[Illustration: 9273]
S the elevator in the big building was taking Rayburn Miller up to the
offices of the Southern Land and Timber Company, many reflections passed
hurriedly through his mind.
“You are going to get the usual cold shoulder from Wilson,” he mused;
“but he 'll put it up against something about as warm as he's touched in
many a day. If you don't make him squirm, it will be only because you
don't want to.”
Wilson was busy at his desk looking over bills of lading, receipts, and
other papers, and now and then giving instructions to a typewriter in
the corner of the room.
“Ahl how are you, Miller?” he said, indifferently, giving the caller his
hand without rising. “Down to see the city again, eh?”
Rayburn leaned on the top of the desk, and knocked the ashes from his
cigar with the tip of his little finger.
“Partly that and partly business,” he returned, carelessly.
“Two birds, eh?”
“That's about it. I concluded you were not coming up our way soon, and
so I decided to drop in on you.”
“Yes, glad you did.” Wilson glanced at the papers on his desk and
frowned. “Wish I had more time at my disposal. I'd run up to the club
with you and show you my Kentucky thoroughbreds, but I realty am rushed,
to-day particularly.”
“Oh, I haven't a bit of time to spare myself! I take the afternoon train
home. The truth is, I came to see you for my clients, the Bishops.”
“Ah, I see.” Wilson's face clouded over by some mechanical arrangement
known only to himself. “Well, I can' t realty report any progress in
that matter,” he said. “All the company think Bishop's figures are away
out of reason, and the truth is, right now, we are over head and ears in
operations in other quarters, and--well, you see how it is?”
“Yes, I think I do.” Miller smoked a moment. “In fact, I told my clients
last month that the matter was not absorbing your attention, and so they
gave up counting on you.”
Wilson so far forgot his pose that he looked up in a startled sort of
way and began to study Miller's smoke-wrapped profile.
“You say they are not--have not been counting on my company to--to buy
their land?”
“Why, no,” said Miller, in accents well resembling those of slow and
genuine surprise. “Why, you have not shown the slightest interest in
the matter since the day you made the loan, and naturally they ceased to
think you wanted the land. The only reason I called was that the note is
payable to-day, and--”
“Oh yes, by Jove! that was careless of me. The interest is due. I knew
it would be all right, and I had no idea you would bother to run down
for that. Why, my boy, we could have drawn for it, you know.”
Miller smiled inwardly, as he looked calmly and fixedly through his
smoke into the unsuspecting visage upturned to him.
“But the note itself is payable to-day,” he said, closely on the alert
for a facial collapse; “and, while you or I might take up a paper for
twenty-five thousand dollars through a bank, old-fashioned people like
Mr. and Mrs. Bishop would feel safer to have it done by an agent. That's
why I came.”
Miller, in silent satisfaction, saw the face of his antagonist fall to
pieces like an artificial flower suddenly shattered.
“Pay the note?” gasped Wilson. “Why--”
Miller puffed at his cigar and gazed at his victim as if slightly
surprised over the assumption that his clients had not, all along,
intended to avail themselves of that condition in their contract.
“You mean that the Bishops are ready to--” Wilson began again on another
breath--“to pay us the twenty-five thousand dollars?”
“And the interest for six months,” quietly added Miller, reaching for a
match on the desk. “I reckon you've got the note here. I don't want to
miss my train.”
Wilson was a good business man, but his Puritanical training in New
England had not fitted him for wily diplomacy; besides, he had not
expected to meet a diplomat that day, and did not, even now, realize
that he was in the hands of one. He still believed that Miller was
only a half-educated country lawyer who had barely enough brains and
experience to succeed as a legal servant for mountain clients. Hence,
he now made little effort to conceal his embarrassment into which the
sudden turn of affairs had plunged him. In awkward silence he squirmed
in his big chair.
“Of course, they can take up their note to-day if they wish,” he said,
with alarmed frankness. “I was not counting on it, though.” He rose
to his feet. Miller's watchful eye detected a certain trembling of his
lower lip. He thrust his hands into his pockets nervously; and in a tone
of open irritation he said to the young man at the typewriter: “Brown,
I wish you'd let up on that infernal clicking; sometimes I can stand it,
and then again I can' t. You can do those letters in the next room.”
When the young man had gone out, carrying his machine, Wilson turned to
Miller. “As I understand it, you, personally, have no interest in the
Bishop property?”
