace, as if he were debating some knotty point
with himself--the table-clearing giving him his chance.
"Did I undehstand you to say that these--ah--suggestions from Dunton had
stopped?" he inquired, after the little coffees had been served.
"Temporarily, at least. I haven't heard anything from New York--not
lately."
"Then Dunton's nephew hasn't made himself known to you?"
"Collingwood? Hardly. I'm not in Mr. Howie Collingwood's set--which is
one of the things I have to be thankful for. But this is news: I didn't
know he was out here."
The news-giver bent his head gravely in confirmation of the fact.
"He's heah, I'm sorry to say, Graham. He has been heah quite some little
time, vibratin' round with the Grigsbys and the Gannons and a lot mo' of
the new-rich people up at the capital."
It was the boss's turn to go silent, and I could guess pretty well what
he was thinking. The presence of President Dunton's nephew in the West
might mean much or nothing. But I could imagine the boss was thinking
that his own single experience with Collingwood was enough to make him
wish that the nephew of Big Money would stay where he belonged--among
the high-rollers and spenders of his own set in the effete East.
"I can't quite get the proper slant on men of the Collingwood type," he
remarked, after the pause. "The only time I ever saw him was on the
night before the directors' meeting last spring. He was here with his
uncle's party in the special train, and that night at the Bullard he had
been drinking too much and made a braying ass of himself. I had to knock
him silly before I could get him up to his room."
"You did that, Graham?--for a strangeh?"
"I did it for the comfort of all concerned. As I say, he was making an
ass of himself."
There was another break, and then the major looked up with a little
frown.
"That was befo' you had met Sheila?" he asked, thoughtfully.
"Why, no; not exactly. It was the same night--the night we all dropped
off the 'Flyer' and got left behind at Sand Creek. You may remember that
we came in later on Mr. Chadwick's special."
The major made no reply to this, and pretty soon the boss was on his
feet and excusing himself once more on the after-dinner smoking stunt,
saying that he was obliged to go back to the office. The major got up
and shook hands with him as if he were bidding him good-by for a long
journey.
"You are going down to keep that appointment with Misteh Rufus Hatch?"
he said. "You take an old man's advice, Graham, my boy, and keep youh
hand--figuratively speaking, of cou'se--on youh gun. It runs in my mind,
somehow, that you are going to be hit--and hit right hard. No, don't ask
me why. Call it a rotten suspicion, and let it go at that. Come up to
the house, afte'wards, if you have time, and tell me I'm a false
prophet, suh; I hope you may."
The boss promised plenty cheerfully as to the calling part, as you'd
know he would since he hadn't seen Mrs. Sheila for I don't know how
long; and a few minutes later we were on our way, walking briskly, to
keep the Fred-May-made engagement with the chief of the grafters.
XXIV
The Dead-Line
We found the three disappointed afternoon callers already on hand when
we reached the headquarters. Fred May was back from his dinner, and he
had let them in as far as the ante-room. The boss said, "Good evening,
gentlemen," as pleasant as a basket of chips; told Fred he might go, and
invited the waiting bunch into the private office, snapping on the
lights as he opened the door.
In the big room he indicated the sitting possibilities, and the three
callers planted themselves in a semicircle at the desk end. No
introductions were needed. One of the pair Hatch had brought with him
was a lawyer named Marrow, whose home town was Sedgwick; a sharp-nosed,
ferret-eyed man who figured as one of the many "local counsels" for Red
Tower. The other, Dedmon, was a political place-hunter who had once been
sheriff of Arrowhead County.
"You've kept us cooling our heels in your waiting-room for just about
the last time, Mr. Norcross!" was the spiteful way in which Hatch opened
fire. "We've come to talk straight business with you this trip, and it
will be more to your interest than ours if you'll send your clerk away."
While they had been dragging up their chairs and sitting down, I had
heard Fred May lock up his typewriter and go, and had been listening
anxiously for some noise that would tell me Tarbell was on deck. I
thought I heard the door of the outer office open again just as Hatch
spoke and it comforted me a whole lot.
The boss didn't pay any attention to Hatch's suggestion about sending me
away; acted as if he hadn't heard it. Opening his desk he took a box of
cigars from a drawer and passed it. Dedmon, the ex-sheriff, helped
himself, but the lawyer and Hatch both refused. With this concession to
the small hospitalities the boss swung his chair to face the trio.
"My time is yours, gentlemen," he said; and Hatch jumped in like a man
fairly spoiling for a fight.
"For six months, Norcross, you've been mowing a pretty wide swath out
here in the tall hills. You've been posing as a little tin god before
the people of this State, and all the while you've been knifing and
slugging and black-jacking private capital and private business wherever
and whenever they have happened to get in your way. Now, at the end of
the lane, by Jupiter, we've got you dead to rights--you and your damned
railroad!"
"Cut out as many of the personalities as you can, and come to the
point," suggested the boss quietly.
"You think I haven't any point to come to?" barked the grafter, with
rising anger. "I'll show you! You've beaten us in the courts, and your
imported lawyers have----"
"Excuse me, Mr. Hatch," was the curt interruption. "Abuse isn't
argument. State your case, if you have one."
"Oh, I've got the case, all right. You've been keeping your finger on
the pulse, or you think you have, but I can wise you up to a few things
that have got away from you. You thought you were the only original
trust-buster when you started your scheme of locally owned elevators and
warehouses and coal- and lumber-yards and ran us out of business. But
I'm here to tell you that your fine-haired little deal to rob us began
to die about as soon as it was born."
"How so?" inquired the boss, just as though Major Kendrick hadn't
already given him his pointer about the how.
"In the way that everything of that kind is bound to die. It wasn't a
month before your little local stockholders began to get together and
swap stock and sell it. In a very short time the control of the whole
string of local plants was in the hands of a hundred men. To-day it's in
the hands of less than twenty, with John Marshall at the head of them."
This time the boss let out a notch. "So far, you haven't told me
anything new. Go on."
"If I should name Marshall's bunch, you'd know what's coming to you. But
we needn't go into statistics. Citizens' Storage & Warehouse is now a
consolidated property, and John Marshall, Henckel and I control a
majority of its stock. How does that strike you?"
"It strikes me that the people most deeply interested have been
exceedingly foolish to sell their birthright. But that is strictly their
own business, and not mine or the railroad company's."
"Wait!" Hatch snarled. "It's going to be both yours and the railroad
company's business, before you are through with it. Marrow, here,
represents Marshall, and I represent Henckel and myself. What are you
going to do about those ground leases?"
"Nothing at all, except to insist upon the condition under which they
were granted by the railroad company."
"Meaning that you are going to try to hold us to the fixed percentage
charge for handling, packing, loading, and transferring?"
"Meaning just that. If you raise the proportional market-price charge
on the producers and merchants, the leases will terminate."
"I thought that was about where you'd land. Now listen: we're
It--Marshall and Henckel and I--and what we say, goes as it lies. We are
going to use the present C. S. & W. plants and equipment, charging our
own storage and handling percentages, based on anything we see fit. If
you pull that ground-lease business on us and try to drive us out, we'll
fight you all the way up to the Supreme Court. If you beat us there,
we'll merely move over to the other side of your tracks to our old Red
Tower houses and yards and go on doing business at the old stand."
The boss sat back in his chair, and I could tell by the set of his jaw
that he was refusing to be panic-stricken.
"You are taking altogether too much for granted, aren't you?" he put in
mildly. "You are assuming that the courts will eventually nullify the
terms of the ground-leases, or, if they do not, that the railroad
company will do nothing to save its patrons from falling into this new
graft trap."
Hatch snapped his fingers. "Now you are coming to the milk in the
cocoanut!" he rapped out. "That is exactly what we're assuming. You are
going to let go, once for all, Norcross. You are not going to fight us
in the courts, and neither are you going to harass us out of existence
with short cars, over-charges, and the thousand and one petty
persecutions that you railroad buccaneers make use of to line your own
pockets!"
"But if we refuse to lie down and let you walk over us and our
patrons--what then?" the boss inquired.
That brought the explosion. Hatch's eyes blazed and he smacked fist into
palm.
"Then we'll knife you, and we'll do it to a velvet finish! After so long
a time, we've got you where you can't side-step, Norcross. You thought
you played it pretty damned fine in that election deal; but we got the
goods on you, just the same!"
Again the boss refused to be panic-stricken; or, anyhow, he looked that
way.
"We have heard that kind of talk many times in the past," he said. "The
way to make it effective is to produce the goods."
"That's just what we're here to do!" snapped the Red Tower president
vindictively. "You, and the Big Fellows in New York, want a lot of the
State railroad laws repealed or amended. If you can't get that string
untied, you can't gamble any more with your stock. Well and good. You
came here six months ago and set out to manufacture public sentiment in
favor of the railroad. You ran up your 'public-be-pleased' flag and beat
the tom-tom and blew the hewgag until you got a lot of dolts and
chuckle-heads and easy marks to believe that you really meant it."
"Well, go on."
"With all this humbug and hullaballoo you still couldn't be quite
certain that you had made your point; that your measures would carry
through the incoming Legislature. After the primaries you counted noses
among the candidates and found it was going to be a tight squeak--a
damned tight squeak. Then you did what you railroad people always do;
you slipped out quietly and bought a few men--just to be on the safe
side."
So it was sprung at last. Hatch was accusing us of the one thing that we
hadn't done; that the boss knew we hadn't done.
"I'm afraid you'll have to try again, Mr. Hatch," he said, with a sour
little smile. Then he added: "Anybody can make charges, you know."
Hatch jumped to his feet and he was almost foaming at the mouth.
"Right there is where we've got you!" he shouted. "You were too cautious
to put one of your own men in the field, so you sent outside for your
briber. He was fly, too; he never came near you nor any of your
officials--to start curious talk. But he was a stranger, and he had to
have help in finding the right men to buy. Dedmon, here, was out of a
job--thanks to you and your meddling--and the steering stunt offered
good pay. Do you want any more?"
The boss shook his head.
"It is a matter of complete indifference to me. I don't know in the
least what you are talking about, and you'll pardon me, I hope, if I say
that it doesn't greatly interest me."
"By heavens--I'll make it interest you! The easy-mark candidates were
found and bought and paid for--and maybe they'll stay bought, and maybe
they won't. But that isn't the point. For a little more money--my money,
this time--each of these men has made an affidavit to the fact that
railroad money was offered him. They don't say whether or not they
accepted it, mind you, and that doesn't cut any figure. They have sworn
that the money was tendered. That lets them out and lets you in. You
don't believe it? I'll show you," and Hatch whipped a list of names from
his pocket and slapped it upon the boss's desk. "Go to those men and ask
them; if you want to carry it that far. They'll tell you."
I could see that the boss barely glanced at the list. The glib story of
the bribery was like the bite of a slipping crane-hitch--slow to take
hold. So far as we were concerned, of course, the charge fell flat; and
upon any other hypothesis it was blankly incredible, unbelievable,
absurd.
"The affidavits themselves would be much more convincing," I heard the
boss say, "though even then I should wish to have reasonable proof that
they were genuine."
Hatch was sitting down again and his grin showed his teeth unpleasantly.
"Do you think for a minute that I'd bring the papers here and trust them
in your hands?" he rapped out insultingly. "Not much! But we've got them
all right, as you'll find out if you balk and force us to use them."
At this point I could see that something in the persistent assurance of
the man was getting under the boss's skin and giving him a cold chill.
What if it were not the colossal bluff it had looked like in the
beginning? What if.... Like a blaze of lightning out of a clear sky a
possible explanation hit me under the fifth rib, and I guess it hit the
boss at about the same instant. What if President Dunton and the New
York stock-jobbers, believing as they did that nothing but legislative
favor would give them their trading capital in the depressed stock, had
cut in and done this thing without consulting us?
The boss stirred uneasily in his chair and picked up the paper-knife--a
little unconscious trick of his when he wanted time to gather himself.
"Perhaps you would be willing to give me the name of this briber, Mr.
Hatch?" he said, after a little pause.
"As if you didn't know it!" was the scoffing retort. "You drive us to
the newspapers and everybody'll know it."
"But I _don't_ know it," the boss insisted patiently. Then he seemed to
take a sort of fresh grip on himself, for he added: "And I don't believe
you do, either, Mr. Hatch. You are a pretty good bluffer, but----"
Hatch broke in with a short laugh.
"There were two of them; one who was hired to do the talking while the
real wire-puller stood aside and held the coin bag. We'll skip the hired
man." Then he turned to the ex-sheriff: "Write out the name of the
bag-holder for him, Dedmon," he commanded, tearing a leaf from his
pocket notebook and thrusting it, with a stubby pencil, into Dedmon's
hands.
The man from Arrowhead County bent over his knee and wrote a name on the
slip of paper, laying the slip on the drawn-out slide of the boss's desk
when he had finished the slow penciling. The effect of the thing was all
that any plotter could have desired. I saw the boss's face go gray, saw
him stare at the slip and heard him say, half to himself, "_Howard
Collingwood!_"
Hatch followed up his advantage promptly. He was afoot and struggling
into his overcoat when he said:
"You've got what you were after, Norcross, and it has got your goat.
We've known all along that you were only bluffing and sparring to gain
time. We've nailed you to the cross. You let this deal with Marshall and
his people stand as it's made, or we'll show you up for what you are.
That's the plain English of it."
"You mean that you will go to the newspapers with this?" said the boss,
and it was no wonder that his voice was a bit husky.
"Just that. We'll give you plenty of time to think it over. The joint
deal with C. S. & W. goes into effect to-morrow, and it's up to you to
sit tight in the boat and let us alone. If you don't--if you butt in
with the ground-leases, or in any other way--the story will go to the
newspapers and every sucker on the line of the P. S. L. will know how
you've been pulling the wool over his eyes with all this guff about
'justice first,' and 'the public be pleased.' You're no fool, Norcross.
You know they won't lay it to Dunton and the New Yorkers. You've taken
pains to advertise it far and wide that you are running this railroad on
your own responsibility, and the people are going to take you at your
word."
Dedmon, and the lawyer--who hadn't spoken a single word in all the
talk--were edging toward the door. I heard just the faintest possible
little noise in the ante-room, betokening Tarbell's withdrawal. The boss
didn't make any answer to Hatch's wind-up except to say, "Is that all?"
The other two were out, now, and Hatch turned to stick his ugly jaw out
at the boss, and to say, just as if I hadn't been there to look on and
hear him:
"No, by Jupiter--it isn't all! In the past six months you've made Gus
Henckel and me lose a cold half-million, Norcross. For a less
provocation than that, many a man in this neck of woods has been sent
back east in the baggage-car, wearing a wooden overcoat. You climb down,
and do it while you can stay alive!"
For some little time after the three men went away the boss sat staring
at the slip of paper on the desk slide. At the long last he got up, sort
of tired-like, I thought, and said to me: "Jimmie, you go down and see
if you can find a taxi, and we'll drive out to Major Kendrick's. I
promised him I'd go out to the house, you remember."
XXV
Flagged Down
When our taxi stopped at the major's gate, somebody was coming out just
as we were getting ready to go in. The light from the street arc was broken
a good bit by the sidewalk trees, and the man had the visor of his big
flat golf cap pulled down well over his eyes, but I knew him just the
same. It was Collingwood!
