It was two weeks after the date of the governor's fishing trip, and by
consequence Judge MacFarlane's court had been the even fortnight in
session in Gaston, when Kent's attention was recalled to the forgotten
Varnum case by another letter from the local attorney, Hunnicott.
"Varnum _vs_. Western Pacific comes up Friday of this week, and they are
going to press for trial this time, and no mistake," wrote the local
representative. "Hawk has been chasing around getting affidavits; for what
purpose I don't know, though Lesher tells me that one of them was sworn by
Houligan, the sub-contractor who tried to fight the engineer's estimates
on the Jump Creek work.
"Also, there is a story going the rounds that the suit is to be made a
blind for bigger game, though I guess this is all gossip, based on the
fact that Mr. Semple Falkland's private car stopped over here two weeks
ago, from three o'clock in the afternoon till midnight of the same day.
Jason, of the _Clarion_, interviewed the New Yorker, and Falkland told him
he had stopped over to look up the securities on a mortgage held by one of
his New York clients."
Kent read this unofficial letter thoughtfully, and later on took it in to
the general manager.
"Just to show you the kind of jackal we have to deal with in the smaller
towns," he said, by way of explanation. "Here is a case that Stephen Hawk
built up out of nothing a year ago. The woman was put off one of our
trains because she was trying to travel on a scalper's ticket. She didn't
care to fight about it; but when I had about persuaded her to compromise
for ten dollars and a pass to her destination, Hawk got hold of her and
induced her to sue for five thousand dollars."
"Well?" said Loring.
"We fought it, of course--in the only way it could be fought in the lower
court. I got a continuance, and we choked it off in the same way at the
succeeding term. The woman was tired out long ago, but Hawk will hang on
till his teeth fall out."
"Do you 'continue' again?" asked the general manager.
Kent nodded.
"I so instructed Hunnicott. Luckily, two of our most important witnesses
are missing. They have always been missing, in point of fact."
Loring was glancing over the letter.
"How about this affidavit business, and the Falkland stop-over?" he asked.
"Oh, I fancy that's gossip, pure and simple, as Hunnicott says. Hawk is
sharp enough not to let us know if he were baiting a trap. And Falkland
probably told the _Clarion_ man the simple truth."
Loring nodded in his turn. Then he broke away from the subject abruptly.
"Sit down," he said; and when Kent had found a chair: "I had a caller this
morning--Senator Duvall."
State Senator Duvall had been the father, or the ostensible father, of the
Senate amendment to House Bill Twenty-nine. He was known to the
corporations' lobby as a legislator who would sign a railroad's
death-warrant with one hand and take favors from it with the other; and
Kent laughed.
"How many did he demand passes for, this time? Or was it a special train
he wanted?"
"Neither the one nor the other, this morning, as it happened," said the
general manager. "Not to put too fine an edge upon it, he had something to
sell, and he wanted me to buy it."
"What was it?" Kent asked quickly.
Loring was rubbing his eye-glasses absently with the corner of his
handkerchief.
"I guess I made a mistake in not turning him over to you, David. He was
too smooth for me. I couldn't find out just what it was he had for sale.
He talked vaguely about an impending crisis and a man who had some
information to dispose of; said the man had come to him because he was
known to be a firm friend of the Trans-Western, and so on."
Kent gave his opinion promptly.
"It's a capitol-gang deal of some sort to hold us up; and Duvall is
willing to sell out his fellow conspirators if the price is right."
"Have you any notion of what it is?"
Kent shook his head.
"Not the slightest. The ways have been tallowed for us, thus far, and I
don't fully understand it. I presented our charter for re-filing
yesterday, and Hendricks passed it without a word. As I was coming out of
the secretary's office I met Bucks. We were pretty nearly open enemies in
the old days in Gaston, but he went out of his way to shake hands and to
congratulate me on my appointment as general counsel."
"That was warning in itself, wasn't it?"
