man who looked like big money, dining at a table alone. The big-money
look was not obtrusive; but it was sufficiently apparent in the city
cut of the Sunday broadcloth, in the spotless linen, and not less in
the attitude of the obsequious waiter who hovered around the great
man’s chair.
“I took the trouble to look up Mr. Dimmock in the Oklahoma period,”
Sprague went on. “I found that he was pretty well known in New York
as the right hand of a certain great money lord whose name we needn’t
mention here. That being the case, it is hardly necessary to add that
his presence in Brewster at this particular crisis is a bit ominous.”
“Have you told Kendall this about Dimmock?” asked the superintendent.
“No; but he’ll be pretty sure to trace the gentleman for himself. Where
a question of pure news is involved, Kendall is apt to be found running
well ahead of the field.”
“But that doesn’t help us out any,” Maxwell objected.
“No. We seem to be forced to await developments; and that, Richard, is
always a mark of the losing side. I wish to goodness Stillings would
turn up.”
“It’s odd about Bob. He doesn’t often drop out without leaving a trail
behind him. Have you finished? Then let’s go over to the office and see
if there is any further word from Benson or Leckhard.”
It was when they were leaving the dining-room together that they came
upon Tarbell, the ex-terror of Montana cattle thieves. The young man
was way-worn and dusty, and his eyes were red for want of sleep.
Sprague’s question was shot-like.
“You’ve found him, Archer?”
“Yep; as good as,” was the short rejoinder.
“Turn it loose,” commanded Sprague.
“He’s at the bottom of an old prospect hole up on Mount Baldwin; him
and Mr. Maxwell’s brother-in-law, Billy Starbuck. I had to come back to
town to get a rope to pull ’em out.”
“What?” said Maxwell. “How did they get there?”
The young special deputy shook his head.
“I don’t know the whys an’ wherefores any more ’n a goat,” he said
simply. “I got onto it through the barkeep’ at the road-house out on
the Topaz pike. He said a bunch o’ fellas came along in an auto late
last night and stopped for drinks. They come in two at a time, and two
of ’em didn’t come in at all. Just as they was startin’ off, there was
a scrap o’ some sort in the auto, and the barkeep’, who was lookin’ out
o’ the window, swore to me he got a glimpse o’ Mr. Stillings. I found
the auto tracks and followed ’em. They left the road this side o’ the
lake, crossed the Gloria on the bridge, and shoved that machine up an
old wood trail on Baldwin.”
“Well, go on,” said Maxwell, impatiently.
“I found where they’d stopped and took Mr. Stillings and Billy out o’
the car; and it sure looked as if there’d been another scrap, the way
the bushes was tore up. About a quarter back from the trail I found the
hole. Starbuck hollered up at me when I peeked in. I couldn’t see ’em
none, but Billy he said they was both there, and wasn’t hurt none to
speak of--only in their feelin’s. He told me to chase back and get a
rope.”
Maxwell looked at his watch. “How deep is this hole, Archer?”
“’Bout a hundred foot, or maybe more.”
“We’ll get a car and go after them,” was the superintendent’s instant
decision. “You say this was last night; have they had anything to eat?”
“Yep; Billy said a basket o’ grub had been lowered down to ’em a little
spell after they was chucked in.”
“All right. Go over to the shops and get a coil of rope out of the
wrecking-car, and I’ll get an auto. Want to go along, Calvin?”
“Sure,” was the prompt reply.
Maxwell, being a reasonably wealthy mine owner, as well as the
superintendent of the railroad, kept two cars; a runabout and a big
touring-machine which, in the absence of his family, were both housed
in a down-town garage. In the big car the twenty-mile drive over the
Topaz Lake pike was quickly made.
Just before they came to the bridge over the Gloria, they passed an
auto with two men in it going toward town. Oddly enough, as it seemed,
the in-bound car gave them a wide berth, steering almost into the ditch
at the passing, and speeding up to a racing clip as soon as the ditched
machine had been yanked back into the roadway. Tarbell, who was
driving the Maxwell car, stopped, jumped out, and examined the tracks
of the other car by the help of a lighted match.
“That’s them,” he said laconically, when he resumed the steering-wheel.
“That was the same car. It’s got a set o’ them new-fangled tires with
creepers on ’em.”
“Hurry!” snapped Maxwell. “We don’t know what they’ve been doing to
Stillings and Billy, this time.”
