we--the judge and I--swore everybody to secrecy on that Monday night
of smashing catastrophes, and the secret has been kept from the world
at large, and from Consolidated Coal in particular. The wrecked
drilling plant has been left just as it was; your laboring force has
been discharged; and the impression has been given that if you ever
recovered your wits, you’d go straight away back to Philadelphia, a
sadder and much wiser young man.”
“Fine!” approved the listener. “But that isn’t all?”
“Not by a jugful. Two days after you were hurt, Wilmerding resigned
from the C. C. & I. service and disappeared. He has been North buying
machinery and material and shipping it in as far as Hesterville by
littles. The explanation given and accepted is that a new company has
been formed to develop some coal lands in the Hesterville vicinity, and
the C. C. & I. people are running around in circles and uttering loud
cries in their effort to find out where the lands are and who is going
to develop them.”
“Good!--ripping good!” the sick man applauded.
“We have been only waiting for you to get upon your feet, and we
didn’t wish to give Thaxter and his backers any chance to tangle things
for you in the meantime. The moment you are able to take hold you will
find everything in train--material and machinery where you can rush it
in with motor-trucks, labor all engaged, coke-burners from Pennsylvania
ready to take the first train south, and all that.”
Tregarvon doubled the pillows under his head and his eyes were
flashing. “Poictiers, you’re a miracle!” he declared.
The professional idler smiled his denial. “I didn’t do any of it. I
merely stood aside and told the others to go ahead and we’d pay the
bills. Wilmerding was fully competent to take charge of the business
part of it, and I have retained old Captain Duncan for the engineering.
All you have to do now is to rise up and say the word, and you’ll have
a mine that will make the Whitlow proposition compare accurately with a
last year’s almanac.”
Tregarvon closed his eyes again and kept them closed so long as to give
the impression that he had fallen asleep. But when Carfax was about to
tiptoe away the heavy-lidded eyes opened.
“I’ll build upon the foundation you have laid, Poictiers; you and
Wilmerding and Duncan. There are three things that I mean to do before
I quit and go West to look for another job: to stand the Ocoee upon
its feet as a paying proposition, to make provision for my mother
and sister with a part of the property and to divide the remainder
equitably among those who were frozen out in the Parker robbery, and
after this is done to turn heaven and earth over until I have found and
punished the man or men who have tried so hard to smash me. When I’ve
squared up I’ll vanish.”
Carfax laid a hand as slender and shapely as a woman’s upon the hot
forehead. “I’ve let you talk too much and you are getting the ‘wheels’
again,” he said gently. “You mustn’t be vindictive; and there is no
reason on earth why you should talk of throwing things up and running
away.”
“There are good reasons for both,” was the stubborn insistence. “I owe
it to common justice, no less than to myself, to dig up the criminal or
criminals and bring them to book. If they should prove to be Thaxter
and his backers, after all, the world needs the example; and if it was
pure outlawry on the part of the McNabbs and Hartridge and some other
scoundrel that McNabb wouldn’t name there is all the more reason why
I should send for the best detectives the country affords and run the
outlaws down. And as to running away after it is all over, that says
itself, Poictiers. I couldn’t stay on here after Richardia is married
to another man. It isn’t in human nature. Now go away and let me sleep.
I want to hurry and get well, so that I can stand up and straighten
things out.”
XXX
A Grounded Wire
The small world of Coalville, centring socially under Tait’s store
porch, had its vivifying shock when it awoke one morning to find that
in a single night, as one might say, the entire face of nature had
changed for the sleepy little hamlet at the foot of old Pisgah. In
the instant of transformation the Ocoee of many disappointments had
suddenly leaped into the foreground as a coal discovery of unlimited
possibilities; an army of workmen was massing to shift the old tramway
to the new opening; motor-trucks, piled high with material, were
trundling over the valley pike from Hesterville; carpenters were
rushing up new buildings at top speed; and at the centre of all these
stirring activities, directing and driving them, was the young man whom
rumor had been bulletining as dead or dying in his room on the second
floor of the old office-building, or at best destined to pass the
remainder of his life in an asylum.
Taking one thing with another, the gossips at Tait’s found it
difficult to recognize the convalescent Tregarvon. The brief period
of his illness had seemed to mature him curiously; to make him a man
of a single idea--the idea being to turn the Ocoee into a producing
industry in the shortest possible time. Also, they missed the genial
and mollifying influence of the young New York millionaire, who, though
still nominally an inmate of the Ocoee headquarters building, spent
most of his time on the mountain, presumably as a guest of the Caswells.
