By the terms of its dating clause the new trust and corporation law became
effective at once, "the public welfare requiring it"; and though there was
an immediate sympathetic decline in the securities involved, there was no
panic, financial or industrial, to mark the change from the old to the
new.
Contrary to the expectations of the alarmists and the lawyers, and
somewhat to the disappointment of the latter, the vested interests showed
no disposition to test the constitutionality of the act in the courts. So
far, indeed, from making difficulties, the various alien corporations
affected by the new law wheeled promptly into line in compliance with its
provisions, vying with one another in proving, or seeming to prove, the
time-worn aphorism that capital can never afford to be otherwise than
strictly law-abiding.
In the reorganization of the Western Pacific, David Kent developed at once
and heartily into that rare and much-sought-for quantity, a man for an
emergency. Loring, also, was a busy man in this transition period, yet he
found time to keep an appreciative eye on Kent, and, true to his implied
promise, pushed him vigorously for the first place in the legal department
of the localized company. Since the resident manager stood high in the
Boston counsels of the company, the pushing was not without results; and
while David Kent was still up to his eyes in the work of flogging the
affairs of the newly named Trans-Western into conformity with the law, his
appointment as general counsel came from the Advisory Board.
At one time, when success in his chosen vocation meant more to him than he
thought it could ever mean again, the promoted subordinate would have had
an attack of jubilance little in keeping with the grave responsibilities
of his office. As it fell out, he was too busy to celebrate, and too sore
on the sentimental side to rejoice. Hence, his recognition of the
promotion was merely a deeper plunge into the flood of legalities and the
adding of two more stenographers to his office force.
Now there is this to be said of such submersive battlings in a sea of
work: while the fierce toil of the buffeting may be good for the swimmer's
soul, it necessarily narrows his horizon, inasmuch as a man with his head
in the sea-smother lacks the view-point of the captain who fights his ship
from the conning tower.
So it befell that while the newly appointed general counsel of the
reorganized Western Pacific was bolting his meals and clipping the nights
at both ends in a strenuous endeavor to clear the decks for a possible
battle-royal at the capital, events of a minatory nature were shaping
themselves elsewhere.
To bring these events down to their focusing point in the period of
transition, it is needful to go back a little; to a term of the circuit
court held in the third year of Gaston the prosperous.
Who Mrs. Melissa Varnum was; how she came to be traveling from Midland
City to the end of the track on a scalper's ticket; and in what manner she
was given her choice of paying fare to the conductor or leaving the train
at Gaston--these are details with which we need not concern ourselves.
Suffice it to say that Kent, then local attorney for the company, mastered
them; and when Mrs. Varnum, through Hawk, her counsel, sued for five
thousand dollars damages, he was able to get a continuance, knowing from
long experience that the jury would certainly find for the plaintiff if
the case were then allowed to go to trial.
And at the succeeding term of court, which was the one that adjourned on
the day of Kent's transfer to the capital, two of the company's witnesses
had disappeared; and the one bit of company business Kent had been
successful in doing that day was to postpone for a second time the coming
to trial of the Varnum case.
It was while Kent's head was deepest in the flood of reorganization that a
letter came from one Blashfield Hunnicott, his successor in the local
attorneyship at Gaston, asking for instructions in the Varnum matter.
Judge MacFarlane's court would convene in a week. Was he, Hunnicott, to
let the case come to trial? Or should he--the witnesses still being
unproducible--move for a further continuance?
Kent took his head out of the cross-seas long enough to answer. By all
means Hunnicott was to obtain another continuance, if possible. And if,
before the case were called, there should be any new developments, he was
to wire at once to the general office, and further instructions would
issue.
It was about this time, or, to be strictly accurate, on the day preceding
the convening of Judge MacFarlane's court in Gaston, that Governor Bucks
took a short vacation--his first since the adjournment of the Assembly.
One of the mysteries of this man--the only one for which his friends could
not always account plausibly--was his habit of dropping out for a day or a
week at irregular intervals, leaving no clue by which he could be traced.
While he was merely a private citizen these disappearances figured in the
local notes of the Gaston _Clarion_ as business trips, object and
objective point unknown or at least unstated; but since his election the
newspapers were usually more definite. On this occasion, the public was
duly informed that "Governor Bucks, with one or two intimate friends, was
taking a few days' recreation with rod and gun on the headwaters of Jump
Creek"--a statement which the governor's private secretary stood ready to
corroborate to all and sundry calling at the gubernatorial rooms on the
second floor of the capitol.