"I took it that way. But I can't fathom his drift; which is the more
unaccountable since I have it on pretty good authority that the ring is
cinching the other companies right and left. Some one was saying at the
Camelot last night that the Overland's reorganization of its
within-the-State lines was going to cost all kinds of money in excess of
the legal fees."
Loring's smile was a wordless sarcasm.
"It's the reward of virtue," he said ironically. "We were not in the list
of subscribers to the conditional fund for purchasing a certain veto which
didn't materialize."
"And for that very reason, if for no other, we may look out for squalls,"
Kent asserted. "Jasper G. Bucks has a long memory; and just now the fates
have given him an arm to match. I am fortifying everywhere I can, but if
the junto has it in for us, we'll be made to sweat blood before we are
through with it."
"Which brings us back to Senator Duvall. Is it worth while trying to do
anything with him?"
"Oh, I don't know. I'm opposed to the method--the bargain and sale
plan--and I know you are. Turn him over to me if he comes in again."
When Kent had dictated a letter in answer to Hunnicott's, he dismissed the
Varnum matter from his mind, having other and more important things to
think of. So, on the Friday, when the case was reached on Judge
MacFarlane's docket--but really, it is worth our while to be present in
the Gaston court-room to see and hear what befalls.
When the Varnum case was called, Hunnicott promptly moved for a third
continuance, in accordance with his instructions. The judge heard his
argument, the old and well-worn one of the absence of important witnesses,
with perfect patience; and after listening to Hawk's protest, which was
hardly more than mechanical, he granted the continuance.
Then came the after-piece. Court adjourned, and immediately Hawk asked
leave to present, "at chambers," an amended petition. Hunnicott was
waylaid by a court officer as he was leaving the room; and a moment later,
totally unprepared, he was in the judge's office, listening in some dazed
fashion while Hawk went glibly through the formalities of presenting his
petition.
Not until the papers were served upon him as the company's attorney, and
the judge was naming three o'clock of the following afternoon as the time
which he would appoint for the preliminary hearing, did the local attorney
come alive.
"But, your Honor!--a delay of only twenty-four hours in which to prepare a
rejoinder to this petition--to allegations of such astounding gravity?" he
began, shocked into action by the very ungraspable magnitude of the thing.
"What more could you ask, Mr. Hunnicott?" said the judge, mildly. "You
have already had a full measure of delay on the original petition. Yet I
am willing to extend the time if you can come to an agreement with Mr.
Hawk, here."
Hunnicott knew the hopelessness of that and did not make the attempt.
Instead, he essayed a new line of objection.
"The time would be long enough if Gaston were the headquarters of the
company, your Honor. But in such a grave and important charge as this
amended petition brings, our general counsel should appear in person,
and----"
"You are the company's attorney, Mr. Hunnicott," said the judge, dryly;
"and you have hitherto been deemed competent to conduct the case in behalf
of the defendant. I am unwilling to work a hardship to any one, but I can
not entertain your protest. The preliminary hearing will be at three
o'clock to-morrow."
Hunnicott knew when he was definitely at the string's end; and when he was
out of the judge's room and the Court House, he made a dash for his
office, dry-lipped and panting. Ten minutes sufficed for the writing of a
telegram to Kent, and he was half-way down to the station with it when it
occurred to him that it would never do to trust the incendiary thing to
the wires in plain English. There was a little-used cipher code in his
desk provided for just such emergencies, and back he went to labor
sweating over the task of securing secrecy at the expense of the precious
minutes of time. Wherefore, it was about four o'clock when he handed the
telegram to the station operator, and adjured him by all that was good and
great not to delay its sending.
It was just here he made his first and only slip, since he did not stay to
see the thing done. It chanced that the regular day operator was off on
leave of absence, and his substitute, a young man from the
train-despatcher's office, was a person who considered the company wires
an exclusive appanage of the train service department. At the moment of
Hunnicott's assault he was taking an order for Number 17; and observing
that the lawyer's cipher "rush" covered four closely written pages, he
hung it upon the sending hook with a malediction on the legal department
for burdening the wires with its mail correspondence, and so forgot it.