As it chanced, the store-porch gossips were not the only persons who
were finding a changed Tregarvon sitting at the desk of overlordship in
the hastily remodelled Ocoee office-building. There were others, among
them Barnby, travelling freight agent for the railroad, who had come
all the way from his own headquarters to find out why the Ocoee was
hauling its new material from Hesterville in motor-trucks.
“You will find the reason in the correspondence files of your general
office,” was the curt reply of the Ocoee organizer. “I asked for a
rate from Hesterville to Coalville on the material and was told that
the shortage of cars would make it impossible for your road to handle
the freight save as it might be transported a little at a time by the
daily way-train. I don’t propose to be held up by a railroad company,
the policy of which seems to be dictated by the C. C. & I., Mr. Barnby.”
Barnby was a fleshy young man with an easy smile, and he gave the smile
its blandishing opportunity.
“You will have to ship your product out over our road when you get in
operation, won’t you?” he asked mildly.
“Not necessarily. We have all the capital we need, and if you don’t
give us an equal show with the C. C. & I. we shall build a ten-mile
industrial track, for which we have already secured a right of way, to
a connection with the South Central at Midvale. It’s up to your people.
Talk it over with them when you go back to headquarters. Glad to have
met you. Drop in again when you are going over the line. Good morning.”
Touching this intimation that the coal trust had already begun a new
series of impeding activities, speculation was rife. Some said that the
C. C. & I. would buy the new mine, lock, stock, and barrel, and close
it; others hinted that the trust would put the price of coke so low
that the new company would be bankrupted in short order; still others
suggested that Consolidated Coal would conspire with the railroad and
call Tregarvon’s bluff to build the industrial cut-off.
Wilmerding or Duncan, or both of them, brought these rumors to
Tregarvon, and were amazed to find that he refused to be either
disturbed or greatly interested. In many ways the superintendent and
the old Scotch engineer were discovering daily that they had to do with
a man who had developed suddenly into a master of himself and others.
The light-hearted young fellow who had thrown himself so joyously
into the fray at the beginning had given place to a modern captain
of industry, alert, strong-willed, a bit dictatorial, perhaps, but
entirely capable.
“Never mind what the C. C. & I. is doing, or will try to do,” he told
his oddly assorted lieutenants. “Our job is to get the mine open and
the ovens fired. Consolidated Coal will neither buy us nor break us,
nor force us to build a railroad to Midvale. I’ll take care of all
those details at the proper time.”
It was on the day when the first tram loads of Ocoee coal were coming
down the mountain to be dumped into the oven-filling hoppers that
another caller discovered the new Tregarvon. Late in the afternoon
a neat, rubber-tired buggy, drawn by a black Hambletonian, stopped
in front of the Ocoee office-building, and a round-bodied little man
descended and hitched the horse.
Somewhat to his chagrin, it may be supposed, Mr. Onias Thaxter was
allowed to cool his heels for a full quarter of an hour in the outer
office before he was admitted to the presence of the new overlord;
and the waiting was doubtless the harder to endure since he came
bearing the olive-branch of peace. Tregarvon sat back in his chair and
listened coldly while the peace branch was getting itself waved to an
accompaniment of placative speech.
“There is no such thing as personal vindictiveness in business, Mr.
Tregarvon,” was the summing-up of the Thaxter argument. “Without
admitting it as a fact, let us assume, for the moment, that the man
Sawyer was employed as a sort of scout for our people. This is a thing
that is done every day; it’s business, and good business. You might
do it yourself, if you had a competitor. We are hearing it asserted
here and there and everywhere that you are charging us with a lot of
outlawry with which we had nothing to do, and that you are going to
press the charges in the courts. Will you pardon me if I say that that
isn’t playing the game?”
“You may say anything you wish to say, if you will only make it
sufficiently brief,” was the discouraging rejoinder.
“I have already made my suggestion. It must be evident to you that a
consolidation of interests with us is by far the most sensible plan you
can adopt. You can hardly hope to do business here, as an independent
coal operator, in the heart of a region which we have developed. There
would be constant friction; in the market, with your labor, with the
transportation companies. I am not authorized to make a definite
proposal, but if you will organize your new company on a conservative
basis with a modest capitalization, I feel sure that our people would
take you in as a subsidiary, share for share at par value.”