“Oh, not a dollar!” smiled the lawyer. “I'm only acting for them.”
“Then”--Wilson drove his hands into his pockets again--“perhaps you
wouldn't mind telling me if the Bishops are on trade with other parties.
Are they?”
Miller smiled and shook his head. “As their lawyer, Mr. Wilson, I simply
couldn't answer that question.”
The blow was well directed and it struck a vulnerable spot.
“I beg your pardon,” Wilson stammered. “I did not mean to suggest that
you would betray confidence.” He reflected a moment, and then he said,
in a flurried tone, “They have not actually sold out, have they?”
Miller was silent for a moment, then he answered: “I don't see any
reason why I may not answer that question I don't think my clients would
object to my saying that they have not yet accepted any offer.”
A look of relief suffused itself over Wilson's broad face.
“Then they are still open to accept their offer to me?”
Miller laughed as if highly amused at the complication of the matter.
“They are bound, you remember, only so long as you hold their note.”
“Then I tell you what to do,” proposed Wilson. “Go back and tell them
not to bother about payment, for a few days, anyway, and that we will
soon tell them positively whether we will pay their price or not. That's
fair, isn't it?”
“It might seem so to a man personally interested in the deal,” admitted
Miller, as the introduction to another of his blows from the shoulder;
“but as lawyer for my clients I can only obey orders, like the boy who
stood on the burning deck.”
Wilson's face fell. The remote clicking of the typewriter seemed to
grate upon his high-wrought nerves, and he went and slammed the partly
opened door, muttering something like an oath. On that slight journey,
however, he caught an idea.
“Suppose you wire them my proposition and wait here for a reply,” he
suggested.
Miller frowned. “That would do no good,” he said. “I'm sorry I can' t
explain fully, but the truth is this: I happen to know that they wish,
for reasons of their own, to take up the note you hold, and that nothing
else will suit them.”
At this juncture Wilson lost his grip on all self-possession,
and degenerated into the sullen anger of sharp and unexpected
disappointment.
“I don't feel that we are being fairly treated,” he said. “We most
naturally assumed that your clients wanted to--to extend our option on
the property for at least another six months. We assumed that from the
fact that we had no notification from them that they would be ready to
pay the note to-day. That's where we feel injured, Mr. Miller.”
Rayburn threw his cigar into a cuspidor; his attitude of being a
non-interested agent was simply a stroke of genius. Behind this plea
he crouched, showing himself only to fire shots that played havoc with
whatever they struck.
“I believe my clients _did_ feel, I may say, honor bound to you to sell
for the price they offered; but--now I may be mistaken--but I'm sure
they were under the impression, as I was, too, that you only wanted the
property provided you could build a railroad from Dar-ley to it, and--”
“Well, that's true,” broke in Wilson. “That's quite true.”
“And,” finished Miller, still behind his inevitable fortification, “they
tell me that you have certainly shown indifference to the project ever
since the note was given. In fact, they asked me pointedly if I thought
you meant business, and I was forced, conscientiously, to tell them that
I thought you seemed to have other fish to fry.”
Wilson glared at the lawyer as if he wanted to kick him for a stupid
idiot who could not do two things at once--work for the interests of his
clients and not wreck his plans also. It had been a long time since he
had found himself in such a hot frying-pan.
“So you think the thing is off,” he said, desperately, probably
recalling several purchases of land he had made in the section he had
expected to develop. “You think it's off?”
“I hardly know what to say,” said Miller. “The old gentleman, Mr.
Bishop, is a slow-going old-timer, but his son is rather up to date,
full of energy and ambition. I think he's made up his mind to sell that
property.”
Wilson went to his desk, hovered over it like a dark, human cloud, and
then reluctantly turned to the big iron safe against the wall, obviously
to get the note. His disappointment was too great for concealment. With
his fat, pink hand on the silver-plated combination-bolt he turned to
Miller again.
“Would you mind sitting down till I telephone one or two of the
directors?”
“Not at all,” said Miller, “if you 'll get me a cigar and the
_Constitution_. The Atlanta baseball team played Mobile yesterday, and I
was wondering--”
“I don't keep track of such things,” said Wilson, coming back to his
desk, with an impatient frown, to ring his call-bell for the office-boy.