Now it chanced that, like all gossip, this statement was subject to
correction as to details in favor of the exact fact. It is true that the
governor, his gigantic figure clad in sportsmanlike brown duck, might have
been seen boarding the train on the Monday evening; and in addition to the
ample hand-bag there were rod and gun cases to bear out the newspaper
notices. None the less, it was equally true that the keeper of the Gun
Club shooting-box at the terminus of the Trans-Western's Jump Creek branch
was not called upon to entertain so distinguished a guest as the State
executive. Also, it might have been remarked that the governor traveled
alone.
Late that same night, Stephen Hawk was keeping a rather discomforting
vigil with a visitor in the best suite of rooms the Mid-Continent Hotel in
Gaston afforded. The guest of honor was a brother lawyer--though he might
have refused to acknowledge the relationship with the ex-district
attorney--a keen-eyed, business-like gentleman, whose name as an organizer
of vast capitalistic ventures had traveled far, and whose present attitude
was one of undisguised and angry contempt for Gaston and all things
Gastonian.
"How much longer have we to wait?" he demanded impatiently, when the hands
of his watch pointed to the quarter-hour after ten. "You've made me travel
two thousand miles to see this thing through: why didn't you make sure of
having your man here?"
Hawk wriggled uneasily in his chair. He was used to being bullied, not
only by the good and great, but by the little and evil as well. Yet there
was a rasp to the great man's impatience that irritated him.
"I've been trying to tell you all the evening that I'm only the hired man
in this business, Mr. Falkland. I can't compel the attendance of the other
parties."
"Well, it's damned badly managed, as far as we've gone," was the
ungracious comment. "You say the judge refuses to confer with me?"
"Ab-so-lutely."
"And the train--the last train the other man can come on; is that in yet?"
Hawk consulted his watch.
"A good half-hour ago."
"You had your clerk at the station to meet it?"
"I did."
"And he hasn't reported?"
"Not yet."
Falkland took a cigar from his case, bit the end of it like a man with a
grudge to satisfy, and began again.
"There is a very unbusinesslike mystery about all this, Mr. Hawk, and I
may as well tell you shortly that my time is too valuable to make me
tolerant of half-confidences. Get to the bottom of it. Has your man
weakened?"
"No; he is not of the weakening kind. And, besides, the scheme is his own
from start to finish, as you know."
"Well, what is the matter, then?"
Hawk rose.
"If you will be patient a little while longer, I'll go to the wire and try
to find out. I am as much in the dark as you are."
This last was not strictly true. Hawk had a telegram in his pocket which
was causing him more uneasiness than all the rasping criticisms of the New
York attorney, and he was re-reading it by the light of the corridor
bracket when a young man sprang from the ascending elevator and hurried to
the door of the parlor suite. Hawk collared his Mercury before he could
rap on the door.
"Well?" he queried sharply.
"It's just as you suspected--what Mr. Hendricks' telegram hinted at. I met
him at the station and couldn't do a thing with him."
"Where has he gone?"
"To the same old place."
"You followed him?"
"Sure. That is what kept me so long."
Hawk hung upon his decision for the barest fraction of a second. Then he
gave his orders concisely.
"Hunt up Doctor Macquoid and get him out to the club-house as quick as you
can. Tell him to bring his hypodermic. I'll be there with all the help
he'll need." And when the young man was gone, Hawk smote the air with a
clenched fist and called down the Black Curse of Shielygh, or its modern
equivalent, on all the fates subversive of well-laid plans.
A quarter of an hour later, on the upper floor of the club-house at the
Gentlemen's Driving Park, four men burst in upon a fifth, a huge figure in
brown duck, crouching in a corner like a wild beast at bay. A bottle and a
tumbler stood on the table under the hanging lamp; and with the crash of
breaking glass which followed the mad-bull rush of the duck-clothed giant,
the reek of French brandy filled the room.
"Hold him still, if you can, and pull up that sleeve." It was Macquoid who
spoke, and the three apparitors, breathing hard, sat upon the prostrate
man and bared his arm for the physician. When the apomorphia began to do
its work there was a struggle of another sort, out of which emerged a
pallid and somewhat stricken reincarnation of the governor.
"Falkland is waiting at the hotel, and he and MacFarlane can't get
together," said Hawk, tersely, when the patient was fit to listen.
"Otherwise we shouldn't have disturbed you. It's all day with the scheme
if you can't show up."
The governor groaned and passed his hand over his eyes.
"Get me into my clothes--Johnson has the grip--and give me all the time
you can," was the sullen rejoinder; and in due course the Honorable Jasper
G. Bucks, clothed upon and in his right mind, was enabled to keep his
appointment with the New York attorney at the Mid-Continent Hotel.