“Are you quite through?” asked the new Tregarvon, when the emissary
paused to take breath. “If you are, you may have my answer in one
word--No.”
“I am sure you are deciding too hastily, and because you haven’t given
the plan sufficient thought. As I have pointed out, there is no such
thing as vindictiveness in business; but when you deliberately set up
that standard for yourself, you mustn’t expect the other fellow to lie
down and let you run the truck-wheels over him.”
“By which you mean that if I refuse to let you swallow me peaceably,
you will do it the other way?”
“That is your own deduction--not mine,” said the bookkeeper in the tone
of one trying to soothe a wayward child.
“Then listen to me, Mr. Thaxter. Some scoundrels--possibly you and
your people--have harried me like a lot of pirates. Nothing has been
left undone in the effort either to swindle me out of my property on
the one hand, or to force me out of it on the other. But now the shoe
is on the other foot”--he was leaning across the corner of the desk
and emphasizing the words with a clenched fist beating softly upon the
oak--“we have Sawyer where we can make him talk. We know that he can
implicate you, individually, in one of the criminalities; and perhaps
he can tell us something about the others. Mr. Thaxter, I am going to
sift these bushwhackings to the bottom, and you know best whether or
not you or the combination you represent can afford to heap more fuel
on the fire now by fighting me in the manner you have suggested. That
is all I have to say, I believe, and I shall have to ask you to excuse
me. This is my busy day.”
In the early evening of the fourth day after Thaxter’s visit,
Carfax made one of his infrequent descents of the mountain, driving
a ridiculously high-priced car, the purchasing of which had been his
latest extravagance. The coke-ovens in the long rank were aglow with
the fires of the initial charging, and the air of the valley was murky
with the smoke of the new industry. Wilmerding and Duncan were at the
mine, and Tregarvon had just finished his dinner when Carfax entered
the dining-room.
“You do turn up once in a while, don’t you?” said the solitary diner
not too hospitably. “You’re late for dinner, but doubtless Uncle
William can find you something. You will have to eat alone. I have some
work to do.”
Carfax followed the worker into the front office and, when the lights
were turned on, dropped into a chair.
“I don’t want any dinner,” he said. “Or rather I should say, I’m due to
show up at Mrs. Caswell’s at the proper dinner-hour.”
Tregarvon had a telegraph pad under his hand and he took time to write
a brief message before he said, half-absently: “We keep working-men’s
hours here.”
“Which is a delicate way of intimating that I’d better go chase myself
and quit bothering you?” put in the intruder with a gentle chuckle.
“All right; I’ll vanish presently. But first I’d like to ask if you are
still clinging to your fantastic idea of making somebody suffer for the
dynamiting?”
“I am; and I don’t see anything fantastic about it. A number of crimes
have been committed, and I have no notion of compounding a felony by
letting the perpetrators get away. Morgan McNabb is the key to the
situation, and I have never understood why you and Judge Birrell turned
him loose and gave him a chance to disappear. It has cost me a pretty
penny to trace him, but I’ve got him now. He is under arrest in Dallas,
Texas.”
“And you are going to have him brought back and given the third degree?”
“Precisely. I have just written the telegram.”
Carfax was feeling in his pockets for his cigarette-case, going about
it leisurely as one who would gain time.
“McNabb is only a poor devil of a mountaineer, too ignorant to be held
fully accountable, don’t you think?” he ventured at the match-lighting.
“That may be. But he knows the real criminal or criminals who employed
him. I’ve been an easy mark all my life, Poictiers, but that is a
thing of the past now. I’ve turned over a new leaf.”
The golden youth was blowing delicate little smoke rings at the ceiling.
“So you have, and the new leaf isn’t as pleasant reading as some of the
old ones, Vance,” he commented, speaking slowly and without a trace of
the lisp. “Some of the things you are writing down on it are rather
sordid, don’t you think? You are a bigger man in some ways, and a much
smaller one in some others.”
“‘Faithful are the wounds of a friend,’” quoted the one under criticism
with a short laugh. “Suppose you elucidate.”