This looked like more trouble. What was the president's nephew doing
here? I wondered about that, and also, if the boss had recognized
Collingwood. If he had, he made no sign, and a moment later I had
punched the bell-push and Maisie Ann was opening the door for us.
"Both of you? oh, how nice!" she said, with a smile for the boss and a
queer little grimace for me. "Come in. This is our evening for callers.
Cousin Basil is out, but he'll be back pretty soon, and he left word for
you to wait if you got here before he did."
That message was for the boss, and I lagged behind in the dimly lighted
hall while she was showing him into the back parlor. I heard her wheel
up a chair for him before the fire, and go on chattering to him about
nothing, and by that I knew that there wasn't anybody else in the parlor
and that she was just filling in the time until something else should
happen.
It wasn't long until the something happened. I had dropped down on the
hall settee, in the end of it next to the coat-rack, and when Mrs.
Sheila came down-stairs and went through the hall, she didn't see me. A
second later I heard the boss jump up and say, "At last! It seems as if
you had been gone a year rather than a fortnight," and then Maisie Ann
came dodging out and plunked herself down on the settee beside me.
You needn't tell me that we had no right to sit there listening; I know
it well enough. On the other hand, I was just shirky enough to shift the
responsibility to Maisie Ann. She didn't make any move to duck, so I
didn't.
"You came out to see Cousin Basil?" Mrs. Sheila was saying to the boss.
And then: "He had a telephone call from the Bullard, and he asked me to
tell you to wait." After that, I guess she sat down to help him wait,
for pretty soon we heard her say: "Cousin Basil has told me a little
about the new trouble: have you been having another bad quarter of an
hour?"
"The worst of the lot," the boss said gravely, and from that he went on
to tell her about the Hatch visit and what had come of it; how the
grafters had a new claw hold on him, now, made possible by an
unwarranted piece of meddling on the part of the New York people in the
political game.
It was while he was talking about this that Maisie Ann grabbed me by the
wrist and dragged me bodily into the darkened front parlor, the door to
which was just on the other side of the coat rack. I thought she had
come to her right senses, at last, and was making the shift to break off
the eavesdropping. That being the case, I was simply horrified when I
found that she was merely fixing it so that we could both _see_ and
hear. The sliding doors between the two parlors were cracked open about
an inch, and before I realized what she was doing she had pulled me down
on the floor beside her, right in front of that crack.
"If you move or make a noise, I'll scream and they'll come in here and
find us both!" she hissed in my ear; and because I didn't know what else
to do with such a kiddish little termagent, I sat still. It was
dastardly, I know; but what was I to do?
The first thing we saw was that the two in the other room were sitting
at opposite sides of the fire. Mrs. Sheila was awfully pretty; prettier
than I had ever seen her, because she had a lot more color in her face,
and her eyes had that warm glow in them that even the grayest eyes can
get when there is a human soul behind them, and the soul has got itself
stirred up about something.
When the boss finished telling her about the Hatch talk, she said: "You
mean that Mr. Dunton and his associates sent somebody out here to
influence the election?"
The boss looked up sort of quick.
"Yes; that is it, precisely. But how did you know?"
"You made the inference perfectly plain," she countered. "I have a
reasoning mind, Graham; haven't you discovered it before this?"
The boss nodded soberly. "I have discovered a good many things about you
during the past six months: one of them is that there was never another
woman like you since the world began."
Knowing, as I did, that she had a husband alive and kicking around
somewhere, it seemed as if I just couldn't stay there and listen to what
a break of that kind on the boss's part was likely to lead up to. But
Maisie Ann gripped my wrist until she hurt.
"You _must_ listen!" she whispered fiercely. "You're taking care of him,
and you've _got_ to know!"
As on many other earlier occasions, Mrs. Sheila slid away from the
sentimental side of things just as easy as turning your hand over.
"You are too big a man to let an added difficulty defeat you now," she
remarked calmly, going back to the business field. "You are really
making a miraculous success. I have just spent two weeks in the capital,
as you know, and everybody is talking about you. They say you are in a
fair way to solve the big problem--the problem of bringing the railroads
and the people together in a peaceable and profitable partnership--which
is as it should be."
"It can be done; and I could do it right here on the Pioneer Short Line
if I didn't have to fight so many different kinds of devils at the same
time," said the boss, scowling down at the fire in the grate. And then
with a quick jerk of his head to face her: "You sent the major a wire
from the capital last night, telling him to persuade me not to go to
Strathcona. Why did you do it? And how did you know I was thinking of
going?"
For the first time in the whole six months I saw Mrs. Sheila get a
little flustered, though she didn't show it much, only in a little more
color in her cheeks.
"Some day, perhaps, I may tell you, but I can't now," she said sort of
hurriedly. And then: "You mustn't ask me."
"But you did send the wire?"
"Yes."
"And you also sent another to Upton Van Britt?"
"I did."
The boss smiled. "That second message was an after-thought. You were
afraid I'd be stubborn and go, anyway. That was some more of your
marvelous inner reasoning. Tell me, Sheila, did you know that there was
going to be a broken rail-joint set to kill me on that trip?"
That got her in spite of her heavenly calm and I could see her press her
pretty lips together hard.
"Was that what they did?" she asked, a bit trembly.
He nodded. "Van Britt was on the pilot engine ahead of my car, and he
found it. There was no harm done. It was bad enough, God knows, to set a
trap that would have killed everybody on my train; but this other thing
that has been pulled off to-night is even worse. Mr. Dunton and his
unprincipled followers have set a thing on foot here which is due to
grind us all to powder. Past that, they have contrived to handcuff me so
that I can't make a move without pulling down consequences of a personal
nature upon President Dunton, himself."
"Now my 'marvelous inner reasoning' has gone quite blind," she said,
with a queer little smile. "You'll have to explain."
"It's simple enough," said the boss shortly. "If Mr. Dunton had sent
only hired emissaries out here to bribe the members of the
Legislature--but he didn't; he included a member of his own family."
I was looking straight at Mrs. Sheila as he spoke, and I saw a sudden
frightened shock jump into the slate-gray eyes. Just for a second.
Before you could count one, it was gone and she was saying quietly:
"A member of his own family? That is very singular, isn't it?"
"It is, and it isn't. The man who was sent with the bribe money has
every qualification for the job, I should say, save one--discretion. And
I'm not sure that he may not be discreet enough, when he isn't drunk."
Again I saw the curious look in her eyes, and this time it was almost
like the shrinking from a blow.
"Was there--was this thing that was done actually criminal?" she asked,
just breathing it at him.
"It was, indeed. The election laws of this State have teeth. It is a
penitentiary offense to bribe either the electorate or the law-makers."
There was silence for a little time, and she was no longer looking at
him; she was staring into the heart of the glowing coals in the grate
basket. By and by she said: "You haven't told me this man's name--the
one who did the bribing; may I know it?"
I knew just what the boss was going to do, and he did it; took the slip
of paper that Dedmon had written on from his pocket and passed it across
to her. If there was another shock for her none of us could see it. She
had her face turned away when she looked at the name on the paper.
Pretty soon she said, sort of drearily:
"Once you told me that the true test of any human being came when he was
asked to eliminate the personal factor; to efface himself completely in
order that his cause might prosper. Do you still believe that?"
"Of course. It's all in the day's work. Any cause worth while is vastly
bigger than any man who is trying to advance it."
"Than any man, yes; but for a woman, Graham; wouldn't you allow
something for the woman?"
"I thought we had agreed long ago that there is no double standard,
either in morals or ethics--one thing for the man and another for the
woman. That is your own attitude, isn't it?"
She didn't say whether it was or not. She was holding the bit of paper
he had given her so that the light from the fire fell upon it when she
said: "I suppose your duty is quite clear. In the slang of the street,
you must 'beat Mr. Hatch to it.' You must be the first to denounce this
bribery, clearing yourself and letting the axe fall where it will. You
owe that much to yourself, to the men who have fought shoulder to
shoulder with you, and to that wider circle of the public which is
beginning to believe that you are honest and sincere, don't you?"
The boss was shaking his head a bit doubtfully.
"It isn't quite so simple as that," he objected. "I don't know that I'd
have any compunctions about sending Collingwood to the dump. If the half
of what they say of him is true, he is a spineless degenerate and hardly
worth saving. But to do as you suggest would be open rebellion, you
know; while Dunton remains president, I am his subordinate, and if I
should expose him and his nephew, the situation here would become simply
impossible."
"Well?" she prompted.
"Such a move would rightly and properly bring a wire demand for my
resignation, of a nature that couldn't be ignored--only it wouldn't,
because I should anticipate it by resigning first. That is a small
matter, introducing the personal element which we have agreed should be
eliminated. But the results to others; to the men of my staff and the
rank and file, and to the public, which, as you say, is just beginning
to realize some of the benefits of a real partnership with its principal
railroad; these things can't be so easily ignored."
"You have thought of some other expedient?"
"No; I haven't got that far yet. But I am determined that Hatch shall
not be allowed to work his graft a second time upon the people who are
trusting me. I believe in the new policy we are trying out. I'd fling my
own fortune into the gap if I had one, and, more than that, I'd pull in
every friend I have in the world if by so doing I could stand the
Pioneer Short Line upon a solid foundation of honest ownership. That is
all that is needed in the present crisis--absolutely all."
He was on his feet now and tramping back and forth on the hearth rug. At
one of his back-turnings I saw Mrs. Sheila reach out quickly and lay the
bit of paper with its accusing scrawl on the glowing coals. Then she
said, quite calm again:
"In time to come you will accomplish even that, Graham--this change of
ownership that we have talked of and dreamed about. It is the true
solution of the problem; not Government ownership, but ownership by the
people who have the most at stake--the public and the workers. You are a
strong man, and you will bring it about. But this other man--who is not
strong; the man whose name was written upon the bit of paper I have just
thrown into the fire...."
He wheeled quickly, and what he said made me feel as if a cold wind were
blowing up the back of my neck, because I hadn't dreamed that he would
remember Collingwood well enough to recognize him in that passing moment
on the sidewalk.
"That man," he muttered, sort of gratingly: "I had completely forgotten.
He was here just a little while ago. I met him as I was coming in. Did
he come to see your cousin--the major?"
"No," she said, matching his low tone; "he came to see me."
"You?"
"Yes. Finding himself in a pitfall which he has digged with his own
hands, he is like other men of his kind; he would be very glad to climb
out upon the shoulders of a woman."
I guess the boss saw red for a minute, but the question he asked had to
come.
"By what right did he come to you, Sheila?"
"By what he doubtless thinks is the best right in the world. He is my
husband."
It was out at last, and the boss's poor little house of cards that I
knew he had been building all these months had got its knock-down in
just those four quietly spoken words. Maisie Ann was still gripping my
wrist, and I felt a hot tear go splash on my hand. "Oh, I could _kill_
him!" she whispered, meaning Collingwood, I suppose.
As well as I knew him, I couldn't begin to guess what the boss would do
or say. But he was such a splendid fighter that I might have known.
"I heard, no longer ago than this afternoon, that you were not--that
your husband was still living," he said, speaking very gently. "I didn't
believe it--not fully--though I saw that there might easily be room for
the belief. It makes no difference, Sheila. You are my friend, and you
are blameless. But before we go any farther I want you to believe that I
wouldn't have been brutal enough to give you that bit of paper if I had
remotely suspected that Collingwood was the man."
She didn't make any answer to that, and after a while he said:
"Having told me so much, can't you tell me a little more?"
"There isn't much to tell, and even the little is commonplace and--and
disgraceful," she replied, with a touch of weariness that was fairly
heart-breaking. "Don't ask me why we were married; I can't explain that,
simply because I don't know, myself. It was arranged between the two
families, and I suppose Howie and I always took it for granted. I can't
even plead ignorance, for I have known him all my life."
"Go on," said the boss, still speaking as gently as a brother might
have.
"Howie was a spoiled child, an only son, and he is a spoiled man. I
stood it as long as I could--I hope you will believe that. But there are
some things that a woman cannot stand, and----"
"I know," he broke in. "So you came out here to be free."
"It is four years since we have lived together," she went on, "and for a
long time I hoped he would never find out where I was. There was no
divorce: I couldn't endure the thought of the publicity and the--the
disgrace. When I came here to Cousin Basil's there was no attempt made
to hide the facts; or at least the one chief fact that I was a married
woman. But on the other hand, I had taken my mother's name, and only
Cousin Basil and his wife knew that I was not what perhaps every one
else took me to be,--a widow with a dead husband instead of a living
one."
"Did Collingwood try to find you?"
"No, I think not. But when he was here last spring with his Uncle
Breckenridge he saw me and found out that I was living here with Cousin
Basil."
"Did he try to persecute you?"
"No, not then. I was afraid of only one thing: that he might drink too
much and--and talk. Part of the fear was realized. He saw me that Sunday
night in the Bullard. That was why he was trying to fight the hotel
people--because they wouldn't let him come up-stairs. I saw what you
did, and I was sorry. I couldn't help feeling that in some way it would
prove to be the beginning of a tragedy."
"You saw no more of him then?"
"No; I neither saw him nor heard of him until about a month ago when he
came west with a man named Bullock--a New York attorney. I didn't know
why he came, but I thought it was to annoy me."
"And he has annoyed you?"
"Until this night he has never missed an opportunity of doing so when he
could dodge Cousin Basil. Caring nothing for me himself, he has taken
violent exceptions to my friendship with you and with Upton Van Britt,
though that is chiefly when he has been drinking too much. It was his
taunting boast yesterday at the capital that led me to telegraph Cousin
Basil and Upton Van Britt about your trip to Strathcona. He knew that
you were going to the gold camp, and he declared to me that you'd never
come back alive."
"But to-night," the boss persisted. "What did he want to-night?"
"He wanted to--to use me. He said that he had 'put something across' for
his uncle, that he had gotten into trouble for it, and that--to use his
own phrase again, you were the man who would try to 'get his goat.'"
"And his object in telling you this?"
"Was entirely worthy of the man. He asked me, or rather I should say,
commanded me, to 'choke you off.' And, of course, he added the insult.
He said I was the one who could do it."
The boss had gone to tramping again and when he stopped to face her I
could see that he had threshed his way around to some sort of a
conclusion.
"Without intending to, you have tied my hands," he said gravely. "I
wasn't meaning to spare Collingwood if there were any way in which I
could use him as a club to knock Hatch out of the game."
"But now you won't use him?"
"You might justly write me down as a pretty poor friend of yours if I
should--after what you have told me."
"I haven't asked you to spare him."
"No, I know you haven't. But the fact remains that he is your husband.
I----"
The interruption was the opening and closing of the front door and the
heavy tread of the major in the hall. In a flash Mrs. Sheila was up and
getting ready to vanish through the door that led to the dining-room.
With her hand on the door-knob she shot a quick question at the boss.
"How much will you tell Cousin Basil?"
"Nothing of what you have told me."
"Thank you," she whispered back; "you are as big in your friendship as
you are in other ways." And with that she was gone.