But first came the whipping-in of MacFarlane. Bucks went alone to the
judge's room on the floor above the parlor suite. It was now near
midnight, but MacFarlane had not gone to bed. He was a spare man, with
thin hair graying rapidly at the temples and a care-worn face; the face of
a man whose tasks or responsibilities, or both, have overmatched him. He
was walking the floor with his head down and his hands--thin, nerveless
hands they were--tightly locked behind him, when the governor entered.
For a large man the Honorable Jasper was usually able to handle his weight
admirably; but now he clung to the door-knob until he could launch himself
at a chair and be sure of hitting it.
"What's this Hawk's telling me about you, MacFarlane?" he demanded,
frowning portentously.
"I don't know what he has told you. But it is too flagrant, Bucks; I can't
do it, and that's all there is about it." The protest was feebly fierce,
and there was the snarl of a baited animal in the tone.
"It's too late to make difficulties now," was the harsh reply. "You've got
to do it."
"I tell you I can not, and I will not!"
"A late attack of conscience, eh?" sneered the governor, who was sobering
rapidly now. "Let me ask a question or two. How much was that security
debt your son-in-law let you in for?"
"It was ten thousand dollars. It is an honest debt, and I shall pay it."
"But not out of the salary of a circuit judge," Bucks interposed. "Nor yet
out of the fees you make your clerks divide with you. And that isn't all.
Have you forgotten the gerrymander business? How would you like to see the
true inwardness of that in the newspapers?"
The judge shrank as if the huge gesturing hand had struck him.
"You wouldn't dare," he began. "You were in that, too, deeper than----"
Again the governor interrupted him.
"Cut it out," he commanded. "I can reward, and I can punish. You are not
going to do anything technically illegal; but, by the gods, you are going
to walk the line laid down for you. If you don't, I shall give the
documents in the gerrymander affair to the papers the day after you fail.
Now we'll go and see Falkland."
MacFarlane made one last protest.
"For God's sake, Bucks! spare me that. It is nothing less than the foulest
collusion between the judge, the counsel for the plaintiff--and the
devil!"
"Cut that out, too, and come along," said the governor, brutally; and by
the steadying help of the chair, the door-post and the wall of the
corridor, he led the way to the parlor suite on the floor below.
The conference in Falkland's rooms was chiefly a monologue with the
sharp-spoken New York lawyer in the speaking part. When it was concluded
the judge took his leave abruptly, pleading the lateness of the hour and
his duties for the morrow. When he was gone the New Yorker began again.
"You won't want to be known in this, I take it," he said, nodding at the
governor. "Mr. Hawk here will answer well enough for the legal part, but
how about the business end of it. Have you got a man you can trust?"
The governor's yellow eyebrows met in a meaning scowl.
"I've got a man I can hang, which is more to the purpose. It's Major Jim
Guilford. He lives here; want to meet him?"
"God forbid!" said Falkland, fervently. He rose and whipped himself into
his overcoat, turning to Hawk: "Have your young man get me a carriage, and
see to it that my special is ready to pull east when I give the word, will
you?"
Hawk went obediently, and the New Yorker had his final word with the
governor alone.
"I think we understand each other perfectly," he said. "You are to have
the patronage: we are to pay for all actual betterments for which vouchers
can be shown at the close of the deal. All we ask is that the stock be
depressed to the point agreed upon within the half-year."
"It's going to be done," said the governor, trying as he could to keep the
eye-image of his fellow conspirator from multiplying itself by two.
"All right. Now as to the court affair. If it is managed exactly as I have
outlined, there will be no trouble--and no recourse for the other fellows.
When I say that, I'm leaving out your Supreme Court. Under certain
conditions, if the defendant's hardship could be definitely shown, a writ
of _certiorari_ and _supersedeas_ might issue. How about that?"
The governor closed one eye slowly, the better to check the troublesome
multiplying process.
"The Supreme Court won't move in the matter. The ostensible reason will be
that the court is now two years behind its docket."
"And the real reason?"
"Of the three justices, one of them was elected on our ticket; another is
a personal friend of Judge MacFarlane. The goods will be delivered."
"That's all, then; all but one word. Your judge is a weak brother.
Notwithstanding all the pains I took to show him that his action would be
technically unassailable, he was ready to fly the track at any moment.
Have you got him safe?"
Bucks held up one huge hand with the thumb and forefinger tightly pressed
together.
"I've got him right there," he said. "If you and Hawk have got your papers
in good shape, the thing will go through like a hog under a barbed-wire
fence."