“I will. Up to the time of your father’s death you were as much of
a _flâneur_ as I’ve always been. You didn’t have to ask for your
blessings; you merely reached out and took them--if they didn’t happen
to be handed you on a silver platter. During the past few months you’ve
been chucked up against life as it really is for the greater part of
mankind; a fight, a frantic scramble for a foothold. You’ve made the
fight, because you have the good old Cornish fighting blood in you; but
while you have been growing on one side you have been shrinking on the
other.”
“Go on.”
“Real magnanimity was one of the strongest and most lovable qualities
of the man you’ve put off; you’ve lost it completely. Cheerful optimism
was one of the other good points, and you’ve dropped it. Just now you
are planning first to get square with your enemies, and next to shirk
your responsibilities by effacing yourself. What have you done about
the new incorporation?”
“I have done exactly what I told you I should. The new company is
formed, and the papers for the division of the capital stock are
prepared. I am looking for Peters, the family lawyer, on every train,
and when he comes the deal will be closed.”
“You tried to tell me the other day what the property arrangement is to
be, but I didn’t get it very clearly fixed in my mind,” Carfax offered.
“It is simple. Since you say you don’t want any of the stock, you will
be reimbursed for your cash advances out of the first money earned by
the mine. The stock is to be divided, sixty per cent to my mother and
sister and forty to Judge Birrell for distribution among the original
minority stockholders who were swindled out of their holdings by
Parker.”
“Parker,” said Carfax musingly. “He will never swindle any more. Did
I tell you? I read an item in the New York _Times_. Parker was found
dead at his desk in his Broad Street office one day last week.” Then he
came back to the matter in hand. “Where do you come in, in the property
distribution?”
“I don’t come in; I go out. Wilmerding and Duncan can operate the mine,
and I shan’t be needed. I shall go West and try for an engineering job
in one of the gold camps.”
“But not before you have had your revenge upon the dynamiters?”
“No; I shall stay long enough to see that part of it through to a
finish.”
“You are proving my contention very handsomely, don’t you think?” said
the critic quietly; “that you are bigger in some ways and smaller in
others? You are telling yourself that this generous thing you are going
to do is perfectly magnanimous, and that you are merely raising the
magnanimity to the _nth_ power by conserving the ends of pure justice
in the prosecution part of it, and by obliterating yourself afterward.
But, really, at the bottom of it all there are two rather dismal
motives. You want your revenge, and you wish to show the woman in the
case that you can turn your back upon her without half trying. Isn’t
that true?”
Tregarvon’s grin bordered upon the saturnine. “It’s next to impossible
to resent anything you choose to say, Poictiers; that is your one
little gift--to be able to flay your friends without getting yourself
disliked. Let’s talk of something else. How long is Elizabeth going to
stay at Judge Birrell’s?”
This time the golden youth was able to call up the cherubic smile in
all its glory.
“Not very much longer now. She, too, is going West.”
“What? Elizabeth? You don’t know her as well as I do. Her ‘West’ begins
and ends at the summit of the Alleghenies.”
“Nevertheless, she is planning to make the grand tour--in a private
car.”
Tregarvon reached suddenly across the corner of the table-desk and
grasped the hand of many helpings.
“There is enough of the old Vance Tregarvon left in me to wish you all
the joy there is in the world, Poictiers!” he exclaimed, with some
touch of the old-time heartiness. “You two were made for each other; I
can see it now.”
“You are quite sure there aren’t any inward daggerings behind that,
Vance?” said the successful one half wistfully.
“Not in the least. I’m glad. If you or Elizabeth had only told me at
first who the other fellow was ... but it is all right now. How did
you contrive to persuade her to overlook your bit of play-acting with
Richardia?”
The persuader shook his head. “That part of it was pretty serious. It
was one of the things that couldn’t very well be explained in cold
words. I think Miss Richardia has helped out some. She knew well enough
what I did it for.”
“You didn’t do it for me,” Tregarvon interposed bluntly.
“Not at all,” was the quiet rejoinder. “As I have said before, I
assumed most naturally that Elizabeth’s happiness was involved, and I
didn’t propose to stand by and see you make ducks and drakes of it if I
could help it.”
“Never mind; it’s all over now, and you two at least are in a fair way
to get what is coming to you. How is Hartridge getting along by this
time?”
“Quite well. He is walking with a crutch, and is able to hear his
classes.” So much Carfax said in the matter-of-fact manner of one
who answers a commonplace categorically. Then he sat up suddenly and
snapped his fingers, and the lisping drawl had returned when he went
on: “By Jove! that reminds me, don’t you know. Hartridge would like to
see you.”