It was right along in the same half-minute, while the boss was standing
with his back to the fire and the major was going in to talk to him,
that I lost Maisie Ann. I don't know where she went, or how. She had let
go of my wrist, and when I groped for her she was gone. Since I didn't
see any good reason why I should stay and spy upon the boss and the
major, I slipped out to the hall and curled up on the big settee beyond
the coat rack; curled up, and after listening a while to the drone of
voices in the farther room, went to sleep.
It was away deep in the night when the boss took hold of me and shook me
awake. The long talk was just getting itself finished, and the major had
come to the door with his guest.
"We must manage to pull Collingwood out of it in some way," the major
was saying. "I don't love the damn' scoundrel any betteh than you do,
Graham; but thah's a reason--a fam'ly reason, as you might say." Then he
switched off quickly. "You haven't asked me yet why I ran away from home
this evenin' when I was expecting you."
"No," said the boss. "Sheila told me that you had a telephone call to
the Bullard."
The old Kentuckian chuckled.
"Yes, suh; and you'd neveh guess in a thousand yeahs who sent the call,
or what was wanted. It was ouh friend Hatch, and no otheh. And he had
the face to offeh me ten thousand dollahs a yeah to act as consulting
counsel for him against the railroad company!"
"Of course you accepted," said the boss, meaning just the opposite.
The major chuckled again. "I talked with him long enough to find out
about where he stood. He thinks he's got you by the neck, but, like most
men of his breed, he's a paltry coward, suh, at heart."
The boss laughed. "What is he afraid of?"
"He's afraid of his life. He told me, with his eyes buggin' out, that
thah was one man heah in Portal City who would kill him to get
possession of certain papehs that were locked up in the cash vault of
the Security National."
The boss was pulling on his gloves.
"I didn't give him any reason to think that I was anxious to murder
him," he said.
"Oh, no, my deah boy; it isn't you, at all. It's Howie Collingwood.
Thah's where we land afteh all is said and done. Youh hands are tied,
and we've got this heah young maniac to deal with. If Collingwood gets
about three fingehs of red likkeh under his belt, why, thah's one murder
in prospect. And if Hatch has any reason to think that you can still get
the underholt on him, why, thah's another. I'm glad you've seen fit to
take Ripley's advice at last, and got you a body-guard."
"What's that?" queried the boss. But the query was answered a minute
later when we hit the sidewalk for the tramp back to town and Tarbell
fell in to walk three steps behind us all the way to the door of the
railroad club.
It sure did look as if things were just about as bad as they could ever
be, now. Hatch once more on top, the whole bottom knocked out of the
railroad experiment, our good name for political honesty gone
glimmering, and, worst of all, perhaps, the boss's big heart broken
right in two over those four little words that nothing could ever rub
out--"he is my husband." I didn't wonder that the boss said never a word
in all that long walk down-town, or that he forgot to tell me good-night
when he locked himself up in his room at the club.
XXVI
The Dipsomaniac
In a day when bunched money, however arrogant it may be, has been taught
to go sort of softly, the Hatch people were careful not to make any
public announcement of the things they were doing or going to do. But
bad news has wings of its own. Mr. Norcross was still in the midst of
his mail dictation to me the morning after the bottom--all the different
bottoms--fell out, when Mr. Hornack came bulging in.
"What's all this fire-alarm that's been sprung about a new elevator
trust?" he demanded, chewing on his cigar as if it were something he
were trying to eat. "It's all over town that C. S. & W. has been
secretly reorganized, with the Hatch crowd in control. I'm having a
perfect cyclone of telephone calls asking what, and how, and why."
The boss's reply ignored the details. "We're in for it again," he
announced briefly. "The local companies couldn't hold on to a good thing
when they had it. The stock has been swept up, first into little heaps,
and then into big ones, and now the Hatch people have forced a practical
consolidation."
"Is that the fact?--or only the way you are doping it out?" queried the
traffic manager.
"It is the fact. Hatch came here last night to tell me about it; also,
to tell me where we were to get off."
Hornack bit off a piece of the chewed cigar and took a fresh hold on it.
"Does he think for one holy half minute that we're going to sit down
quietly and let him undo all the good work that's been done?" he rasped.
"He does--just that. He's putting us in the nine-hole, Hornack, and up
to the present moment I haven't found the way to climb out of it."
"But the ground leases?" Hornack began. "Why can't we pull them on him?"
"We might, if we hadn't been shot dead in our tracks by the very men who
ought to be backing us to win," said the boss soberly. And then he went
on to tell about the new grip Hatch had on us.
Of course, Hornack blew up at that, and what he said wasn't for
publication. For a minute or so the air of the office was blue. When he
got down to common, ordinary English again he was saying, between
cusses: "But you can't let it stand at that, Norcross; you simply
_can't_!"
"I don't intend to," was the even-toned rejoinder. "But anything we can
do will always lack the element of finality, Hornack, while Wall Street
owns us. I've said it a hundred times and I'll say it again: the only
hope for the public service corporation to-day lies in a distribution of
its securities among the people it actually serves."
Hornack's teeth met in the middle of the chewed cigar.
"That's excellent logic--bully good logic, if anybody should ask you!
But we're fighting a condition, not a theory. Nobody wants P. S. L.
Common even at thirty-two. You wouldn't advise your worst enemy to buy
it at that figure."
"I don't know," said the boss, kind of musingly. "You're forgetting the
water that's been put into it from time to time by the speculators and
reorganizers; there has been a good deal of that, first and last.
Nevertheless, value for value, you know, and I know, that the property
is worth more than thirty-two, including the bonds. What I mean is that
if anybody would buy the control at that figure,--the control, mind you,
and not merely a minority--and handle the road purely as a
dividend-earning business proposition, he wouldn't lose money; he'd make
money--a lot of it."
"All of which doesn't get us anywhere in the present pinch," returned
the traffic manager. "I suppose we'll have to wait until Hatch makes his
first move, and I've still got fight enough left in me to hope that
he'll make it suddenly. Punch the button for me if anything new
develops. I'm going back to swing on to my telephone."
Following this talk with Hornack there was a try-out with Billoughby and
Juneman, but as this three-cornered conference was held in the private
room of the suite, I don't know what was said. A little farther along,
when the boss was once more whittling at the dictation, Mr. Van Britt
strolled in. Mr. Norcross told me to take my bunch of notes to May and
then he gave Mr. Van Britt his inning, starting off with: "Well, how is
the general superintendent this fine morning?"
Mr. Van Britt wrinkled his nose.
"The general superintendent is wondering, one more time, why under the
starry heavens he is out here in this country that God has forgotten,
scrapping for a living on this one-horse railroad of yours when he might
be in good little old New York, living easy and clipping coupons in the
safety-deposit room of a Broad Street bank."
The boss laughed at that, and I'm telling you right now that I was glad
to know that he was still able to laugh.
"You've never seen the day when you wanted to renege, Upton, and you
know it," he hit back. "Think of the perfectly good technical education
you were wasting when I took hold of you and jerked you out here."
"Huh!" said our millionaire; "I've got other things to think of. I've
just had two enginemen on the carpet for running over an old ranchman's
pet cow. They said they couldn't help it; but I told them that under the
'public-be-pleased' policy, they'd got to help it."
Again the boss chuckled. "I believe you'd joke at your own funeral,
Upton. You didn't come here to tell me about the ranchman's pet cow."
"Not exactly. I came to tell you that Citizens' Storage & Warehouse is
due to have a strike on its hands. The management--which seems to have
got itself consolidated in some way--shot out a lot of new bosses all
along the line on the through train last night, and this morning the
entire works, elevators, packeries, coal yards, lumber millers, and
everything, are posted with notices of a blanket cut in wages; twenty
per cent, flat, for everybody. The news has been trickling in over the
wires all morning; and the last word is that a general strike of all C.
S. & W. employees will go on at noon to-morrow."
"That is move number one," said the boss. And then: "You have heard that
the Hatch people have reached out and taken in the C. S. & W.?"
"Hornack was telling me something about it; yes."
"It is true; and the fight is on. You see what Hatch is doing. At one
stroke he gets rid of all the local employees of C. S. & W., who have
been drawing good pay and who might make trouble for him a little later
on, and fills their places with strike-breakers who have no local
sympathizers."
"But there will be another result which he may not have counted upon,"
Mr. Van Britt put in. "The blanket cut serves notice upon everybody that
once more the old strong-arm monopoly is in the saddle. The newspapers
will tell us about it to-morrow morning. Also, a good many of them will
be asking us what _we_ are going to do about it; whether we are going to
fight the new monopoly as we did in the old, or stand in with the graft,
as our predecessors did."
"We needn't go over that ground again--you and I, Upton," said Mr.
Norcross. "You know where I stand. But the conditions have changed. We
have been knifed in the back." And with that he gave the stocky little
operating chief a crisp outline of the new situation precipitated by the
Dunton-Collingwood political bribery.
Mr. Van Britt took it quietly, as he did most things, sitting with his
hands in his pockets and smiling blandly where Hornack had exploded in
wrathful profanity. At the wind-up he said:
"Old Uncle Breckenridge is one too many for you, Graham. You can't stand
the gaff--this new gaff of Hatch's; and neither can you go before the
people as the accuser of your president--and hope to hold your job. The
one thing for you to do is to lock up your office and walk out."
"Upton, if I thought you meant that--but I never know when to take you
seriously."
"The two enginemen who ran over the ranchman's pet cow had no such
difficulty, I assure you. And isn't it good advice? You know, as well as
I do, that Chadwick is holding you here by main strength; that you can
never accomplish anything permanent while Dunton and his cronies are at
the steering-wheel. It might be different if you had the local backing
of your constituency--the people served by the Short Line. But you
haven't that; up to date, the people are merely interested spectators."
"Go on," said the boss, frowning again.
"They have a stake in the game--the biggest of the stakes, as a matter
of fact--but it isn't sufficiently apparent to make them climb in and
fight for you. They are saying, with a good bit of reason, that, after
all is said and done, Big Money--Wall Street--still has the call, and
any twenty-four hours may see the whole thing slump back into graft and
crooked politics."
"It is so true that you might be reading it out of a book," was the
boss's comment. And then: "What's the answer?"
Mr. Van Britt shook his head. "I don't know. If you had money enough to
buy the voting control in P. S. L. you might get somewhere; but as it
is, you're like a cat in Hades without claws."
"Tell me," said Mr. Norcross, after a little pause: "You're a native New
Yorker: do you know this man Collingwood?"
"Only by hearsay. He is what our English friends call a 'blooming
bounder'; fast yachts, fast motor-cars, the fast set generally. It's a
pretty bad case of money-spoil, I fancy. They say he wasn't always a
total loss."
"Did you ever hear that he was married?"
"Oh, yes; he married a Kentucky girl some years ago: I don't remember
her name. They say she stood him for about six months and then dropped
out. I suppose he needs killing for that."
At this the boss went a step farther, saying: "He does, indeed, Upton. I
happen to know the young woman."
That was when Mr. Van Britt fired his own little bomb-shell. "So do I,"
he answered quietly.
"But you said you had forgotten her name!"
"So I have--her married name. And what's more, I mean to keep on
forgetting it."
There was no mistake about the boss's frown this time.
"That won't do, Upton," he said, kind of warningly.
"It will do well enough for the present. I'd marry her to-morrow,
Graham, if she were free, and there were no other obstacles. Unhappily,
there are two--besides the small legal difficulty; she doesn't care for
my money--having a little of her own; and she happens to be in love with
the other fellow."
I guess the boss was remembering what Mrs. Sheila had told him in that
confidence before the back-parlor fire, about its being all off between
her and Collingwood, for he said: "I think you are mistaken as to that
last."
"No, I'm not mistaken. But that's neither here nor there. Neither you
nor I can send Collingwood to the penitentiary--that's a cinch.
Wherefore, I'm advising you to quit, walk out, jump the job."
At that the boss took a fresh brace, righting his swing chair with a
snap.
"You know very little about me, Upton, if you think I'm going to throw
up my hands now, when the real pinch has come. A while back I might have
done it, but now I'll fight until I'm permanently killed. I have a
scheme--if it could only be worked. But it can't be worked on a rising
market. I suppose you have seen the morning's quotations. By some trick
or other, the Dunton people are boosting the stock again. It went up
three points yesterday."
Mr. Van Britt grinned. "They're discounting the effect of this little
political deal--which will at least rope your reform scheme down, if it
doesn't do anything else. What you need is a good, old-fashioned
cataclysm of some sort; something that would fairly knock the tar out of
P. S. L. securities and send them skittering down the toboggan slide in
spite of anything Uncle Breckenridge could do to stop them; down to
where they could be safely and profitably picked up by the dear public.
Unfortunately, those things don't happen outside of the story books. If
they did, if the earthquake should happen along our way just now, I
don't know but I'd be disloyal enough to get out and help it shake
things up a bit."
After Mr. Van Britt had gone, the boss put in the remainder of the day
like a workingman, skipping the noon luncheon as he sometimes did when
the work drive was extra heavy. Meanwhile, as you'd suppose, rumor was
plentifully busy, on the railroad, and also in town.
By noon it was well understood that there had been a radical change in
the management of C. S. & W., and that there was going to be a general
strike in answer to the slashing cut in wages. I slipped up-town to get
a bite while Fred May was spelling me at the dictation desk, and I heard
some of the talk. It was pretty straight, most of it--which shows how
useless it is to try to keep any business secrets, nowadays.
For example: the three men at my table in the Bullard grill-room--they
didn't know me or who I was--knew that a council of war had been called
in the railroad headquarters, and that Ripley had been pulled in by wire
from Lesterburg, and that we were rushing around hurriedly to provide
storage room for the wheat shippers in case of a tie-up, and that we
were arranging to distribute railroad company coal in case the tie-up
should bring on a fuel famine--knew all these things and talked about
them.
They were facts, as far as they went--these things. The boss hadn't been
idle during the forenoon, and he kept up the drive straight through to
quitting time. Word was brought in during the afternoon by Tarbell that
the Hatch people were wiring the Kansas City and Omaha employment
agencies and placing hurry orders for strike-breakers. The boss's answer
to this was a peremptory wire to our passenger agents at both points to
make no rate concessions whatever, of any kind, for the transportation
of laborers under contract. It was a shrewd little knock. Labor of that
kind is mighty hard to move unless it can get free transportation or a
low rate of fare, and I could see that Mr. Norcross was hoping to keep
the strike-breakers away.
When six o'clock came, the boss asked May to stay and keep the office
open while I could go down-stairs and get my dinner in the station
restaurant, and he went off up-town--to the club, I suppose. After I'd
had my bite, I let May go. Everything was moving along all right, so far
as anybody could see. We had five extra fuel trains loading at the
company's chutes at Coalville, and the despatcher was instructed to work
them out on the line during the night, distributing them to the towns
that had reported shortages. They were not to be turned over to the
regular coal yards; they were to be side-tracked and held for
emergencies.
Mr. Norcross came back about eight o'clock, and I gave him my report of
how things were going on the line. A little later Mr. Cantrell dropped
in, and there was a quiet talk about the situation, and what it was
likely to develop. The _Mountaineer_ editor was given all the facts,
except the one big one about Hatch's death-grip on us, and in turn Mr.