Happily they soon found that the evening visit of the two unknown
men to the abandoned prospect shaft had been charitable rather than
malevolent. Stillings, who was the first of the two captives to be
hauled out of the dark pit on the mountain side, told them that another
basket of food had just been lowered by a string into the shaft. And
when Starbuck came up he brought the basket with him.
Singularly enough, the two rescued ones had no explanation to offer;
or, at least, none that served to explain anything. It transpired that
they had dined together in the town house of the club the evening
before, and had afterward gone to the theatre together. After the play
they had taken a taxi to go to Stillings’s house in the suburbs to
sleep. An auto had followed them, and when they had dismissed the taxi
they had been set upon by a number of masked men who tumbled out of the
pursuing car. Since they had no weapons, they were quickly overpowered,
thrown into the car, carried off to the mountains, and dumped into the
prospect hole, the rope by which they had been lowered being thrown in
after them. That was all.
“And you don’t know what it was for?” asked Sprague, when they were
rolling evenly back to the city with Starbuck at the steering-wheel.
“No more than you do,” was the lawyer’s answer. “Billy and I
have speculated over it all day--having no other way of amusing
ourselves--and it’s a perfectly blind trail. Billy says he knows I must
have been the one they were after, and I say he must have been the one.
You can take your choice.”
At the club town house the two rescued ones were set down, and
Tarbell was released to go and get his well-earned rest after the
twenty-four-hour task of shadow work.
“Get yourself in shape to go on an advisory committee with us as soon
as you can, Robert,” was Sprague’s injunction to the attorney; and then
Maxwell drove down to the railroad building, and the expert was with
him when he went up to the despatcher’s office.
There was no more news from the Copah seat of war, two hundred miles
to the eastward, or, at most, nothing different. The huge alien
track-laying force was still guarding the crossing through the
Southwestern main line and the new junction with the Nevada Short Line
in the western yards. Leckhard reported that Benson was sleeping off
his fatigues of the previous night, and said that all was quiet on the
late battle-ground.
“And still no word from Ford!” said Maxwell, as he and Sprague, having
put the car up at the garage, walked back to the hotel. “By and large,
Calvin, that is the most mysterious thing in the bunch. I can’t
understand it.”
“Unless I am much mistaken, we shall all understand many things
to-morrow that we can’t appreciate to-night,” was Sprague’s prediction;
and long after Maxwell had gone back to his office to put in a make-up
period at his desk, the big-bodied man from Washington sat out on the
loggia porch of the hotel smoking in thoughtful solitude and staring
absently at the unwinking eyes of the mast-head electrics in the
railroad yard diagonally opposite.
The Monday morning dawned bright and fair, as a vast majority of the
mornings do in the favored inter-mountain paradise known as Timanyoni
Park. Notwithstanding his long Sunday sleep, Maxwell came down late to
his breakfast, and the café waiter told him that Sprague had eaten at
his usually early hour and was gone.
While he was waiting to be served, the superintendent glanced through
the morning _Tribune_. There was a rather exciting first-page
news story of the track-laying fight at Copah. The story was evidently
an Associated Press despatch, and was carefully non-committal in its
reference to the Transcontinental’s purpose in rushing the new trackage
through to a connection with the Nevada Short Line yards. None the
less, the impression was given that the Southwestern’s opposition to
the move had been only perfunctory and for public effect. Also, the
impression was conveyed that the Copah public, at least, believed that
there was a secret understanding between the two railroad corporations.
Turning to the inside pages, Maxwell found no editorial comment on the
news story, and he was still wondering why Editor Kendall had missed
his chance when Stillings came in and took the chair at the end of the
table.
“They told me I’d find you here,” said the lawyer, “and I wanted to
have a word with you before the wheels begin to go round. This is our
day in court on the Hixon damage suit, and we’ll have to fish or cut
bait this time. In all probability, we sha’n’t be able to get another
postponement, and if we let the case come to trial, it’s all off. The
jury will give Hixon his verdict, if only for the reason that he is
one man fighting a corporation. The only question is, shall I try to
compromise before it is too late?”
“Is there any chance for a compromise?” asked Maxwell.
“I don’t know positively. Bletchford was willing a few weeks ago, but
his figure was so high that I refused to talk to him.”
“It’s a hold-up!” snapped the superintendent shortly. “I haven’t
changed my mind.”
