JUDGE BLACK
There are two kinds of business men: those who make their business at
once work and play, a means of acquiring wealth and a most exciting
game whose charms make all other games seem flat and unprofitable; and
another class who, though they may enjoy work, turn for recreation to
whist or philanthropy or golf. Porter belonged to the latter class. He
went into the fight against Jim Weeks simply because he hoped it would
make him richer, and it did not occur to him that he could enjoy the
action. On Wednesday morning he sat in his office wondering if he could
not get away to the Truesdale golf links for a match that afternoon.
He looked over the ground carefully, and could see no way by which Weeks
could save himself from defeat, for the control of Tillman City gave C.
& S.C. a majority of the stock. Weeks's allies were deserting him,
so that he now had a bare majority in the Board of Directors. Anyway,
McNally would be on the ground in case Jim should try to do anything.
“Well,” thought Porter, “I'll go. I guess it's safe enough.” He had
closed his desk when the door opened and an office boy came in with a
telegram. Porter tore it open listlessly, but his indolence vanished as
he read the first line. The message was from Manchester, and it read as
follows:--
M. & T. subscription book stubs show issue of nine thousand shares
new stock to Weeks, Myers, and Spencer, ten per cent paid, dated
yesterday.
POWERS.
When a man finds himself in an ambush, or when an utterly unexpected
attack is made upon him, he shows what he is. It was characteristic of
Porter that after the moment of dazed unrealization had passed he began
almost mechanically to plan a break for cover; he wished that he had
not gone into the fight, and berated his stupidity in not foreseeing the
move; it had not occurred to him that the subscription for the stock had
not closed long ago. After a few minutes of vain search for an avenue
of retreat, he saw that it was too late to do anything but fight it out;
Jim Weeks was not likely to let an antagonist off easily.
He called to his secretary: “Telephone Shields to come over here, will
you, as soon as he can? And ask McNally to come too.” While he was
waiting for them he sat quite still in his big chair and thought hard,
but he could see no way of countering the blow.
The two men he had sent for came into the office together. Porter
did not rise. With a nod of greeting he handed the yellow envelope to
McNally, who whistled softly as he caught its import, and passed it on
to Shields, an attorney for the C. & S.C., an emotionless, noncommittal
man.
“Hm--it looks as though that beat you,” he said slowly.
Porter lost his nerve and his temper too for a moment. He rose quickly
and took a step toward the lawyer.
“Hell, man!” he exclaimed angrily. “We can't be beat. We've got to get
out of this some way. That's what you're here for.” Then he recovered
himself. “I beg your pardon, Shields. Sit down, and we'll talk this
business over.”
For nearly an hour the three men sat in earnest consultation; then the
secretary was called in.
“Find out if Judge Black is in Truesdale,” said Porter. “If he is, I
want to talk to him.” Then he turned to Shields.
“That's our move,” he said. “We can allege fraud on the ground that
the stock was issued secretly and with the purpose of influencing the
election. Black's the man for that business.”
“It isn't much of a case, mind you,” said Shields. “I'm afraid that
Weeks's action is not illegal, and that a court would sustain it, but
it's possible to raise a question that it will take time to decide.”
“That's all we need,” said Porter, with a sigh of relief. “If we raise
the question, Black will do the rest.”
It was several minutes before the secretary came back from the
telephone.
“Well, did you get him?” asked Porter.
“No,” said the secretary; “he isn't in Truesdale.”
“Where is he?”
“I couldn't find out. His stenographer wouldn't tell me.”
“Wouldn't tell you, eh?” said Porter. “Just get Truesdale again; I'll
talk with that young man myself.”
When he began talking his voice was mild and persuasive, and Shields and
McNally listened expectantly. As the minutes went by and he did not get
the information he wanted, it became evident that the cocksure young
man at the other end of the line was rasping through what was left of
Porter's patience as an emery wheel does through soft iron. As might be
expected, the process was accompanied with a shower of sparks. Porter's
voice rose and swelled in volume until at last he shouted, “You don't
care who I am? Why, you damned little fool--” and then he stopped, for a
sharp click told him that he was cut off, even from the central office,
and he was not angry enough to go on swearing at an unresponsive
telephone.