“Why does he wish to see me?”
Carfax spread his hands. “My dear boy, I’m no mind-reader. But I’m sure
it’s rather urgent. Will you go?”
Tregarvon sat frowning down upon the papers on the desk for a full
half-minute before he looked up to say: “I can’t go, Poictiers. I don’t
care especially to meet Hartridge, or to listen to the begging-off
plea which he is probably going to make. He as good as told me that
he was jealous, and was trying to get square. Besides, I haven’t seen
Richardia since this mad-work whirl began, and--and it will be easier
for me if I don’t see her again.”
Carfax had his answer ready. “You’ll not meet Richardia at Highmount.
Elizabeth is staying with the Caswells for a few days, and Richardia
went home to Westwood House at three o’clock. I know, because I drove
her in my car. Hartridge has his rooms in the laboratory building, and
you needn’t show up at the president’s house at all if you don’t wish
to.”
Tregarvon hesitated a moment and then glanced at his watch.
“I’ll go--a little later,” he decided abruptly. “I don’t know that I
owe the professor anything but an action at law for helping to destroy
my drilling plant, but I’ll give him a chance to say what he has to
say. Now run along and keep your dinner engagement. I can drive up in
my own car when I am ready.”
“About what time will that be?” queried Carfax, hanging upon the
threshold of the door of leave-takings. “I ought to let Hartridge know
when to expect you.”
Again Tregarvon looked at his watch. “Say eight o’clock. Will that do?”
“Perfectly, I should think.” It was the golden youth’s cue to
disappear, but still he lingered. “That telegram you have just written,
Vance; are you going to send it to-night?”
Tregarvon answered without looking up. “Certainly. And to-morrow I
shall notify the sheriff to send a deputy after McNabb.”
Carfax went out, closing the door softly behind him. But when the
big expensive motor-car had cut its half-circle to head toward the
mountain pike it was brought to a stand at the railroad station, and
the driver left it for a minute or two while he had speech through the
ticket-window with Orcutt, the night telegraph operator. Daddy Layne,
with nothing better to do, was warming his shins at the waiting-room
stove, and though he listened, after the manner of his kind, he caught
only one sentence of the low-toned talk. That was Orcutt’s, spoken
after Layne’s keen old eyes had glimpsed the passing of something that
looked like a yellow-backed bank-note through the window. “It’ll be as
much as my job’s worth, Mr. Carfax, but I’ll do it.”
A half-hour later, while Layne was dozing in a corner of the
superheated waiting-room, Tregarvon came in with his message to the
Dallas chief of police. This time there was no effort made to keep the
talk from being overheard.
“I’m mighty sorry, Mr. Tregarvon, but I can’t get it off to-night,” was
the operator’s deprecatory protest when the message was handed in. “The
commercial wires are grounded--been that way all the evening. Mighty
sorry, but these things will happen once in a while. Yes; sure! first
thing in the morning, if I have to put it through the despatcher’s
office. Good night.”
XXXI
On Pisgah’s Height
Professor William Wilberforce Hartridge was reading before the cheerful
grate fire in his sitting-room when his visitor was brought up by the
old negro janitor.
“Come in, Mr. Tregarvon, and be at home,” he said, rising, with the
aid of his crutch, for the welcoming, and making difficult work of it.
“Draw your chair to the fire and be comfortable. It was kind of you
to----”
“Carfax brought me your message,” Tregarvon interrupted, rather
more brusquely than he meant to. “In a certain sense I suppose I am
responsible for your present condition, and since you wished to see
me----”
“Ah, yes; but I didn’t wish to give myself the opportunity of
reproaching you for the accident, I assure you,” was the deprecatory
rejoinder. “You were not even constructively to blame for my cowardly
legs.” Then he added, with a touch of naïve humor: “I trust they have
sufficiently learned their lesson.”
“You are having a pretty long siege of it,” Tregarvon offered, finding
himself sympathizing where he had meant to be coldly self-contained.
“Old bones,” returned the schoolmaster, with his quaint smile. “They
haven’t knitted quite as rapidly as they might. But let us hope that
there is nothing worse than broken bones in store for any of us. May I
be very frank with you, Mr. Tregarvon?”