Cantrell promised the help of his paper to the last ditch--though, of
course, he had no idea of how deep that last ditch was going to be. I
had a lot of filing and indexing to do, and I kept at work while they
were talking, wondering all the time if the boss would venture to tell
the editor about the depth of that "last ditch." He didn't. I guess he
thought he wouldn't until he had to.
It was pretty nearly nine o'clock when the editor went away, and Mr.
Norcross was just saying to me that he guessed we'd better knock off for
the night, when we both heard a step in May's room. A second later the
door was pushed open and a man came in, making for the nearest chair and
flinging himself into it as if he'd reached the limit. It was
Collingwood. He was chewing on a dead cigar and his face was like the
face of a corpse. But he was sober.
Naturally, I supposed he had come to make trouble with the boss on Mrs.
Sheila's account, and I quietly edged open the drawer of my desk where I
kept Fred May's automatic, so as to be ready. He didn't waste much time.
"I saw you as I was coming away from Kendrick's last night," he began,
with a bickering rasp in his voice. "Did you go up against the gun I had
loaded for you?"
Mr. Norcross cut straight through to the bottom of that little
complication at a single stroke.
"What Mrs. Collingwood said to me, or what I said to her, can have no
possible bearing upon anything that you may have to say to me, or that I
can consent to listen to, Mr. Collingwood."
The derelict sat up in his chair.
"But you've got to keep hands off, just the same; at Kendrick's, and in
this other business, too. If you don't, there is going to be blood on
the moon! Get me?"
The boss never batted an eye. "I'm taking it for granted that you are
sober, Mr. Collingwood," he said. "If you are, you must surely know that
threats are about the poorest possible weapons you can use just now."
"It's a plant, from start to finish!" gritted the man in the chair. "I
haven't done a damned thing more than to cash a few checks for--for
expenses, and turn the money over to Bullock. Now Hatch tells me that I
was working with a spotter--his spotter--and that he can send me up for
bribery. It's a lie. I don't know what Bullock did with the money, and I
don't want to know."
"But you had orders to give it to him when he required it, didn't you?"
Mr. Norcross cut in.
"That's none of your business. I want you to choke this man Hatch off of
me!"
The boss had picked up his paper-knife. "I don't know why you should
come to me for help," he said. "You have been hand-in-glove with these
conspirators ever since you came out here. You have known what they were
doing to destroy the railroad property and wreck our trains, and two
days ago you knew that they had set a trap for my special train on the
Strathcona branch--a trap that was meant to kill me."
It was a random shot, and I knew that Mr. Norcross was just guessing at
where it might land when he fired it. But it went home; oh, you bet it
went home!
"Damn you!" gurgled the bounder, half starting to his feet. "Why
shouldn't I want to see you killed? And what do I care what becomes of
your cursed railroad? Haven't you done enough to me?"
"No!" the word was slammed at him like a bullet. And then: "As I told
you in the beginning, we won't go into any phase of it that involves
Mrs. Collingwood. Get back into your own boat. Are you trying to tell me
now that Hatch is threatening you?"
"He's played me for a come-on. He says he's got the whole business down
in black and white, with affidavits, and all that. He had the nerve to
tell me less than an hour ago that he'd burn me alive if I didn't toe
the mark."
"What does he want you to do?"
"He wants me to stick around here so that he can use me against you. He
knows how you're mixed up with Sheila and that you can't turn a wheel
without making it look as if you were going after me on your own
personal account."
There was silence for a little time, and the crackle of the match with
which Mr. Norcross relighted his cigar smashed into the stillness like a
tiny pistol shot. It was an awful muddle, with bloody murder sticking
out of it on every side.
"If you have come here with the idea that I can force Hatch's hand, you
are very much misled," said the boss, at the close of the electric
pause. And then: "Has he made it appear to you that he was merely trying
to help you avenge your own fancied wrongs?"
"He said I ought to get you; that any man who would make love to a
married woman ought to be got."
My chief was looking past the derelict and out through the darkened
window.
"You don't know me, Mr. Collingwood, but you do know your wife; and you
know that she is as far above suspicion as the angels in heaven. Let
that part of it go. Hatch was merely using you for his own ends. If he
could persuade you to kill me off out of the way, it would be merely
that much gained in the business fight. You haven't done it thus far,
and now he is using your check-cashing excursion as a club with which he
proposes to brain the entire railroad management, your uncle included,
if we interfere with his plans."
Collingwood scowled up at the ceiling, shifting the dead cigar from one
corner of his mouth to the other.
"So that's the way of it, is it?" he commented. "He was working for his
own pocket all the time, and Uncle Breck stands pat and slips him the
ace he was needing to make his hand a winner. Between you and me,
Norcross, I believe this damned piker needs killing a few times,
himself."
The boss sat back in his swing chair and I could just imagine that he
was trying to get some sort of proper angle on this young fellow who, in
addition to his other scoundrelisms, big and little, had wrecked the
life of Sheila Macrae. I knew what he was thinking. He had a theory that
no man that was ever born was either all angel or all devil, and he was
hunting for the redeeming streak in this one.
When you looked right hard at the haggard face you could see something
sort of half-appealing in it; something to make you think that perhaps,
away back yonder before the spoiling began, there used to be a man;
never a strong man, I guess, but one that might have been generous and
free-hearted, maybe. I got a fleeting little glimpse of that back-number
man when he turned suddenly and said:
"One night a few weeks ago when I was full up, Hatch got hold of me and
told me you were out at the Kendrick place with Sheila. He made me
believe that I ought to go out there and kill you, and I started to do
it. Do you know why I didn't do it?"
"No," said the chief, mighty quietly.
"Well, I'll tell you. One night last spring up at the Bullard you
slammed me one in the face and dragged me off to my room to keep me from
making a bigger ass of myself than I'd already made. I haven't forgotten
that. In all these crooked years, nobody else has ever taken the trouble
to chuck me decently out of sight and give me a chance to brace. Drunk
as I was, I remembered it that night when I was climbing up to a window
in the major's house and trying to get a shot at you."
Mr. Norcross shook his head, more than half sympathetically, I thought.
"Let that part of it go and tell me about this other trouble," he said.
"How badly are you tangled up in this political business?"
"I've given it to you straight on the bribing proposition. Uncle Breck
used me as a money carrier because--well, maybe it was because he
couldn't trust Bullock. I didn't know definitely what Bullock was doing
with the checks I cashed for him, though I supposed, of course, it was
something that wouldn't stand daylight. It was only a side issue with
me. I was coming out here anyway. I knew Sheila had made up her
mind--God knows she's had cause enough; but I had a crazy notion that
I'd like to be on the same side of the earth with her again for just a
little while. Then this--" he trailed off in a babble of maledictions
poured out upon the man who had trapped him and used him.
The boss straightened himself in his chair, but he still was speaking
gently when he said:
"You are not asking my advice, and I don't owe you anything, personally,
Mr. Collingwood. But I'll say to you what I might say to a better man in
like circumstances. You have done all the harm you can, but, as I see
it, there doesn't seem to be any need of your staying here to suffer the
consequences. Why don't you go back to New York, taking your wife with
you, if she will go?"
Collingwood's smile was a mere teeth-baring grimace.
"Sheila made her wedding journey with me once, when she was just
eighteen. The next time she rides with me it will be at my funeral. Oh,
I've earned it, and I'm not kicking. And about this other thing: I can't
duck. You know what Hatch is holding me for. He told me just a little
while ago that if I stepped aboard of a train, I'd be arrested before
the train could pull out."
It was a handsome little precaution on the part of the chief of the
grafters. If a fight should be precipitated--if the boss should try to
checkmate the C. S. & W. gobble--the arrest and indictment of President
Dunton's nephew would serve bully good and well as a dramatic bit of
side play to keep the newspapers from printing too much about the other
thing.
"If you really want to go, I think it can be arranged in some way, in
spite of Hatch and his bluffing," Mr. Norcross put in quietly. "So far
as our railroad troubles are concerned it will neither help nor hinder
for you to stay on here, now."
As if the helpful suggestion had been a lighted match to fire a hidden
mine of rage, Collingwood sprang to his feet with his dull eyes ablaze.
"No, by God!" he swore. "I'm going to make him come across with those
affidavit papers first! You wait right here, Norcross. You think I'm all
cur, but I'll show you. There isn't much left of me but hound dog, but
even a hound dog will bite if you kick him hard enough. Lend me a gun,
if you've got one and I'll----"
"Hold on--none of that!" the boss broke in sternly, jumping out of his
chair to enforce the command. But before he could make the grabbing move
the corridor door slammed noisily and the madman was gone.
XXVII
The Deserter
Mr. Norcross chased out and tried to overtake Collingwood, going as far
as the foot of the stairs. I went, too, but got only far enough to meet
the boss coming up again. There was nothing doing. The station policeman
had seen the crazy rounder jump into a taxi and go spinning off up-town.
That settled the Collingwood business for the time being, but there was
another jolt waiting for us when we got back to the office. While we
were both out, Mr. Van Britt had blown in from his room at the foot of
the hall and we found him lounging comfortably in the chair that
Collingwood had just vacated.
"I thought maybe you'd turn up again pretty soon, since you'd left the
doors all open," was the way he started out. Then: "Sit down, Graham; I
want to talk a few lines."
Mr. Norcross took his own chair and twirled it to face the general
superintendent. "Say it," he commanded briefly.
Mr. Van Britt hooked his thumbs in his armholes.
"I've just been figuring a bit on the general outlook: you have a
decently efficient operating outfit here, what with Perkins and Brant
and Conway handling the three divisions as self-contained units. You
don't need a general superintendent any more than a monkey needs two
tails."
"What are you driving at?" was the curt demand.
"Well, suppose we say retrenchment, for one thing. As I size it up, you
might just as well be saving my salary. It would buy a good many new
cross-ties in the course of a year."
"That's all bunk, and you know it," snapped the boss. "The organization
as it stands hasn't a single stick of dead wood in it. You know very
well that a railroad the size of the Short Line can't run without an
individual head of the operating department."
Mr. Van Britt laughed a little at that.
"If you should get some one of these new efficiency experts out here he
would probably tell you that you could cut your staff right in two in
the middle."
I could see that the boss was getting mighty nearly impatient.
"You are merely turning handsprings around the edges of the thing you
have come to say, Upton," he barked out. "Come to the point, can't you?
What have you got up your sleeve?"
"Nothing that I could make you understand in a month of Sundays. I'm
sore on my job and I want to quit."
"Nonsense! You don't mean that?"
"Yes, I do. I'm tired of wearing the brass collar of a soulless
corporation. What's the use, anyway? I found a bunch of dividend checks
from my bank at home in the mail to-day, and what good does the money do
me? I can't spend it out here; can't even tip the servants at the hotel
without everlastingly demoralizing them. I'm like the little boy who
wanted to go out in the garden and eat worms."
The boss was frowning thoughtfully.
"You're not giving me a show, Upton," he protested. "Can't you blow the
froth off and let me see what's in the bottom of the stein?"
"Pledge you my word, it's all froth, Graham. I want to climb up on the
mesa behind the shops and take a good deep breath of free air and shake
my fist at your blamed old cow-track of a railroad and tell it to go to
the devil. You shouldn't deny me a little pleasure like that."
It was getting under the boss's skin at last. "I can't believe that you
really want to resign," he broke out, sort of hopelessly. "It's simply
preposterous!"
"Pull it down out of the future and put it in the present, and you've
got it," said Mr. Van Britt. "I _have_ resigned. I wrote it out on a
piece of paper and dropped it into your mail box as I came through the
outer office. It's signed, sealed, and delivered. You'll give me a
testimonial, or something of that sort, 'To Whom It May Concern,' won't
you? I've been obedient and faithful and honest and efficient, and all
that, haven't I?"
"I'd like to know first where you got your liquor, Upton. That is the
most charitable construction I can put upon all this. Why, man alive!
you're quitting me in the thick of the toughest fight the grafters have
put up!"
"Yes, I know; but a man's got only one life to live, and I've always had
a sneaking sympathy for the high private in the front rank who didn't
want to stand up and get himself shot full of holes. I'm running, and if
you should ask me why, I'd tell you what the retreating soldier told
Stonewall Jackson; he said he was running only because he couldn't fly."
Once more the boss grew silently thoughtful. Out of the digging mental
inquiry he brought this:
"Has this sudden notion of yours anything to do with Sheila Macrae,
Upton?"
"Pledge you my word again. I met Sheila on the street to-day and
promised her that I wouldn't so much as tip my hat to her while
Collingwood is on this side of the Missouri River."
"But if you quit, you'll go East yourself, won't you?"
"Maybe, after a while. For the time being, I'd like to loaf on you for a
week or so and watch the wheels go around without my having to prod
them. It's running in my mind that this newest phase of the C. S. & W.
business is going to stir up a mighty pretty shindy, and I had a foolish
notion that I'd like to stick around and look on--as an innocent
bystander."
"The innocent bystander usually gets shot in the leg," the boss ripped
out, with the brittlest kind of humor. And then: "I suppose I shall have
to let you do what you want to--and let you pick your own time for
giving me the real reason. But you're crippling me most savagely,
Upton--and at a time when I am least able to stand it."
Mr. Van Britt got up and edged his way toward the door.
"It's a good reason, Graham; and sometime--say when we are walking
through the pearly gates of the New Jerusalem together--maybe I'll tell
you about it. If I were really a good scrapper, I'd stay and help you
fight it out with Hatch; but you know the old saying--capital is always
cowardly; and my present credit at the Portal City National is pretty
well up to a quarter of a million, thanks to the dividends I deposited
to-day. Good-night. I'll see you in the morning--if by that time you
haven't decided to cut me cold."
I kept right busy over the indexes after Mr. Van Britt went away, just
to give the boss a little chance to catch up with himself. He sure was
catching it hot and heavy on all sides. The way things had turned out,
he couldn't go to the major's any more, and now his railroad
organization was beginning to go to pieces on him. It certainly was
tough. All we needed now was for President Dunton to come smashing in
with one more good jolt and it would be all over but the obsequies, the
monument and the epitaph. At least, that is the way it looked to me.
It was along about ten o'clock when the boss closed his desk with a bang
and said we'd better saw it off for the night. I walked up-town with him
and as we were passing the Bullard he turned in to ask the night clerk
if Collingwood was in his room. The answer was nix; that the young New
Yorker hadn't been seen since dinner.
On the way out we saw Mr. Van Britt at the telegraph alcove. He had
apparently been making good use of his first half-hour or so of freedom.
He was handing in a thick bunch of telegrams for transmission, and he
rather pointedly turned the sheaf face down upon the marble slab when we
came along, as much as to say "it's none of your business what I'm
doing."
It struck me as sort of curious that he should have so much wire
correspondence when he claimed to be taking a rest, and why he was so
careful not to let us get a glimpse of what it was all about. But the
whole thing was now so horribly muddled that a little mystery more or
less on anybody's part couldn't make much difference; and that was the
thought I took to bed with me a little later after we reached our rooms
in the railroad club.