For a moment he stood biting his lip in a nervous effort to control
himself, then he joined feebly in the laughter the other two men had
raised against him. A moment later he pulled out his watch, and turning
to McNally said:--
“Keep your eye on Weeks, will you? I'm going to Truesdale on the
eleven-thirty to find Black. Good-by.”
Katherine was not surprised when twenty minutes later her father
appeared and told her his plans. That was the train she had expected
they would take.
“I'm going along too,” she said. “You're going to play golf this
afternoon, aren't you?”
“No,” replied her father, shortly, “I'm not going to play golf. I'm
going to play something else.”
The five-hour ride to Truesdale was for the most part a silent one.
Katherine knew that her father was worried about something, and when he
was worried he never liked to talk, so she asked no questions and made
no attempt to draw him away from what troubled him. Only when they
reached Truesdale and her father was about to help her into the cart
that stood waiting she stopped long enough to kiss him and say:--
“Don't bother too much about it, dad. And don't plan any business for
this evening; I want you to take me out on the river.” As she turned
the cart around and started up the broad smooth street toward home she
frowned, and thought, “I wish he would tell me more about things. I
believe I could help.”
Porter went straight to Judge Black's to continue his conversation with
the stenographer, but it needed no more than a glance to convince him of
the futility of trying to get any information from that source.
The new stenographer was a boyish-looking person who tried to convince
one that he was much older than his appearance would indicate. He
had big feet and a high voice; he used only the bottom notes for
conversational purposes save when in unwary moments Nature would assert
herself in a hoarse falsetto. He patronized Mr. Porter. He said that the
Judge had left town the week before, and that he would probably be back
in about ten days. He would send him no messages whatever, from anybody:
those were Judge Black's orders.
The young man seemed willing to go on talking at great length, and he
doubtless would have done so had not Porter suddenly left the room. The
Vice-President had thought of a possible clew. He walked rapidly to the
railroad ticket office and spoke to the agent.
“Did Judge Black leave town a few days ago?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” answered the agent. “I don't remember just what day, but he
went up on twenty-two.”
“Oh, he went east then. Do you remember where?”
“His ticket read to Chicago.”
Porter walked away thoroughly disappointed. The chance had looked like
a good one and there seemed to be no other. But he must in some way find
the Judge; he could not wait for him. The first thing he did was to call
up McNally by telephone and repeat to him what the agent had said. He
told McNally to find out at what hotel the Judge had stayed, if at any,
and to look for anything which might prove a clew to his whereabouts.
“It's a wild-goose chase, I know,” he concluded; “but then you may
manage to turn up something.” He knew that McNally would do everything
that could be done in Chicago toward finding the missing Judge, so he
went to work along other lines.
Judge Black was a member of two fishing clubs, one at Les Chenaux
Islands, near Mackinac, and the other about forty miles north of
Minneapolis, so Porter sent long and urgent telegrams to both these
places. Then he began making long shots, working through a list of more
or less likely places, which his knowledge of Black's tastes and habits
enabled him to get together. Just before dinner a message came from
McNally:--
Black at Sherman House Friday. Clerk says he took three-thirty train
on Northwestern for Lake Geneva. Can run him down in morning.
Thursday morning the two little telegraph boys at Lake Geneva and the
one at William's Bay had a busy time of it, for Porter and McNally
between them kept the wires hot; but neither hide nor hair of Judge
Alonzo Black could they discover. From ten o'clock on through an
interminable day the messages kept coming back, 'not delivered.' At
half-past four Porter telephoned his lieutenant to go to the lake and
continue the search in person.
At seven Katherine and her father sat down to dinner. She had known all
day that something was going wrong with her father's affairs, and she
could read in his silent preoccupied manner that he had not yet been
able to see a way out of the difficulty. She knew that she could not
make him forget his troubles. Many vain attempts had taught her that,
so she waited. The long dinner wore on Porter's nerves; once he rose
suddenly and walked toward his library, but stopped short when he
reached the door and came back to the table. Then he drummed on the arm
of his chair.