“All right,” said the attorney, rising to go. “I thought I’d give you
one last chance at it. The case is called for ten o’clock in Judge
Watson’s court. If you’re foot-loose, you might come up and see us lose
ten thousand dollars. I guess that is what it will come to.” And then,
as he was turning to go: “By the way, that was a mighty cold-blooded
thing the T-C. people did yesterday, wasn’t it? What does it mean?”
“If Sprague hasn’t told you, I’m sure I can’t.”
“I haven’t seen Sprague. He left a note at the office this morning,
saying he’d be around later; but he hasn’t shown up yet. Will you come
over to the court-house and see the jury sand-bag us?”
Quite naturally, the hard-working superintendent had no notion of
wasting his forenoon in a court-room, and he said so tersely. And
beyond Stillings’s departure and the finishing of the late breakfast,
he went across to his office and plunged into the day’s tasks.
There was an unusual quantity of the work that morning, it seemed,
and no sooner was he through with one file of referred papers than
Calmaine, the chief clerk, was ready with another. Only once during
the forenoon was the steady office grind lightened by an interruption
from the outside world. At ten o’clock Benson wired from Copah, saying
that the T-C. track-layers were at work again, carefully surfacing and
ballasting the new track as if it were to be a permanency. Also, the
chief engineer asked if any legal steps had been taken looking to the
prevention of further trespass.
Maxwell broke the routine pace long enough to dictate to Calmaine the
reply to Benson’s asking. It stated the facts briefly. No legal steps
had as yet been taken. A full report of the intrusion had gone to the
Pacific Southwestern head-quarters in New York, and no action would be
taken until New York had spoken.
It was a little before noon when Calmaine carried away the final files
of claim correspondence with the superintendent’s notations on them,
and Maxwell sat back in his chair and relighted his cigar, which had
gone out many times during the stressful morning. In the act the door
of the private office suddenly opened and the heavy-set, neatly groomed
gentleman whom Sprague had pointed out at the hotel dinner-table the
previous evening walked in and took the chair at the desk end, removing
his hat and wiping his brow with a handkerchief filmy enough to have
figured as the _mouchoir_ of a fine lady.
“Mr. Maxwell, I believe?” he said, dropping a card bearing the single
line, “C. P. Dimmock,” on the desk.
“That is my name,” returned Maxwell, bristling with a wholly
unaccountable prickling of antagonism.
“I have come, as an officer of Judge Watson’s court, to take over your
railroad,” announced the cold-featured man calmly, and as he said it,
the telephone buzzer under Maxwell’s desk went off as though a general
fire-alarm had been sounded from the central office.
Maxwell reached for the telephone and put the receiver to his ear.
It was Stillings who was at the other end of the wire, and he was
frantically incoherent. But out of the attorney’s coruscating
babblement the superintendent picked enough to enable him to surround
the principal fact. In the face of all precedent, in defiance of all
its legal rights, the Nevada Short Line had been practically declared
bankrupt and a receiver had been appointed.
Notwithstanding his nerve, which was ordinarily very good, the snappy
little superintendent’s hand trembled when he replaced the ear-piece on
its hook and turned to his visitor.
“So you’ve got us at last, have you, Mr. Dimmock?” he said,
constraining himself to speak calmly. “It was on the Hixon case, our
attorney tells me.”
The visitor nodded blandly.
“You should have compromised that case, Mr. Maxwell--if you will allow
me the privilege of criticising, after the fact. But we needn’t come to
blows over the purely academic question. Judge Watson has appointed me
receiver--temporary, of course--for the railroad property. I am here to
take charge in the interest of all concerned, and I am assuming that
you won’t put yourself in contempt of court by any ill-considered
resistance. Here is the court order.” And he tossed a folded paper
across to the desk.
For the moment Maxwell was speechless. Then he slowly straightened up
and took a few packets of papers out of the desk pigeon-holes marked
“R. Maxwell, Private,” putting them into his pocket. That done, he
removed the desk and door keys from his pocket ring and laid them upon
the desk.
“I think that is about as far as I have to go, personally,” he said,
rising and reaching for his hat. “And, of course, I have nothing to ask
for myself. But for the staff and the rank and file, Mr. Dimmock--I
hope you’re not going to make a clean sweep. We have a mighty good
working organization, and it will cause a great deal of hardship if
you take the usual course of discharging and replacing all heads of
departments.”