XXVIII
The Beginning of the End
However much the Hatch people may have wanted to avoid publicity
regarding the change of ownership and policies in the Storage &
Warehouse reorganization, the prompt announcement of a general strike of
the employees was enough to make every newspaper in the State sit up and
take notice.
We had the _Mountaineer_ at the breakfast-table in the club grill-room
on the morning of the day when the strike was advertised to go into
effect. There was a news story, with big headlines in red ink, and also
an editorial. Cantrell didn't say anything against the railroad company.
His comments were those of an observer who wished to be straight-forward
and fair to all concerned, but his editorial did not spare the silly
local stockholders whose swapping and selling had made the _coup_
possible.
Cantrell himself, mild-eyed and looking as if he'd got out of bed about
three hours too early, drifted into the grill-room and took a seat at
our table before we were through.
"I wanted to be decent about it, Norcross," he said, forestalling
anything that the boss might be going to say about the editorial in the
_Mountaineer_. "I'm trying to believe that the men higher up in your
railroad councils haven't fathered this Hatch scheme of
consolidation--which is more than some of the other pencil-pushers will
do for you, I'm afraid. Thanks to your publicity measures, everybody
believes that you still hold the whip-hand over the combination with
your ground leases. I'm not asking what you propose to do; I am merely
taking it for granted that you are going to stick to your policy, and
hoping that you will come and tell me about it when you are ready to
talk."
"I shall do just that," the boss promised; and I guess he would have
been glad to let the matter drop at this, only Cantrell wouldn't.
"I lost three good hours' sleep this morning on the chance of catching
you here at table," the editor went on. "A little whisper leaked in over
the wires last night, or, rather, early this morning, that set me to
thinking. You haven't been having any trouble with your own employees
lately, have you, Norcross?"
"Not a bit in the world. Why?"
"There is some little excitement, with the public taking a hand in it.
There were indignation meetings held last night in a number of the
towns along your lines, and resolutions were passed protesting against
the action of the new combination in cutting wages, and asserting that
public sentiment would be with the C. S. & W. employees if they are
forced to carry out their threat of striking at noon to-day. The whisper
that I spoke of intimated that the protest might extend to the railroad
employees."
"There's nothing in it," said the boss decisively. "I suppose you mean
in the way of a sympathetic strike, and that is entirely improbable. I
imagine very few of the C. S. & W. employees belong to any of the labor
unions."
"A strike on the railroad would hit you pretty hard just now, wouldn't
it?" Cantrell asked.
Mr. Norcross dodged the question. "We're not going to have a strike," he
averred; and since we had finished our breakfast, he made a business
excuse and we slid out.
When we reached the office we found Fred May already there and at work,
and in the middle room Mr. Van Britt was on hand, reading the morning
paper.
"You don't get around as early as you might," was the little
millionaire's comment when the boss walked in and opened up his desk.
"I've been waiting nearly a half-hour for you to show up. Seen the
paper?"
The boss nodded.
"I don't mean the strike business; I mean the market quotations."
"No; I didn't look at them."
"They are interesting. P. S. L. Common went up another three points
yesterday. It closed at 38 and a fraction. Do you know what that means,
Graham?"
"No."
"It means that Uncle Breckenridge and his crowd are already joyfully
discounting your coming resignation. Somebody has given them a wire tip
that you are as good as down and out, and unless a miracle of some sort
can be pulled off, I guess the tip is a straight one. Strong as he is,
Chadwick can't carry you alone."
"Drop it," snapped the boss irritably. And then: "Have you come to tell
me that you have reconsidered that fool letter you wrote me last night?"
"Not in a million years," returned the escaped captive airily. "I am
here this morning as a paying patron of the Pioneer Short Line. I want
to hire a special train to go--well, anywhere I please on your jerkwater
railroad."
"You don't mean it?"
"Oh, yes, I do. I want a car and a good, smart engine. The Eight-Fifteen
will do, with Buck Chandler to run it."
"Pshaw! take your own car and any crew you please. We are not selling
transportation to you."
"Yes you are; I'm going to pay for that train, and what's more, I want
your written receipt for the money. I need it in my business. Then, if
Chandler should happen to get gay and dump me into the ditch somewhere,
I can sue you for damages."
"All right; if you will persist in joking with me it's going to cost you
something. How far do you want your train to run?"
"Oh, I don't know; anywhere the notion prods me--say to the west end and
back, with as many stops as I see fit to make, and perhaps a run over
the branches."
I saw the boss make a few figures on a pad under his hand.
"It would cost anybody else, roughly, something like five hundred
dollars. On account of your little joke it's going to cost you a cold
thousand."
Mr. Van Britt took out his check-book and a fountain pen and solemnly
made out the check.
"Here you are," he said, flipping the check over to the boss's desk.
"Now shell out that receipt, so that I'll have it to show if anybody
wants to know how much you've gouged me. Since you're making the
accommodation cost me a dollar a minute, how long have I got to wait?"
The chief's answer was a push at Fred May's call button, and when
Frederic of Pittsburgh came in:
"Have Mr. Perkins order out my private car for Mr. Van Britt, with the
Eight-Fifteen and Chandler, engineer. Tell Mr. Perkins to give Chandler
and his conductor orders to run as Mr. Van Britt may direct, giving the
special right-of-way over everything except first-class trains in the
opposite direction." Then to Van Britt: "Will that do?"
"Admirably; only I'm waiting for that receipt."
Mr. Norcross said something that sounded like "damn," scribbled a
memorandum of the thousand-dollar payment on a sheet of the scratch-pad
and handed it over, saying: "The order for the car includes my cook and
porter, and something to eat; we'll throw these in with the
transportation, and if the car is ditched and you sue for damages, we'll
file a cross-bill for hotel accommodations. Now go away and work off
your little attack of lunacy. I'm busy."
We had an easier day in the office than I had dared hope for, whatever
the boss thought about it, though it was an exceedingly busy one. With
the strike news in the papers, it seemed as if everybody in town wanted
to interview the general manager of the railroad, and to ask him what he
was going to do about it.
Following his hard-and-fast rule, Mr. Norcross didn't deny himself to
anybody. Patiently he told each fresh batch of callers that the railroad
company had nothing whatever to do with the change in ownership of C. S.
& W.; that the railroad's attitude was unaltered; and that, so far as it
could be done legally, the Pioneer Short Line would stand firmly between
its patrons and any extortion which might grow out of the new
conditions.
The C. S. & W. strike--as our wires told us--went into effect promptly
on the stroke of noon, and a train from the west, arriving late in the
afternoon, brought Ripley. For the first time that day, Mr. Norcross
told me to snap the catch on the office door for privacy and then he
told Ripley to talk. Our neat little general counsel was fresh from the
actual fighting line, and his news amply confirmed the wire reports
which had been trickling in.
"The conditions all along the line are almost revolutionary," was
Ripley's summing-up of the situation. "Generally speaking, the public is
not holding us responsible as yet, though of course there are croakers
who are saying that it is entirely a railroad move, and predicting that
we won't do anything to interfere with the new graft."
"Cantrell says that public sentiment is altogether on the side of the C.
S. & W. strikers," the boss put in.
"It is; angrily so. There is hot talk of a boycott to be extended to
everything sold or handled by the Hatch syndicate. I hope there won't be
any effort made to introduce strike-breakers. In the present state of
affairs that would mean arson and rioting and bloody murder. You can
starve a dog without driving him mad, but when you have once given him a
bone it's a dangerous thing to take it away from him."
"I wired you because I wanted to consult you once more about those
ground leases, Ripley. Do you still think you can make them hold?"
"If Hatch breaks the conditions, we'll give him the fight of his life,"
was the confident rejoinder.
"But that will mean a long contest in the courts. Hatch will give bond
and go on charging the people anything he pleases. The Supreme Court is
a full year behind its docket, and the delay will inevitably multiply
your few 'croakers' by many thousands. But that isn't the worst of it.
Hatch has a better hold on us than the law's delay." And to this third
member of his staff Mr. Norcross told the story of the political trap
into which Collingwood and the New York stock-jobbers had betrayed the
railroad management.
Ripley's comment was a little like Hornack's; less profane, perhaps, but
also less hopeful.
"Good Lord!" he ejaculated. "So that is what Hatch has had up his
sleeve? I don't know how you feel about it, but I should say that it is
all over but the shouting. If the Dunton crowd had been deliberately
trying to wreck the property, they couldn't have gone about it in any
surer way. They haven't left us so much as a gnawed rat-hole to crawl
out of."
"That is the way it looked to me, Ripley, at first; but I've had a
chance to sleep on it--as you haven't. The gun that can't be spiked in
some way has never yet been built. I have the names of the eleven men
who were bribed. Hatch was daring enough to give them to me. Holding the
affidavits which they were foolish enough to give him, Hatch can make
them swear to anything he pleases. But if I could get hold of those
papers----"
"You'd destroy them, of course," the lawyer put in.
"No, hold on; let me finish. If I had those affidavits I'd go to these
men separately and make each one tell me how much he had been paid by
Bullock for his vote."
"Well, what then?"
"Then I should make every mother's son of them come across with the full
amount of the bribe, on pain of an exposure which the dirtiest
politician in this State couldn't afford to face. That would settle it.
Hatch couldn't work the same game a second time."
Ripley let it go at that and spoke of something else.
"I suppose you have seen how our stock is climbing. Has the new
situation here anything to do with it?"
Mr. Norcross said he thought not, and rather lamented that we didn't
have better information about what was going on at the New York end of
things. Also, he told Ripley something that I hadn't known; that he had
wired Mr. Chadwick asking the wheat king to give him a line on what the
stock-kiting meant. Then Ripley asked for orders.
"There is nothing to be done until Hatch begins to raise his prices," he
was told. "But I wanted to have you here in case anything should break
loose suddenly." And at that Ripley went away.
We were closing our desks to go to dinner when Fred May came in to say
that a delegation of the pay-roll men was outside and wanting to have a
word with the "Big Boss." Mr. Norcross stopped with his desk curtain
half drawn down.
"What is it, Fred?" he asked.
"I don't know," said the Pittsburgher. "I should call it a grievance
committee, if it wasn't so big. And they don't seem to be mad about
anything. Bart Hoskins is doing the talking for them."
"Send them in," was the curt command, and a minute later the inner
office was about three-fourths filled up with a shuffling crowd of P. S.
L. men.
The chief looked the crowd over. There was a bunch of train- and
engine-men, a squad from the shops, and a bigger one from the yards.
Also, the wire service had turned out a gang of linemen and half a dozen
operators.
"Well, men, let's have it," said Mr. Norcross, not too sharply. "My
dinner's getting cold."
"We'll not be keepin' you above the hollow half of a minute, Mister
Norcross," said the big, bearded freight conductor who acted as
spokesman. "About this C. S. & W. strike that went on to-day: we'd like
to know, straight from you, if it's anything in the railroad company's
pocket to have all these old men fired out and a lot of scabs put in on
starvation wages to ball us all up when we try to work with 'em."
"It's nothing to us; or rather, I should say, we are on the other side,"
was the short reply. "You probably all know that C. S. & W. has changed
hands, and the old Red Tower syndicate, with Mr. Rufus Hatch at its
head, is now in control."
Hoskins nodded. "That's about what we allowed, and we've come up here to
say that we're almighty sorry for these poor cusses that have been
dumped out o' their jobs. We ain't got no kick comin' with you, n'r with
the company, Mister Norcross, but it looks like it's up to us to do
somethin', and we didn't want to do it without hittin' square out from
the shoulder."
"I'm listening," said the chief.
"The union locals have called a meetin' f'r to-night. There ain't nobody
knows yet what's goin' to be done, but whatever it is, we want you to
know that it ain't done ag'inst you n'r the railroad company."
The boss had handled wage earners too long not to be able to suspect
what was in the wind.
"You men don't want to let your sympathies carry you too far," he
cautioned. "When you take up another fellow's quarrel you want to be
pretty sure that you're not going to hit your friends in the scrap."
Hoskins grinned understandingly, and I guess the boss was a little
puzzled by the nods and winks that went around among the silent members
of the delegation; at least, I know I was.
"That's all right," Hoskins said. "Bein' the Big Boss, you've got to
talk that way. They might reach out and grab you fr'm New York if you
didn't. But what I was aimin' to say is that there'll be a train-load 'r
two of strike-breakers a-careerin' along here in a day 'r so, and we
ain't figurin' on lettin' 'em get past Portal City, if that far."
"That's up to you," said Mr. Norcross brusquely. "If you start anything
in the way of a riot----"
"Excuse _me_. There ain't goin' to be no riotin', and no company
property mashed up. Mr. Van Britt, he----"
It was right here that an odd thing happened. Con Corrigan, a big
two-fisted freight engineer standing directly behind Hoskins, reached an
arm around the speaker's neck and choked him so suddenly that Hoskins's
sentence ended in a gasping chuckle. When the garroting arm was
withdrawn the conductor looked around sort of foolishly and said: "I'm
thinking that's about all we wanted to say, ain't it, boys?" and the
deputation filed out as solemnly as it had come in.
I guess Mr. Norcross wasn't left wholly in the dark when the tramping
footfalls of the committee died away in the corridor. That unintentional
mention of Mr. Van Britt's name looked as if it might open up some more
possibilities, though what they were I couldn't imagine, and I don't
believe the general manager could, either.
After that, things rocked along pretty easy until after dinner. Instead
of going right back to the office from the club, Mr. Norcross drifted
into the smoking-room and filled a pipe. In the course of a few minutes,
Major Kendrick dropped in and pulled up a chair. I don't know what they
talked about, but after a little while, when the boss got up to go, I
heard him say something that gave the key to the most of what had gone
before, I guess.
"Have you seen or heard anything of Collingwood since yesterday?"
The good old major shook his head. "I haven't seen, but I have heard,"
he said, sort of soberly. "They're tellin' me that he's oveh in his
rooms at the Bullard, drinkin' himself to death. If he wasn't altogetheh
past redemption, suh, he would have had the decency to get out of town
befo' he turned loose all holts that way; he would, for a fact, Graham."
At that, Mr. Norcross explained in just a few words why Collingwood
hadn't gone--why he couldn't go. Whereupon the old Kentuckian looked
graver than ever.
"That thah spells trouble, Graham. Hatch is simply invitin' the
unde'takeh. Howie isn't what you'd call a dangerous man, but he is
totally irresponsible, even when he's sobeh."
"We ought to get him away from here," was the boss's decision. "He is an
added menace while he stays."
I didn't hear what the major said to that, because little Rags, Mr.
Perkins's office boy, had just come in with a note which he was asking
me to give to Mr. Norcross. I did it; and after the note had been
glanced at, the chief said, kind of bitterly, to the major:
"You can never fall so far that you can't fall a little farther; have
you ever remarked that, major?" And then he want on to explain: "I have
a note here from Perkins, our Desert Division superintendent. He says
that the 'locals' of the various railroad labor unions have just
notified him of the unanimous passage of a strike vote--the strike to go
into effect at midnight."
"A strike?--on the _railroad_? Why, Graham, son, you don't mean it!"