“Two days more of this,” he said, with a nervous laugh, “and that man
Black will have my life to answer for.”
“Judge Black?” asked Katherine. “What has he done?”
“Done? He's disappeared off the face of the earth just at this
particular moment when I've got to have him here.”
“Why,” cried Katherine, “I know where he is. He's at the Grand View
Hotel--” she paused and leaned forward, her elbows on the table and her
hands clasped before her. “It's some place up in Wisconsin that sounds
like alpaca. Waupaca--that's it. Grand View Hotel, Waupaca, Wisconsin.”
“Are you sure that's right?” he asked. “How do you know?”
“Mr. West told me,” she answered. “There was such a good joke on him in
the paper. I meant to tell you about it.”
But Porter was smiling over something else. After a moment he said:--
“We'd have been swamped long ago in this M. & T. business if it hadn't
been for the kind services of that wise and valuable young man, West. I
think I'll pay him a regular salary after this to keep him on the other
side in all the fights I get into. Lord, what a fool he is!”
He left the room so abruptly that he did not see how Katherine's cheeks
reddened, nor how her lips pressed together in vexation. If he had he
would not have known the reason for it any more than Katherine did.
Rainbow Lake is pretty in the daytime, but it is beautiful under the
moonlight when you can stretch out distances and imagine that the lights
at Bagley's Landing are those of a city twenty miles away, and when the
solid pine groves on Maple and Government islands loom up big and black.
The Judge was enjoying his vacation the better for its lateness. He had
bolted his supper early enough to secure his favorite chair in the best
part of the piazza: a mandolin orchestra was playing a waltz from “The
Serenade,” and playing it well, the Judge thought. He threw away
the match with which he had lighted his third cigar--to keep off the
mosquitoes, he blandly told his conscience--and leaned back in the
Morris chair, thinking how congruously comfortable it all was, now that
he had his own clothes and the 'bus man could work without soiling his
other suit.
A clerk came out of the office, peered about in the half light for a
moment, and approached the Judge, touching him on the shoulder.
“Judge Black,” he said, “Truesdale wants to talk to you on the 'phone.”
Five minutes later the legal luminary came out of the telephone box.
He was swearing earnestly, but softly, out of deference to the
candy-and-cigar girl. He walked slowly across the office.
“There's a train for Chicago at 8.30, isn't there?” he asked.
“Yes,” said the clerk. “Do you want to take it?”
There was another pianissimo interlude, at the end of which the clerk
was given to understand that he should order the 'bus for that train.
Then the Judge went back for his chair, but it was occupied by a little
girl who was just too old to be asked to sit somewhere else.
As Jim Weeks had said, Thompson wouldn't fight, and Porter realized this
quite as well as Jim. The recalcitrant Vice-President played no part
in Porter's calculations except as a somewhat blundering and obstinate
tool. But on Friday morning Thompson's office boy announced Mr. Porter.
Porter stated his case clearly. It was his plan to remove Weeks and
Myers by judicial order from the Board of Directors. That would leave
the opposition a majority of the board. Then Thompson was to call a
meeting and assume control of the books. That done, the battle would be
decided, and the election a mere formality. Thompson was badly rattled,
for he hadn't a grain of sand in his composition, but in the end he
conquered his fears and agreed to play the part Porter assigned to him.
At half-past two a disjointed-looking train panted into the Harrison
Street Station, and Judge Black climbed disconsolately out of the
smoker. There was a coating of cinders on the top of his derby hat;
there were drifts of cinders in the curl of the brim; there were streaks
of cinders along the lines where his coat wrinkled; and there was one
cinder in his left eye which gave him so leery and bibulous an aspect
that an old lady who narrowly escaped colliding with him turned and
looked after him in indignation, being half minded to go back and plead
with him to lead a better life.
It was fifteen minutes later when the Judge reached Porter's office, but
before three o'clock he had signed an order enjoining James Weeks and
Johnson Myers from acting as directors of, or from interfering in any
way with, the affairs of the corporation known as the Manchester &
Truesdale Railroad Company, and from voting the nine thousand shares of
stock in that company which had been issued September 25th.