The new head of all departments smiled, and in the smile much of the
cold hardness of his face disappeared.
“That is a matter with which I shall have very little to do, Mr.
Maxwell,” he returned. “Mr. Carmody, lately in charge of the
Transcontinental’s Pacific Division, will be my operating chief, and I
am sure that you yourself, as a practical railroad man, would counsel
me to give him a free hand.”
Maxwell took the additional bitter dose of the medicine of defeat like
a man, but he made one more attempt--an attempt to save Calmaine’s head.
“My chief clerk,--the young man who admitted you here,--I hope you can
provide for him, Mr. Dimmock. Apart from any personal relations, I have
found him the most faithful, the most painstaking----”
The new receiver lifted a faultlessly manicured hand in genial protest.
“You know I couldn’t do that, Mr. Maxwell,” he objected. “Your young
man has probably been much too close to you to make it possible or
prudent. You are a rich man yourself, and you can very easily provide
for your secretary, as I make no doubt you will. Must you go? Don’t be
in a hurry. We needn’t make this a personal fight, I’m sure.”
The ex-superintendent looked at his watch and told a lie for the sake
of keeping the peace.
“It is my luncheon hour,” he said. “If there are any routine matters
upon which you may wish to consult me, you will find me over at the
hotel.” And he went out with his hat pulled over his eyes and his
blood boiling. To have stayed another minute would have been to risk an
explosion.
It was a small but exceedingly fervent indignation meeting which
gathered in Attorney Stillings’s office in the Kinzie Building a little
after twelve o’clock on this day of cataclysms. When Maxwell entered,
Stillings was trying to explain to Starbuck and Sprague and Editor
Kendall--who had been hauled out of bed to lend his presence to the
conference--just how it had come about.
As it appeared in the wrathful summing up, it had happened very easily;
so easily as to present every indication of careful prearrangement.
When the Hixon case had been called in court, Stillings had risen and
asked for a further postponement, having, as it chanced, a very good
excuse in the fact that the witness by whom he expected to prove that
Hixon’s claim of a lost mining sale was a pure invention was absent.
Instantly the Kentucky colonel counsel for the plaintiff had jumped
up, not to protest against the further delay, but to introduce his
colleague in the cause--the stranger whose name on the Hophra House
register was Mr. Peter Hunniwell.
Before Stillings could get his breath, Hunniwell was on his feet,
making an impassioned plea for justice. Rapidly rehearsing the course
of the defendant railroad company, which he charged with maliciously
striving to defeat the ends of justice, he summed up with a still more
serious charge, namely, that the railroad was not only unwilling to
pay the just claims upon it, but was unable to do so; was, in effect,
practically bankrupt, as the thick packet of affidavits, which he here
passed up to the judge, would sufficiently prove.
“After that,” Stillings went on, “it was _biff! bang!_ and
the fight was over. Judge Watson merely glanced through the
affidavits--which may or may not be purely faked--while Hunniwell, in
a voice like a steam calliope, was demanding that the court appoint a
receiver. It was so ridiculous, so absolutely beyond all precedent,
that it didn’t seem worth while to try to call him down. When Hunniwell
finally quit, the judge was looking over his spectacles at us in that
mild, half-vacant way of his, and saying, ‘I think your point is very
well taken. It is time that something was done to bring these defendant
corporations to a sense of their responsibilities to the plain
people. I shall appoint, as temporary receiver, Mr. C. F. Dimmock,
the appointment to take effect this day at noon.’ At noon, mind you!”
choked Stillings. “And it was at that moment half-past eleven!”
“Of course, you tried to break in,” said Maxwell.
“Sure! But I might as well have gone out on the court-house steps and
shouted at the scenery! Watson told me, in the same half-absent way,
that the receivership was only temporary, and that we should have ample
opportunity to show cause, if we could, why the receiver should be
discharged at the regular hearing, which he there and then set for the
twelfth of the month, naming his chambers as the place. Before I could
wedge in another word, court was adjourned and Watson was leaving the
bench.”
Sprague was nodding slowly.
“Now we know the meaning of the Sunday track-laying, and the sudden
influx of strangers--most of whom will doubtless turn out to be T-C.
officials and employees--and the mysterious kidnapping of the Short
Line’s attorney night before last,” he said. And then to Maxwell: “I
suppose the thing is definitely done, and you have been properly kicked
out of your office, Dick?”