"The men seem to mean it--which is much more to the purpose. They are
striking in sympathy with the C. S. & W. employees. I fancy that settles
our little experiment in good railroading definitely, major. We'll go
out of business as a common carrier at midnight, and it's the final
straw that will break the camel's back. Dunton doesn't want a
receivership, but he'll have to take one now."
"Oh, my deah fellow!" protested the major. "Let's hope it isn't going to
be so bad as that!"
"It will. The bottom will drop out of the stock and break the market
when this strike news gets on the wire, and that will end it. I wish to
God there were some way in which I could save Mr. Chadwick: he has
trusted me, major, and I--I've failed him!"
XXIX
The Murder Madman
I knew what we were up against when we headed down to the railroad
lay-out, the chief and I, leaving the good old major thoughtfully
puffing his cigar in the club smoking-room. With a strike due to be
pulled off in a little more than three hours there were about a million
things that would have to be jerked around into shape and propped up so
that they could stand by themselves while the Short Line was taking a
vacation. And there was only a little handful of us in the headquarters
to do the jerking and propping.
But it was precisely in a crisis like this that the boss could shine.
From the minute we hit the tremendous job he was all there, carrying the
whole map of the Short Line in his head, thinking straight from the
shoulder, and never missing a lick; and I don't believe anybody would
ever have suspected that he was a beaten man, pushed to the ropes in the
final round with the grafters, his reputation as a successful railroad
manager as good as gone, and his warm little love-dream knocked
sky-winding forever and a day.
Luckily, we found Fred May still at his desk, and he was promptly
clamped to the telephone and told to get busy spreading the hurry call.
In half an hour every relief operator we had in Portal City was in the
wire-room, and the back-breaking job of preparing a thousand miles of
railroad for a sudden tie-up was in full swing. Mr. Perkins, as division
superintendent, was in touch with the local labor unions, and a
conference was held with the strike leaders. Persuading and insisting by
turns, Mr. Norcross fought out the necessary compromises with the
unions. All ordinary traffic would be suspended at midnight, but
passenger trains _en route_ were to be run through to our connecting
line terminals east and west, live-stock trains were to be laid out only
where there were feeding corrals, and perishable freight was to be taken
to its destination, wherever that might be.
In addition to these concessions, the strikers agreed to allow the mail
trains to run without interruption, with our promise that they would not
carry passengers. Hoskins and his committee bucked a little at this, but
got down when they were shown that they could not afford to risk a clash
with the Government. This exception admitted, another followed, as a
matter of course. If the mail trains were to be run, some of the
telegraph operators would have to remain on duty, at least to the extent
of handling train orders.
With these generalities out of the way, we got down to details.
"Fire-alarm" wires were sent to the various cities and towns on the
lines asking for immediate information regarding food and fuel supplies,
and the strike leaders were notified that, for sheer humanity's sake,
they would have to permit the handling of provision trains in cases
where they were absolutely needed.
By eleven o'clock the tangle was getting itself pretty well straightened
out. Some of the trains had already been abandoned, and the others were
moving along to the agreed-upon destinations. Kirgan had taken hold in
the Portal City yard, and by putting on extra crews was getting the
needful shifting and car sorting into shape; and the Portal City
employees, acting upon their own initiative, were picketing the yard and
company buildings to protect them from looters or fire-setters. Mr. Van
Britt's special, so the wires told us, was at Lesterburg, and it was
likely to stay there; and Mr. Van Britt, himself, couldn't be reached.
It was at half-past eleven that we got the first real yelp from somebody
who was getting pinched. It came in the shape of a wire from the
Strathcona night operator. A party of men--"mine owners" the operator
called them--had just heard of the impending railroad tie-up. They had
been meaning to come in on the regular night train, but that had been
abandoned. So now they were offering all kinds of money for a special to
bring them to Portal City. It was represented that there were millions
at stake. Couldn't we do something?
Mr. Norcross had kept Hoskins and a few of the other local strike
leaders where he could get hold of them, and he put the request up to
them as a matter that was now out of his hands. Would they allow him to
run a one-car special from the gold camp to Portal City after midnight?
It was for them to say.
Hoskins and his accomplices went off to talk it over with some of the
other men. When the big freight conductor came back he was alone and was
grinning good-naturedly.
"We ain't aimin' to make the company lose any good money that comes
a-rolling down the hill at it, Mister Norcross," he said. "Cinch these
here Strathcona hurry-boys f'r all you can get out o' them, and if
you'll lend us the loan of the wires, we'll pass the word to let the
special come on through."
It was sure the funniest strike I ever saw or heard of, and I guess the
boss thought so, too--with all this good-natured bargaining back and
forth; but there was nothing more said, and I carried the word to Mr.
Perkins directing him to have arrangements made for the running of a
one-car special from Strathcona for the hurry folks.
Past that, things rocked along until the hands of the big standard-time
clock in the despatcher's room pointed to midnight. Mr. Norcross and I
were both at Donohue's elbow when the men at the wires, east and west,
clicked in their "Good-night," which was the signal that the Pioneer
Short Line had laid down on the job and gone out of business. I couldn't
compare it to anything but a funeral bell, and that's about what it was.
No matter how short the strike might be, it was going to smash us good
and plenty. And whatever else might come of it, it was a cinch that it
would squeeze the last little breath of life out of the Norcross
management for good and all.
As if to confirm that sort of doleful foreboding of mine, Norris, who
was holding down the commercial wire, came over to the counter railing
just then with a New York message. I saw the boss's eyes flash and the
little bunchy muscle-swellings of anger come and go on the edge of his
jaw as he read it, and then he handed it to me.
"You may endorse that 'No Answer' and file it when you go back to the
office," he said shortly, and then he went on talking to Donohue,
telling him how to handle the trains which were still out and moving to
their tie-up destinations.
Of course, I read the message; I knew there was nothing private about it
so far as I was concerned, since it had been given me to put away in the
files. It was dated from the Waldorf-Astoria at midnight, which,
allowing for the difference in time between New York and Portal City,
meant that it had been sent at nine o'clock by our time. Somebody in our
neck of woods was evidently keeping in close wire touch with Mr. Dunton,
for though the strike vote was only a little more than an hour old when
he sent the telegram, he evidently knew all about it. This is what I
read:
"To G. NORCROSS, G. M.,
"Portal City.
"Your administration has been a conspicuous failure from the
beginning. Compromise with employees on any terms offered and
prevent strike at all costs. That done, you are hereby directed to
wire your resignation to take effect one week from to-day.
"B. DUNTON, _President_."
It had hit us at last; not a decent request, mind you, but a blunt,
brutal demand. The boss was fired. No word had come from Mr. Chadwick,
and there could be but one reason for his silence. In some way, perhaps
through the late boosting of the stock, the New Yorkers had squeezed
him out. We were shot dead in the trenches.
I didn't understand how the chief could take it so quietly, unless it
was because he had been hammered so long and so hard that nothing
mattered any more. Anyhow, he was just standing there, talking soberly
to Donohue, when once more the Strathcona branch sounder began to click
furiously, snipping out the headquarters call.
Donohue cut in and we all heard the Strathcona man's new bleat. The way
he told it, it seemed that one member of the party that had chartered
the special to come to Portal City had got left, and this man was now in
the Strathcona wire office, bidding high for an engine to chase the
train and put him aboard.
At first the boss said, "No," short off, just like that; adding that it
wouldn't be keeping faith with the strike committee. But at that moment
Hoskins blew in again, and when he was told what was on the cards, he
took a little responsibility of his own.
"Go to it, Mister Norcross, if there's any more money in it f'r the
railroad," he told the boss. "I'll stand f'r it with the boys." And then
to Donohue: "Who'll be runnin' this chaser engine?"
"It'll be John Hogan and the Four-Sixteen," said Donohue. "There's
nobody else at that end of the branch."
The arrangement, such as it was, was fixed up quickly. The man who was
putting up the money seemed to have plenty of it. He was offering five
hundred dollars for the engine, and a thousand if it should overtake the
special that side of Bauxite Junction.
I guess the bleat unravelled itself pretty clearly for all of us; or at
least, it seemed plain enough. A mining deal of some kind was on, and
this man who was left behind was going to be left in another sense of
the word if he couldn't butt in soon enough to break whatever
combination the others were stacking up against him.
In just a few minutes we got the word from the Strathcona operator that
the money was paid and the chaser engine was out and gone. The special
train had fully a half-hour's start, and with the hazardous grades of
Slide Mountain and Dry Canyon to negotiate, it didn't seem probable that
the light engine could overtake it anywhere north of Bauxite. That
wasn't up to us, however. Kirgan had come in to say that our
good-natured strikers had thrown a guard into the shops and were
patroling the yard, when Fred May showed up, making signals to me. I
heard him when he edged up to the boss and said: "There's a lady in the
office, wanting to see you, Mr. Norcross."
"Holy Smoke!" said I to myself. I knew it couldn't be anybody but Mrs.
Sheila, at that time of night, and I saw seventeen different kinds of
bloody murder looming up again when I tagged along after the boss on the
trip down the hall to our offices.
The guess was right, both ways around. It was Mrs. Sheila, and she had
the major with her. And the air of the private office was so thick with
tragedy that it made the very electrics look dim and ghostly. Mrs.
Sheila didn't have a bit of color in her face, and her eyes had a big
horror in them that was enough to make your flesh creep.
I won't attempt to tell all that was said, partly by the good old major
and partly by Mrs. Sheila. But the gist of it was this: Collingwood had
continued his booze fight in his rooms at the Bullard until he had
worked himself up to the crazy murder pitch. Then he had gone on the
warpath, hunting for Hatch. Just how he had contrived to dodge Hatch's
spotters, who were doubtless keeping cases on him, did not appear. But
that was a detail. He had dodged them, had learned that Hatch and a
bunch of his Red Tower backers had gone to Strathcona on a mining deal,
and had started to drive to the gold camp in an auto to get his man.
Before leaving Portal City he had written a letter to Mrs. Sheila,
telling her what he was going to do, and that when he got through with
it, she would be free. The letter, which had been left at the hotel,
had been delayed in delivery--had, in fact, just been sent out to the
major's house by the night clerk who had found it.
Long before the story could get itself fully told, the different gaps in
it were filling themselves up for me--and for Mr. Norcross, as well, I
guess. When Mrs. Sheila came to the auto-drive part of it, the boss
whirled and shot an order at me.
"Jimmie, chase into the despatcher's office and find out the name of the
man who chartered that following engine!" he snapped; and I went on the
run, remembering that in the strike excitement and hustle it hadn't
occurred to anybody to ask the man's name or that of the particular
"mine owner" who had chartered the special train.
Donohue got the Strathcona operator in less than half a minute after I
fired my order at him, and the answer came almost without a break:
"Charter of special train was to R. Hatch, of Portal City, and of engine
416 to man named Collingwood."
Gosh! but this did settle it! I didn't run back to the office with the
news--I flew. It was like firing a gun in amongst the three who were
waiting, but it had to be done. The major groaned and said, "Oh, good
God!" and Mrs. Sheila sat down and put her face in her hands. The boss
was the only one who knew what to do and he did it: vanished like a
shot in the direction of the despatcher's office.
In about fifteen of the longest minutes I ever lived he came back,
shaking his head. I knew what he had been doing, or trying to do. There
was one night telegraph station on the branch--at a mining-camp half-way
down the grade on Slide Mountain--and he had been trying to get word
there to stop the wild engine.
"He has either bribed or bullied his engine crew," he told the major. "I
wired and had a stop signal set for them at the Antonio Mine, but they
overran it, going at full speed down the hill."
It was plain enough now what Collingwood was trying to do. The murder
mania had got a firm hold of its weapon. Collingwood knew that Hatch was
on the special, and he was going to chase that one-car train until it
made a stop somewhere and then smash into it for blood. After Mr.
Norcross had talked hurriedly for a minute or two with the major he went
back to the despatcher's room and I went with him. There was a word for
Donohue, telling him to call all night stations ahead of the special.
The operators were to give the special the "go-ahead," and after it had
passed, to set their signals against the following engine.
As Donohue cut in on the branch wire, Nippo, at the canyon mouth, broke
in to say that the special had gone by fifteen minutes earlier, and
that the following engine was now coming down the canyon. Donohue
grabbed his key.
"Throw signal against engine 416," he clicked; and a few seconds later
we got the reply:
"No good. Engine 416 overran signal."
"Never mind," said the boss to Donohue; "keep it up at the other
stations. That engine has got to be stopped. It's carrying a madman."
This is what he said, but I knew well enough what he was thinking. He
was remembering that the special now had a lead of only fifteen minutes,
and that it would be obliged to stop at Bauxite for its orders over the
main line.
He did what he could to cut out the Bauxite stop for the special,
ordering Donohue to tell the junction man to set his signals at "clear"
for the train, and at "stop" for the 416. It was only a make-shift. In
the natural order of things the engineer of the special would make the
Bauxite stop anyway, signal or no signal, since it is a nation-wide
railroad rule that no train shall pass a junction without stopping.
Past that the boss grabbed up an official time-card and began to study
it hurriedly and to jot down figures. I wondered if he wasn't
tempted--just the least little bit in the world, you know.
Here was a thing shaping itself up--a thing for which he wasn't in the
least responsible--and if it should work out to the catastrophe that
nobody seemed to be able to prevent, the chief of the grafters, and
probably a number of his nearest backers, would be wiped off the books;
and Collingwood's death, which, in all human probability, was equally
certain, would set Mrs. Sheila free.
He must be thinking of it, I argued; he couldn't be a human man and not
be thinking of it. But he never stopped his hasty figuring for a single
instant until he broke off to bark out at Kirgan, who was standing by:
"Quick, Mart! I want a light engine, and somebody to run it! Jump for
it, man!"
Kirgan, big and slow-motioned at most times, was off like a shot. Then
the boss hurried back down the hall to his own offices, and again I
tagged him. The old major was standing at a window with his hands behind
him, and Mrs. Sheila was sitting just as we had left her, with the big
terror still in her eyes and her face as white as a sheet.
"We can't stop him without throwing a switch in front of him, and that
would mean death to him and his two enginemen," said the boss, talking
straight at the major, and as if he were trying to ignore Mrs. Sheila.
"I'm going to take a long chance and run down the line to meet them.
There's a bare possibility that I can contrive to get between the train
and the engine, and if I can----"
Mrs. Sheila was on her feet and she had her hands clasped as if she were
going to make a prayer to the boss. And it was pretty nearly that.
"Take me!" she begged; "oh, _please_ take me. It's my _right_ to go!"
Kirgan had found an engine somewhere in the yard and was backing it up
to the station platform. We could hear it. I saw that the chief was
going to turn Mrs. Sheila down--which was, of course, exactly the right
thing to do. But just then the major shoved in.
"Sheila knows what she's talking about, Graham," he said quietly. "When
you-all find Howie, you'll have a madman on your hands--and she's the
only one who can control him at such times--God pity her! Take us both,
suh."
I suppose Mr. Norcross thought there wasn't any time to stand there
arguing about it.
"As you will," he snapped at the major; and then to me: "Break for it,
Jimmie, and tell Kirgan to get a car--any car--the first one he can
find!"