It was nine o'clock when the night operator came on duty; and being a
careful man, he not only looked first to his sending hook, but was
thoughtful enough to run over the accumulation of messages waiting to be
transmitted, to the end that he might give precedence to the most
important. And when he came to Hunnicott's cipher with the
thrice-underlined "RUSH" written across its face, and had marked the hour
of its handing in, he had the good sense to hang up the entire wire
business of the railroad until the thing was safely out of his office.
It was half-past nine when the all-important cipher got itself written out
in the headquarters office at the capital; and for two anxious hours the
receiving operator tried by all means in his power to find the general
counsel--tried and failed. For, to make the chain of mishaps complete in
all its links, Kent and Loring were spending the evening at Miss Portia
Van Brock's, having been bidden to meet a man they were both willing to
cultivate--Oliver Marston, the lieutenant-governor. And for this cause it
wanted but five minutes of midnight when Kent burst into Loring's bedroom
on the third floor of the Clarendon, catastrophic news in hand.
"For heaven's sake, read that!" he gasped; and Loring sat on the edge of
the bed to do it.
"So! they've sprung their mine at last: this is what Senator Duvall was
trying to sell us," he said quietly, when he had mastered the purport of
Hunnicott's war news.
Kent had caught his second wind in the moment of respite, and was settling
into the collar in a way to strain the working harness to the breaking
point.
"It's a put-up job from away back," he gritted. "If I'd had the sense of a
pack-mule I should have been on the lookout for just such a trap as this.
Look at the date of that message!"
The general manager did look, and shook his head. "'Received, 3:45, P.M.;
Forwarded, 9:17, P.M.' That will cost somebody his job. What do we do?"
"We get busy at the drop of the hat. Luckily, we have the news, though
I'll bet high it wasn't Hawk's fault that this message came through with
no more than eight hours' delay. Get into your clothes, man! The minutes
are precious, now!"
Loring began to dress while Kent walked the floor in a hot fit of
impatience.
"The mastodonic cheek of the thing!" he kept repeating, until Loring
pulled him down with another quiet remark.
"Tell me what we have to do, David. I am a little lame in law matters."
"Do? We have to appear in Judge MacFarlane's court to-morrow afternoon
prepared to show that this thing is only a hold-up with a blank cartridge.
Hawk meant to take a snap judgment. He counted on throwing the whole thing
up against Hunnicott, knowing perfectly well that a little local attorney
at a way-station couldn't begin to secure the necessary affidavits."
Loring paused with one end of his collar flying loose.
"Let me understand," he said. "Do we have to disprove these charges by
affidavits?"
"Certainly; that is the proper rejoinder--the only one, in fact," said
Kent; then, as a great doubt laid hold of him and shook him: "You don't
mean to say there is any doubt about our ability to do it?"
"Oh, no; I suppose not, if it comes to a show-down. But I was thinking of
your man Hunnicott. Doesn't it occur to you that he is in just about as
good a fix to secure those affidavits in Gaston as we are here, David?"
"Good Lord! Do you mean that we have to send to Boston for our
ammunition?"
"Haven't we? Don't you see how nicely the thing is timed? Ten days later
our Trans-Western reorganization would be complete, and we could swear our
own officers on the spot. These people know what they are about."
Kent was walking the floor again, but now the strength of the man was
coming uppermost.
"Never mind: we'll wire Boston, and then we'll do what we can here. Could
you get me to Gaston on a special engine in three hours?"
"Yes."
"Then we have till eleven o'clock to-morrow to prepare. I'll be ready by
that time."
"David, you are a brick when it comes to the in-fighting," said the
general manager; and then he finished buttoning his collar.
X