Maxwell briefed the short interview with Dimmock for the benefit of the
others.
“Dimmock and Carmody are in charge,” he concluded, “and before night
they will have tried and executed everybody in the service whose head
sticks up far enough to give them an excuse for cutting it off. They
are going to make a clean sweep. Dimmock practically admitted it. By
this time to-morrow the Nevada Short Line will be part and parcel of
the Transcontinental System, with only T-C. men in charge.”
“Holy Smoke!” said Kendall, and the ejaculation from him meant more
than the most frenzied outburst of the average man: and then again he
said, “_Holy Smoke!_”
It was Starbuck, himself a small stockholder in the confiscated
railroad, who first got his feet upon the solid earth again.
“I reckon we-all are just going to sit around and bite our thumbs and
let these hold-ups put it all over us,” he said, in his slow drawl;
adding, after the proper pause: “I don’t think!”
Maxwell sprang out of his chair.
“I must go to the commercial office and wire Ford!” he broke out.
“He’ll know what to do, if there is anything that can be done.
Stillings, you get in touch with our general counsel in Chicago. We’re
an interstate road, and this thing can’t be settled in a Timanyoni
county court!”
“Hold on,” said Stillings. “That is where we’re lame. We allowed
ourselves to be sued in this cause, as we have in a good many others,
under the old corporate name--The Red Butte Western. That, as you
know, was a purely intrastate corporation. Our newer lines are only
‘extensions.’”
“Then we can’t carry it up to the Federal courts?” gasped Maxwell.
“We can try it, and, of course, we shall try it. But the presumptive
facts are against us. What I am hoping is that our Pacific Southwestern
backers will be able to help us make a killing and dump these pirates
at the regular hearing.”
“Then you needn’t hope any more,” said Sprague quietly. “Apart from
the fact that they’ve put the high kibosh on you to-day, the element
of time comes in to cut the largest figure. For the stock-smashing
purpose in this particular instance, a short receivership will prove
as efficacious as a long one. You’ve had one experience with the
steam-roller to-day, and you’ll have as many more of them as may
seem necessary. It wouldn’t make any difference if you should import
a train-load of eastern lawyers; the thing’s done, and it is going
to stay done until it has accomplished the end in view--which is to
transfer the stock control of the Short Line to the T-C. Your only
chance is to strike back, and strike quickly--before the mischief is
done in New York.”
“But how?” pleaded Stillings. “Tell us how!”
“By proving clearly, what I presume we all accept as the undoubted
fact, that Judge Watson has been bribed.”
True to his calling, Stillings was the first to object to so sweeping a
charge.
“Oh, hold on!” he exclaimed. “I wouldn’t go so far as that. That is a
pretty serious charge, Sprague.”
“I know it is. But when I say bribery, it doesn’t necessarily mean the
grosser form of buying with cash money. Let us say that Judge Watson
has been ‘influenced.’ If you can’t make that charge and sustain it,
you may as well call the incident closed.”
Maxwell was leaning against the door-jamb. His eyes were fiery and his
breath was coming quickly.
“If you say there has been crooked work, Calvin, that settles it; I
believe it. Now tell us what to do, and we’ll do it.”
Kendall’s lean, leathery jaw was set hard, and he was furtively
watching the big expert. That a fierce struggle of some kind was going
on behind the mask of the ruddy, half-boyish face, he made no doubt.
And Sprague’s answer quickly confirmed the editor’s conclusion.
“You don’t know what you’re asking, Dick,” said the big man slowly.
“I do!” said Maxwell hotly. “I’m asking you to help us send a bunch
of criminals--just low-down, ordinary thieving criminals--to jail!
Sprague, if you can do it, and _won’t_ do it----”
There was a strained silence in the shabby little law office that
seemed as if it would never be broken. Kendall turned his face away,
and Starbuck slid noiselessly out of his chair and went to stand at the
window with his back to the others. At length the reply to Maxwell’s
demand came, wrung out, as it seemed, from the very heart of reluctance.
“It can be done. Every chain that was ever forged has its weak link.
For reasons which are purely personal to me, I’d rather be shot than
go into this thing with you. I’d refuse, if I could in common decency;
and, in any event, I may fall down on you when it comes to the pinch.
But I’ll go as far as I can. Will that do?”
“Say it!” snapped the ex-superintendent eagerly.