I broke, and came pretty near breaking my blessed neck tumbling down the
stairs. Kirgan had found his engine and had picked up a yard man to fire
it. I told him what was wanted, and in less than no time he had pulled
out an empty day-coach from the washing track. While he was backing in
with it, Mr. Norcross came down the platform with the major and Mrs.
Sheila. He let the major help Mrs. Sheila up the steps of the coach and
ran forward to call out to Kirgan:
"Donohue is clearing for you, and there'll be nothing in the way. Run
regardless to Timber Mountain 'Y.' You have six minutes on the special's
time to that point, if you run like the devil!" And then, as he was
climbing to the cab, he ripped out at me: "Jimmie, you go back and stay
with them in the car. Hurry or you'll be left!"
XXX
Under the Wide and Starry Sky
I sure had to be quick about obeying that "get-aboard" order of Mr.
Norcross's. Kirgan had jerked the throttle open the minute the word was
given. I missed the forward end of the car, and when the other end came
along my grab at the hand-rod slammed me head over heels up the steps.
Kirgan was holding his whistle valve open, and the guarding strikers in
the yard gave us room and a clear track. By the time we had passed the
"limit" switches we were going like a blue streak, and I could hardly
keep my balance on the back platform of the day-coach.
You can guess that I didn't stay out there very long. The night was
clear as a bell and pretty coolish, with the stars burning like white
diamonds in the black inverted bowl of the sky. It was mighty pretty
scenery, but just the same, after Kirgan had fairly struck his gait on
the long western tangent, I clawed my way inside. It was a lot too
blustery and unsafe on that back platform.
The major and Mrs. Sheila were sitting together, near the middle of the
car. I staggered up and took the seat just ahead of them, and the major
asked me if Mr. Norcross was on the engine. I told him he was, and that
ended it. What with the rattle and bang of the coach, the howling of the
speed-made wind in the ventilators, and the shrill scream of the
spinning wheels, there wasn't any room for talk during the whole of that
breath-taking race to the old "Y" in the hills beyond Banta.
Knowing, from what Mr. Norcross had said, the point at which we were
going to side-track and wait for the special and the wild engine, I grew
sort of nervous and worked-up after we had crashed through the Banta
yard and the day-coach began to sway and lurch around the hill curves.
What if the special had been making better time than the boss had
counted upon? In that case, we'd probably hit her in a head-ender
somewhere on one of those very curves. And with the time we were making,
and the time she'd be making, there wouldn't be enough left of either
train to be worth picking up.
A mile or so short of the "Y" siding I went up ahead and handed myself
out to the forward platform to see if I couldn't get a squint past the
storming engine. I got it now and then, on the swing of the curves, but
there was nothing in sight. Just the same, it was mighty scary, and I
took a relief breath so deep that it nearly made me sick at my stomach
when I finally realized that Kirgan had shut off and was slowing for the
stop at the farther switch of the old "Y."
What was done at the switch was done swiftly, as men work when they have
the fear of death gripping at them. If the special should come up while
we were making the back-in, the result would be just about the same as
it would have been if we had met it on the curves.
The jerking tug of the self-preservation instinct is pretty strong,
sometimes, and I tumbled off the steps of the car as it was backing in
around the western curve of the "Y." Our picked-up fireman was at the
switch, setting it again for the main line. With our own engine silent,
I could hear a faint sound like the far-away fluttering of a
safety-valve. We were not ten seconds too soon. The special was coming.
Mr. Norcross, who was still in the engine cab, shot an order at Kirgan.
"Fling your coat over the headlight, and then be ready to snatch it and
get off!" he shouted. "If they see it as they come up, it may stop
them!" Then, catching a glimpse of me on the ground: "Break the coupling
on the coach, Jimmie--quick!"
As I jumped to obey I understood what was to be done. The fireman at
the switch was to let the special go by, and then the boss--just the
boss alone on the engine--was to be let out on the main track to put
himself between the chaser and the chased. It was a hair-raising
proposition, but perhaps--just perhaps--not quite so suicidal as it
looked. With skilful handling the interposed engine might possibly be
kept out of the way by backing, and its warning headlight shining full
into the eyes of the men in the 416's cab would surely be enough to stop
them--if anything would.
I got the coupling broken on the car to set our engine free before the
distant flutter noise had grown to anything more than a humming like
that of an overhead swarm of angry bees. Kirgan was standing on the
front end, with his coat thrown over the headlight, ready to jerk it off
and jump when he got the word. Out at the switch, our fireman was
keeping out of sight so that the engineer of the special shouldn't see
him, and maybe get rattled and stop. As usual, the boss had covered
every little detail in his instructions, and had remembered that the
sight of a man standing at a switch in a lonesome place like this might
give an engineer a fit of "nerves" and make him shut off steam.
I had just finished uncoupling the day-coach and the boss was easing our
engine ahead a bit to make sure that she was loose, when the car-door
opened behind me and the major and Mrs. Sheila came out in the front
vestibule. It was Mrs. Sheila who spoke to me, and her voice had
borrowed some of the big terror that I had seen in her eyes while she
was sitting in the office at Portal City.
"Where--whereabouts are we, Jimmie?" she asked.
I didn't get a chance to tell her. Before I could open my mouth the
black shadows of the crooked valley beyond the switch were shot through
with the white, shimmering glow of a headlight beam, and a second later
the special flicked into view on the curve of approach.
When we first saw it, the engine was working steam, and she was running
like a streak of lightning. But as we looked, there was a short, sharp
whistle yelp, the brakes gripped the wheels, the one-car train, with
fire grinding from every brake-shoe, came to a jerking stop a short
car-length on our side of the switch, and a man dropped from the engine
step to go sprinting to the rear. And it was plain that neither the
engineer nor the man who was running back saw our outfit waiting on the
leg of the old "Y."
Kirgan was the first one to understand. With a shout of warning, he
jumped and ran toward the stopped train, yelling at the engineer for
God's sake to pull out and go on. Back in the hills beyond the curve of
approach another hoarse murmur was jarring upon the air, and the
special's fireman, who was the man we had seen jump off and go running
back, and who, of course, didn't know that we had our man there, was
apparently trying to reach the switch behind his train to throw it
against the following engine to shoot it off on the "Y."
By this time the boss was off of our engine and racing across the angle
of the "Y" only a little way behind Kirgan. He realized that his plan
was smashed by the stopping of the special, and that the very
catastrophe we had come out to try to prevent was due to happen right
there and then. Whatever our man waiting at the switch might do, there
was bound to be a collision. If he left the points set for the main
line, the wild engine would crash into the rear end of the stopped
special; and if he did the other thing, our engine and coach standing on
the "Y" would get it.
"Get the people out of that car!" I heard the boss bellow, but even as
he said it the pop-valve of the stopped engine went off with a roar,
filling the shut-in valley with clamorings that nothing could drown.
Two minutes, two little minutes more, and the sleep-sodden bunch of men
in the special's car might have been roused and turned out and saved.
But the minutes were not given us. While the racing fireman was still a
few feet short of the switch the throwing of which would have saved the
one-car train only to let the madman's engine in on our engine and
coach, and our man--already at the switch--was too scared to know which
horn of the dilemma to choose, the end came. There was the flash of
another headlight on the curve, another whistle shriek, and I turned to
help the Major take Mrs. Sheila off our car and run with her, against
the horrible chance that we might get it instead of the special.
But we didn't get it. Ten seconds later the chasing engine had crashed
headlong into the standing train, burying itself clear up to the tender
in the heart of the old wooden sleeper, rolling the whole business over
on its side in the ditch, and setting the wreckage afire as suddenly as
if the old Pullman had been a fagot of pitch-pine kindlings and only
waiting for the match.
If I could write down any real description of the way things stacked up
there in that lonesome valley for the little bunch of us who stood
aghast at the awful horror, I guess I wouldn't need to be hammering the
keys of a typewriter in a railroad office. But never mind; no soldier
sees any more of a battle than the part he is in. There were seven of us
men, including the engineer and fireman of the special, who were able to
jump in and try to do something, and, looking back at it now, it seems
as if we all did what we could.
That wasn't much. About half of the people in the sleeping-car--six by
actual count, as we learned afterward--were killed outright in the crash
or so badly hurt that they died pretty soon afterward; and the fire was
so quick and so hot that after we had got the wounded ones out we
couldn't get all of the bodies of the others.
As you'd imagine, the boss was the head and front of that fierce rescue
fight. He had stripped off his coat, and he kept on diving into the
burning wreck after another and yet another of the victims until it
seemed as if he couldn't possibly do it one more time and come out
alive. He didn't seem to remember that these very men were the ones who
had been trying to ruin him--that at least once they had set a trap for
him and tried to kill him. He was too big for that.
After we had got out all the victims we could reach, there was still one
more left who wasn't dead; we could hear him above the hissing of the
steam and the crackling of the flames, screaming and begging us to break
in the side of the car and kill him before the fire got to him. Kirgan
had found an axe in the emergency box of our day-coach, and was chopping
away like a madman.
The minute he got a hole big enough, the big master-mechanic dropped
his axe and climbed down into the choking hell where the screams were
coming from. Our fireman picked up the axe and ran around to the other
side of the wreck where Jones, the engineer of the special, and his
fireman were trying to break into the crushed cab of the 416.
The old major, the boss, and I stood by to help Kirgan, and the minute
his head came up through the chopped hole we saw that he needed help. He
had pried the screaming man loose, somehow, and was trying to drag him
up out of the smoking furnace. It was done, amongst us, some way or
other. Kirgan had wrapped the man up in a Pullman blanket to keep the
fire from getting at him any worse than it already had, and as we were
taking him out the blanket slipped aside from his face and I saw who it
was that the master-mechanic had risked his life for. It was Hatch,
himself, and he died in our arms, the major's and mine, while we were
carrying him out to where Mrs. Sheila was tearing one of the Pullman
sheets that I had got hold of into strips to make bandages for the
wounded.
With the chance of saving maybe another one or two, we couldn't stay to
help the brave little woman who was trying to be doctor and nurse to
half a dozen poor wretches at once. But she took time to ask me one
single breathless question:
"Have they found him yet?--you know the one I mean, Jimmie?"
"No," I said. "They're digging away at that side now," and then I ran
back to jump in again.
Though the fire was now licking at everything in sight, Kirgan, who had
taken the axe from our fireman, had managed to cut some of the car
timbers out of the way so that we could see down into the tangle of
things where the cab of the 416 ought to have been. There wasn't much
left of the cab. The water-gauge was broken, along with everything else,
but in spite of the reek of smoke and steam we could see that Hogan and
his fireman were not there. But down under the coal that had shifted
forward at the impact of the collision we could make out the other
man--the murder-maniac--lying on his back, black in the face and
gasping.
That was enough for the boss. It looked like certain death for anybody
to crawl down into that hissing steam-bath, but he did it, wriggling
through the hole that Kirgan had chopped, while two or three of us ran
to the little creek that trickled down on the far side of the "Y" and
brought back soaking Pullman blankets to try to delay the encroaching
fire and smother the steam-jets.
I couldn't see very well what the boss was doing; the smoke and steam
were so blinding. But when I did get a glimpse I saw that he was digging
frantically with his bare hands at the shifted coal, and that he had
succeeded in freeing the head and shoulders of the buried man, who was
still alive enough to choke and gasp in the furnace-like heat.
Kirgan stood it as long as he could--until the licking flames were about
to drive us all away.
"You'll be burnt alive--come up out of that!" he yelled to the boss; but
I knew it wouldn't do any good. With Collingwood still buried down there
and still with the breath of life in him, the boss was going to stay and
keep on trying to dig him out, even if he, himself, got burned to a
crisp doing it. Loving Mrs. Sheila the way he did, he couldn't do any
less.
It was awful, those next two or three minutes. We were all running
frantically back and forth, now, between the wreck and the creek,
soaking the blankets and doing our level best to beat the fire back and
keep it from cutting off the only way there was for the boss to climb
out. But we could only fight gaspingly on the surface of things, as you
might say. Down underneath, the fire was working around in front and
behind in spite of all we could do. Some of it had got to the coal, and
the heavy sulphurous smoke was oozing up to make us all choke and
strangle.
Honestly, you couldn't have told that the boss was a white man when he
crawled up out of that pit of death, tugging and lifting the crushed
and broken body of the madman, and making us take it out before he would
come out himself. We got them both away from the fire as quickly as we
could and around to the other side of things, Kirgan and Jones carrying
Collingwood.
The poor little lady we had left alone with the rescued ones had done
all she could, and she was waiting for us. When we put Collingwood down,
she sat down on the ground and took his head in her lap and cried over
him just like his mother might have, and when the boss knelt down beside
her I heard what he said: "That's right, little woman; that's just as it
should be. Death wipes out all scores. I did my best--you must always
believe that I did my best."
She choked again at that, and said: "There is no hope?" and he said:
"I'm afraid not. He was dying when I got to him."
I tried to swallow the big lump in my throat and turned away, and so did
everybody else but the major, who went around and knelt down on the
other side of Mrs. Sheila. The wreck was blazing now like a mighty
bonfire, lighting up the pine-clad hills all around and snapping and
growling like some savage monster gloating over its prey. In the red
glow we saw a man limping up the track from the west, and Kirgan and I
went to meet him. It was Hogan, the missing engineer of the 416.
He told us what there was to tell, which wasn't very different from the
way we'd been putting it up. They--Hogan and his fireman--hadn't
suspected that they were carrying a maniac until after they had passed
Bauxite and Collingwood had told them both that what he wanted to do was
to overtake the special and smash it. Then there had been a fight on the
engine, but Collingwood had a gun and he had threatened to kill them
both if they didn't keep on.
"I kep' her goin'," said the Irishman, "thinkin' maybe Jonesy'd keep out
of my way, or that at the lasht I'd get a chanst to shut the 'Sixteen
off an' give her the brake. He kep' me fr'm doin' it, and whin I saw the
tail-lights, I pushed Johnnie Shovel off an' wint afther him because
there was nawthin' else to do. Johnnie's back yondher a piece, wid a
broken leg."
Just then Jones, the special's engineer, came up, and he pieced out
Hogan's story. The wire to Bauxite had warned him that a crazy man was
chasing him and overrunning stop-signals. He had thought to side-track
the chaser at the old "Y" and that was what he had stopped for.
Thereupon the three of us went after the crippled fireman, and when we
got back to the "Y" with him it was all over. Collingwood had died with
his head in Mrs. Sheila's lap, and the boss, fagged out and half dead as
he must have been, was up and at work, getting the wreck victims into
our day-coach, which had been backed up and taken around to the other
leg of the "Y" to head for Portal City.
When it came time for us to move Collingwood, Mrs. Sheila pulled her
veil down and walked behind the body, with the good old major locking
his arm in hers, and that choking lump came again in my throat when I
remembered what Collingwood had said to the boss the night he came to
our office: "Sheila made her wedding journey with me once, when she was
just eighteen. The next time she rides with me it will be at my
funeral."
I guess there's no use stretching the agony out by telling about that
mournful ride back to Portal City with the dead and wounded. We left the
wreck blazing and roaring in the shut-in valley at the gulch mouth
because there wasn't anything else to do; Kirgan and Jones and one of
the firemen handled the engine and pulled out, while the rest of us rode
in the day-coach and did what we could for the suffering.