“Oh yes, I believe football is your national sport,” said Miller, with
a dry smile. “Well, it's only a difference between arms and legs--whole
bones and casualties.”
Wilson ordered the cigar and paper when the boy appeared, and, leaving
the lawyer suddenly, he went into the room containing the telephone,
closing the door after him.
In a few minutes he reappeared, standing before Miller, who was
chewing a cold cigar and attentively reading. He looked up at Wilson
abstractedly.
“Bully for Atlanta!” he said. “The boys made ten runs before the Mobiles
had scored--”
“Oh, come down to business!” said the New-Eng-lander, with a ready-made
smile. “Honestly, I don't believe you drowsy Southerners ever will get
over your habit of sleeping during business hours. It seems to be bred
in the bone.”
Miller laughed misleadingly. “Try to down us at a horse-race and we 'll
beat you in the middle of the night. Hang it all, man, you don't know
human nature, that's all! How can you expect me, on my measly fees, to
dance a breakdown over business I am transacting for other people?”
“Well, that may account for it,” admitted Wilson, who seemed bent on
being more agreeable in the light of some fresh hopes he had absorbed
from the telephone-wires. “See here, I've got a rock-bottom proposal
to make to your people. Now listen, and drop that damned paper for a
minute. By Jove! if I had to send a man from your State to attend to
legal business I'd pick one not full of mental morphine.”
“Oh, you wouldn't?” Miller laid down the paper and assumed a posture
indicative of attention roused from deep sleep. “Fire away. I'm
listening.”
“I already had authority to act for the company, but I thought it best
to telephone some of the directors.” Wilson sat down in his chair and
leaned towards the lawyer. “Here's what we will do. The whole truth is,
we are willing to plank down the required one hundred thousand for
that property, provided we can lay our road there without incurring the
expense of purchasing the right of way. Now if the citizens along the
proposed line want their country developed bad enough to donate the
right of way through their lands, we can trade.”
There was a pause. Then Miller broke it by striking a match on the sole
of his boot. He looked crosseyed at the flame as he applied it to
his cigar. “Don't you think your people could stand whatever value is
appraised by law in case of refusals along the line?”
“No,” said Wilson. “The price for the land is too steep for that. Your
clients have our ultimatum. What do you say? We can advertise a meeting
of citizens at Springtown, which is about the centre of the territory
involved, and if all agree to give the right of way it will be a trade.
We can have the meeting set for to-day two weeks. How does that strike
you?”
“I'd have to wire my clients.”
“When can you get an answer?”
Miller looked at his watch. “By five o' clock this afternoon. The
message would have to go into the country.”
“Then send it off at once.”
A few minutes after five o' clock Miller sauntered into the office.
Wilson sat at his desk and looked up eagerly.
“Well?” he asked, almost under his breath.
The lawyer leaned on the top of the desk. “They are willing to grant you
the two weeks' time, provided you sign an agreement for your firm that
you will purchase their property at the price named at the expiration of
that time.”
“With the provision,” interpolated Wilson, “that a right of way is
donated.”
“Yes, with that provision,” Miller nodded.
“Then sit down here and write out your paper.”
Miller complied as nonchalantly as if he were drawing up a bill of sale
for a worn-out horse.
“There you are,” he said, pushing the paper to Wilson when he had
finished.
Wilson read it critically. “It certainly is binding,” he said. “You
people may sleep during business hours, but you have your eyes open when
you draw up papers. However, I don't care; I want the Bishops to feel
secure. They must get to work to secure the right of way. It will be no
easy job, I 'll let you know. I've struck shrewd, obstinate people in my
life, but those up there beat the world. Noah couldn't have driven them
in the ark, even after the Flood set in.”
“You know something about them, then?” said Miller, laughing to himself
over the implied confession.
Wilson flushed, and then admitted that he had been up that way several
times looking the situation over.
“How about the charter?” asked Miller, indifferently.
“That's fixed. I have already seen to that.”
“Then it all depends on the right of way,” remarked the lawyer as he
drew a check from his pocket and handed it to Wilson. “Now get me that
note,” he said.
Wilson brought it from the safe.
“Turning this over cuts my option down to two weeks,” he said. “But
we 'll know at the meeting what can be done.”
“Yes, we 'll know then what they can do with _you_,” said Miller,
significantly, as he put the cancelled note in his pocket and rose to
go.