At Banta we made a stop long enough to let the boss send a wire to
Portal City, turning out the doctors and the ambulances--and the
undertakers; and though it was after three o'clock in the morning when
we pulled in, it seemed as if the whole town had got the word and was
down at the station to meet us.
I couldn't see Mrs. Sheila's face when the major helped her off at the
platform; her veil was still down. But I did hear her low-spoken word to
the boss, whispered while they were carrying Collingwood and Hatch, and
two of the others who were past help, out to the waiting string of
dead-wagons.
"I shall go East with the body to-morrow--to-day, I mean--if the
strikers will let you run a train, and Cousin Basil will go with me. We
may never meet again, Graham, and for that reason I must say what I have
to say now. Your opportunity has come. The man who could do the most to
defeat you is dead, and the strike will do the rest. If I were you, I
should neither eat nor sleep until I had thought of some way to take the
railroad out of the hands of those who have proved that they are not
worthy to own it."
I didn't know, just then, how much or little attention Mr. Norcross was
paying to this mighty good, clear-headed bit of business advice. What he
said went back to that saying of hers that they might never meet again.
"We must meet again--sometime and somewhere," he said. And then: "I did
my best: God knows I did my best, Sheila. I would have given my own
life gladly if the giving would have saved Collingwood's. Don't you
believe that?"
"I shall always believe that you are one of God's own gentlemen,
Graham," she said, soft and low; and then the major came to take her
away.
XXXI
P. S. L. Comes Home
I didn't get more than five hours' sleep after the excitement was all
over, and we had ourselves driven, Mr. Norcross and I, up to the club.
But by nine o'clock the next morning, as soon as I'd swallowed a hurried
bite of breakfast in the grill-room I swiped a camp-stool and a magazine
out of the lounge and trotted up-stairs to plant myself before the
boss's door, determined that nobody should disturb him until he was good
and ready to get up.
He turned out a little before twelve, looking sort of haggard and drawn,
of course, and having some pretty bad burns on the side of his neck and
on the backs of both hands. But he was all there, as usual, and he laid
a good, brotherly hand on my shoulder when he saw what I was doing.
"They don't make many of them like you, Jimmie," he said. And then:
"Have you any news?"
I had, a little, and I gave it to him. Fred May had come tip-toeing up
into my sentry corridor about ten o'clock to tell me that Mr. Perkins
had arranged with the strikers to have a special go east with the major
and Mrs. Sheila and Collingwood's body to catch the Overland at
Sedgwick; and I told the boss this, and that the train had been gone for
an hour or more.
Also, I gave him a sealed package that a strange boy had brought up just
a little while after May went away. We took the elevator to the
grill-room for something to eat, and at table Mr. Norcross opened the
package. It contained a bunch of affidavits, eleven of them in all, and
there was no letter or anything to tell where they had come from.
He handed the papers over to me, after he had seen what they were, and
told me to take care of them, and, when the waiter was bringing our
bite--or rather after he had brought it and was gone--he sort of frowned
across the table at me and said: "Do you know what it means--this
surrender of those bribe affidavits, Jimmie?"
I said I guessed I did; that Hatch being dead, and Collingwood, too,
there wasn't nerve enough left in the Red Tower outfit to keep up the
fight; that the surrender of the affidavits was kind of a plea for a
let-up on our part.
"We'll begin to show them, in just about fifteen minutes, Jimmie," was
the short comment. "Reach over and get that telephone and tell Mr.
Ripley and Mr. Billoughby that I want them to meet me at my office at
half-past twelve. Any news from the strike?"
"Nothing," I told him, while "Central" was getting me Mr. Ripley's
number. "Fred May said it was going on just the same; everything quiet
and nothing doing, except that the wrecking train had gone out to pick
up the scraps at Timber Mountain 'Y'. Kirgan is bossing it, and the
strikers manned it for him."
Nothing more was said until after I had sent the two phone messages, and
then the boss broke out in a new spot.
"Has anything been heard from Mr. Van Britt?" he asked.
"Not that I know of."
Again he gave me that queer little scowl across the table.
"Jimmie, have you found out yet why Mr. Van Britt insisted on quitting
the service?"
I guess I grinned a little, though I tried not to.
"Mr. Van Britt is one of the best friends you've got," I said. "He
thought you needed this strike, and he wanted to go out among the
pay-roll men and sort of help it along. He couldn't do a thing like that
while he was an officer of the company and drawing his pay like the rest
of us."
"I might have known--he as good as told me," was the reply, made kind of
half-absently; and then, short and quick: "How's the stock market? Have
you seen a paper?"
I had seen both papers, at breakfast-time, but of course they had
nothing startling in them except a last-minute account of the wreck at
Timber Mountain "Y," grabbed off just before they went to press. They
couldn't have anything later from New York than the day before. But Fred
May had tipped me off when he came up to tell me about the Major
Kendrick special. The newspaper offices were putting out bulletins by
that time.
I told Mr. Norcross about the bulletins and was brash enough to add:
"We're headed for the receivership all right, I guess; our stock has
tumbled to twenty-nine, and there's a regular dog-fight going on over it
at the railroad post in the Exchange. Wall Street's afire and burning
up, so they say."
The chief hadn't eaten enough to keep a cat alive, but at that he pushed
his chair back and reached for his hat.
"Come on, Jimmie," he snapped. "We've got to get busy. And there isn't
going to be any receivership."
We reached the railroad headquarters--which were as dead and quiet as a
graveyard--a little before Mr. Ripley and Billoughby got down. But Mr.
Editor Cantrell was there, waiting to shoot an anxious question at the
boss.
"Well, Norcross, are you ready to talk now?"
"Not just yet; to-morrow, maybe," was the good-natured rejoinder.
"All right; then perhaps you will tell me this: Do you, yourself,
believe that four or five thousand railroad men have gone on strike out
of sheer sympathy for a few hundred C. S. & W. employees, most of whom
are merely common laborers?"
The boss spread his hands. "You have all the facts that anybody has,
Cantrell."
"Can you look me in the eye and tell me that you haven't fomented this
eruption on the quiet to get the better of the Red Tower crowd in some
way?" demanded the editor.
"I can, indeed," was the smiling answer.
Cantrell looked as if he didn't more than half believe it.
"Being a newspaper man, I'm naturally suspicious," he put in. "There are
big doings down underneath all this that I can smell, but can't dig up.
Everything about this strike is too blamed good-natured. I've talked
with half a dozen of the leaders, and with any number of the rank and
file. They all grin and give me the wink, as if it were the best joke
that was ever pulled off."
Again Mr. Norcross smiled handsomely. "If you push me to it, Cantrell, I
may say that this is exactly their attitude toward me!"
"Well," said the editor, getting up to go; "it's doing one thing to you,
good and proper. Your railroad stock is tumbling down-stairs so fast
that it can't keep up with itself."
"I hope it will tumble still more," said the boss, pleasantly, with
another sort of enigmatic smile; and with that Mr. Cantrell had to be
content.
As the editor went out, Fred May brought in the bunch of forenoon
telegrams and laid them on the desk. They were quickly glanced at and
tossed over to me as fast as they were read. Most of them were plaintive
little yips from a strike-stricken lot of people along the Short Line
who seemed to think that the world had come to an end, but there were
three bearing the New York date line and signed "Dunton." The earliest
had been sent shortly after the opening of the Stock Exchange, and it
ran thus:
"Morning papers announce strike and complete tie-up on P. S. L. Why no
report from you of labor troubles threatening? Compromise at any cost
and wire emphatic denial of strike. Answer quick."
The second of the series had been filed for transmission an hour later
and it was still more saw-toothed.
"Later reports confirm newspaper story. Your failure to compromise
instantly with employees will break stock market and subject you to
investigation for criminal incompetency. Answer."
The third message had been sent still later.
"Your continued silence inexcusable. If no favorable report from you by
six o'clock you may consider yourself discharged from the company's
service and criminal proceedings on charge of conspiracy will be
instituted at once."
There was no mention of Collingwood, and I could only imagine that Major
Kendrick's telegram had not yet reached the president. I thought things
were beginning to look pretty serious for us if Mr. Dunton was going to
try to drag us into the courts, but Mr. Norcross was still smiling when
he handed me the last and latest telegram in the bunch that May had
brought in. It was from Mr. Chadwick, and was good-naturedly laconic.
"To G. NORCROSS, G. M.,
"Portal City.
"Just returned from trip to Seattle. What's doing on the Short
Line?
"CHADWICK."
"A couple of telegrams, Jimmie," said the chief, as he passed this last
wire over, and I got my notebook ready.
"To B. Dunton, New York. Strike is sympathetic and not subject to
compromise. Mails moving regularly, but all other traffic suspended
indefinitely. My office closes to-day, and my resignation, effective at
once, goes to you on Fast Mail to-night."
"Now one to Mr. Chadwick, and you may send it in code," he directed
crisply. Then he dictated:
"See newspapers for account of strike. Hatch and eight of his associates
were killed last night in railroad wreck. Dunton has demanded my
resignation and I have given it. Have plan for complete reorganization
along lines discussed in beginning, and need your help. At market
opening to-morrow sell P. S. L. large blocks and repurchase in driblets
as price goes down. Repeat until I tell you to stop. Wire quick if you
are with us."
Just as I was taking the last sentence, Mr. Ripley and Billoughby came
in, and Mr. Norcross took them both into the third room of the suite and
shut the door. An hour later when the door opened and they came out, the
boss was summing up the new orders to Billoughby: "There's a lot to do,
and you have my authority to hire all the help you need. See the bankers
yourself, personally, and get them to interest other local buyers along
the line, the more of them, and the smaller they are, the better. I'll
take care of Portal City, myself. I've had Van Britt on the wire and he
is taking care of the employees--yes, that goes as it lies, and is a
part of the original plan; every man who works for P. S. L. is going to
own a bit of stock, if we have to carry him for it and let him pay a
dollar a week. More than that, they shall have representation on the
board if they want it. And while you're knocking about, take time to
show these C. S. & W. folks how they can climb back into the saddle. Red
Tower is down and out, now, and they can keep it out if they want to."
* * * * *
I suppose I might rattle this old type-machine of mine indefinitely and
tell the story of the financial fight that filled the next few days; of
how the boss and Mr. Ripley and Billoughby got the bankers and
practically everybody together all along the Short Line and sprung the
big plan upon them, which was nothing less than the snapping up, on a
tumbling stock market, of the opportunity now presented to them of
owning--actually _owning_ in fee simple--their own railroad, the buying
to be done quietly through Mr. Chadwick's brokers in Chicago and New
York.
There was some opposition and jangling and see-sawing back and forth, of
course, but the newspapers, led by the _Mountaineer_, took hold, and
then, pretty soon, everybody took hold; after which the only trouble was
to keep people--our own rank and file among them--from buying P. S. L.
Common so fast that the New Yorkers would catch on and run the price
up.
They didn't catch on--not until after it was too late; and the minute
Mr. Chadwick wired us from Chicago that we were safe, the strike went
off, as you might say, between two minutes, and Mr. Norcross called a
meeting of stockholders, the same to be held--bless your heart!--in
Portal City, the thriving metropolis of the region in which, counting
Mr. Chadwick in as one of us, a good, solid voting majority of the stock
was now held. The _Mountaineer_ printed the call, and it spoke of the
railroad as "_our_ railroad company"!
The meeting was held in due time, and Mr. Chadwick was there to preside.
He made a cracking good chairman, and the way he dilated on the fact
that now the country--and the employees--had a railroad of their own,
and that the whole nation would be looking to see how we would
demonstrate the problem we had taken over, actually brought
cheers--think of it; cheers in a railroad stockholders' meeting.
Following Mr. Chadwick's talk there was the usual routine business;
reports were read and it was shown that the Short Line, notwithstanding
all the stealings and mismanagements was still a good going proposition
at the price at which it had been bought in. A new board of directors
was chosen, and as soon as the new board got together, Mr. Norcross
went back to his office in the headquarters, not as general manager,
this time--not on your life!--but as the newly elected president of
Pioneer Short Line. And by the same token, the first official circular
that came out--a copy of which I sent, tied up with a blue ribbon, to
Maisie Ann--read like this:
"To all Employees:
"Effective this day, Mr. James F. Dodds is appointed Assistant to
the President with headquarters in Portal City.
"G. NORCROSS, _President_."
That's all; all but a little talk between the boss and Mr. Upton Van
Britt that took place in our office on the day after Mr. Van Britt,
still kicking about the hard work that the boss was always piling upon
him, had been appointed general manager.
"You've made the riffle, Graham--just as I said you would," said our own
and only millionaire, after he had got through abusing the fates that
wouldn't let him go back East and play with his coupon shears and his
yachts and polo ponies. "You're going to be the biggest man this side of
the mountains, some day; and the day isn't so very far off, either."
It was just here that the boss got out of his chair and walked to the
other end of the room. When he came back it was to say:
"You think I have won out, Upton, and so does everybody else. I suppose
it looks that way to the man in the street. But I haven't, you know. I
have lost the one thing for which I would gladly give all the business
success I have ever made or hope to make."
Mr. Van Britt's smile was more than half a grin.
"It isn't lost, Graham: it's only gone before. Can't you wait a decent
little while?"
"If I should wait all my life it wouldn't be long enough, Upton," was
the reply. "What you said to me--that time when we first spoke of
Collingwood--was true. You said she loved the other man--and so she
did."
This time Mr. Van Britt's smile was a whole grin.
"I said it, and I'll say it again. She didn't realize it or admit it,
even to herself you know; she's too good and clean-hearted for anything
like that. But I could see it plainly enough, and so could everybody
else except the two people most nearly concerned. I didn't mean Howie
Collingwood: you were the 'other man,' Graham."
At this the boss whirled short around and tramped to the other end of
the room again, standing for quite a little while with one foot on the
low window-sill and making out like he was looking down at the traffic
clattering along in Nevada Avenue. But I'll bet a quarter he never saw a
single wheel of it. When he came back our way his eyes were shining and
he put his hand on Mr. Van Britt's shoulder.
"It ought to have been you, Uppy," he said, dropping back to the old
college nickname. "You're by long odds the better man. When--when do you
think I might venture to take a little run across to New York?"
At that, Mr. Van Britt laughed out loud.
"Ho! ho!" he said. "I suppose I ought to say a year. You can wait one
little year, can't you, Graham?"
"Not on your life!" rasped the boss. And then: "I'll tell you what I'll
do; I'll compromise with the proprieties, or whatever it is that you're
insisting on, and make it six months. But that's the limit--the absolute
limit!"
And so it was.
* * * * *
_BY FRANCIS LYNDE_
THE WRECKERS
DAVID VALLORY
BRANDED
STRANDED IN ARCADY
AFTER THE MANNER OF MEN
THE REAL MAN
THE CITY OF NUMBERED DAYS
THE HONORABLE SENATOR SAGE-BRUSH
SCIENTIFIC SPRAGUÉ
THE PRICE
THE TAMING OF RED BUTTE WESTERN
A ROMANCE IN TRANSIT
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