reflectively; "and anyway, I guess I'd better go over the papers again,
so I can be sure to speak my piece right end to. By Jove! I didn't
suppose a couple of thousand miles of easting would take the heart out
of things the way it does. If I didn't know better, I should think I'd
come here to float the biggest kind of a fake, instead of a life-boat
for the shipwrecked people in the Pacific Southwestern. It is beginning
to look that way in spite of all I can do."
Going once again over his carefully tabulated argument did not help
matters greatly. He was beginning to realize now how vastly, antipodally
different the New York point of view might be from his own. It came to
him with the benumbing effect of a blow that his own ambitions had
persistently looked beyond the mere money-making results of his scheme.
Also, that President Colbrith and his fellow-investors might very easily
refuse to consider any other phase of the revolutionary proposition he
was about to lay before them.
By ten o'clock postponement was no longer a tenable city of refuge: the
plunge had to be taken. Accordingly, he fared forth to present himself
at the Broadway address given in the Pacific Southwestern printed matter
as the New York headquarters of the company.
The number proved to be a ground floor, with the business office of the
eastern traffic representative in front, and three or four private
desk-rooms in the rear, one of them labeled "President" in inconspicuous
gilt lettering. Entering, with less assurance than if he had been the
humblest of place-seekers out of a job, Ford was almost relieved to find
only a closed desk, and a young man absently scanning a morning paper.
Inquiry developed a few facts, tersely stated but none the less
enlightening. Mr. Colbrith was not in: the office was merely his nominal
headquarters in the city and he occupied it only occasionally. His
residence? It was in the Borough of the Bronx, pretty well up toward
Yonkers--locality and means of access obligingly written out on a card
for the caller by the clerk. Was Mr. Ford's business of a routine
nature? If so, perhaps, Mr. Ten Eyck, the general agent, could attend to
it. Ford said it was not of a routine nature, and made his escape to
inquire his way to the nearest subway station. To pause now was to lose
the precious impetus of the start.
It was worth something to be whirled away blindly out of the stifling
human vortex of the lower city; but Ford's first glimpse of the Colbrith
mansion depressed him again. The huge, formal house had once been the
country residence of a retired dry-goods merchant. It fronted the river
brazenly, and the fine old trees of a ten-acre park shamed its
architectural stiffness. Ford knew the president a little by family
repute and more particularly as a young subordinate knows the general in
command. It struck him forcibly that the aspect of the house fitted the
man. With the broad river and the distant Palisades to be dwelt upon,
its outlook windows were narrow. With the sloping park and the great
trees to give it dignity, it seemed to assume an artificial, plumb-line
dignity of its own, impressive only as the product of rigid measurements
and mechanical uprightness.
From the boulevard there was a gravelled driveway with a stone portal.
The iron gates were thrown wide, and at his entrance Ford stood aside to
let an outgoing auto-car have the right of way. Being full of his
errand, and of the abstraction of a depressed soul, Ford merely remarked
that there were two persons in the car; a young man driving, and a young
woman, veiled and dust-coated, in the mechanician's seat beside him.
None the less, there floated out of the mist of abstraction an instantly
vanishing phantom of half-recognition for the Westerner. Something in
the pose of the young woman, the way she leaned forward and held her hat
with the tips of her gloved fingers, was, for the fleeting moment,
almost reminiscent.
If Ford had wished to speculate upon abstruse problems of identity,
there was neither time nor the mental aptitude. A little later he had
given his card to the servant at the door and was waiting in a darkened
and most depressive library for the coming of the master of the house.
The five minutes of waiting nearly finished him. As the absurdly formal
clock between the book-cases ticked off the leaden-winged seconds, his
plan for the rescue of Pacific Southwestern took the form of a crass
impertinence, and only the grim determination to see a lost cause
decently coffined and buried kept the enthusiast with his face to the
front.
After all, the beginning of the interview with the tall, thin,
gray-haired and hatchet-faced old man, who presently stalked into the
library and gave his hand with carefully adjusted cordiality to the son
of one of his college classmates, was only a little more depressing: it
was not mortal. Ford had been born in Illinois; and so, something better
than a third of a century earlier, had the president. Moreover, Mr.
Colbrith had, in the hey-day of his youth, shared rooms with the elder
Ford in the fresh-water university which had later numbered the younger
Ford among its alumni. These things count for somewhat, even when the
gap to be bridged is that between the president of a railroad and one of
his minor officials.
But when the revolutionary project was introduced, the president's
guarded cordiality faded like a photographic proof-print in the
sunlight, and the air of the darkened library grew coldly inclement.
"So you came to talk business, did you?" said the high, rasping voice
out of the depths of the easy-chair opposite; and Ford raged inwardly at
the thought that he had clearly placed himself at a disadvantage by
becoming even constructively the guest of the president. "As a rule, I
positively refuse to discuss such matters outside of their proper
environment; but I'll make an exception for Douglas Ford's son. Your
plan is simply impossible. I can understand how it may appear possible,
and even attractive, to a young man, and especially to the young man who
has invented it. But as an investment for capital--my dear young sir, go
back to your division, and strive by faithful service to rise in the
accepted and time-honored way. You are wasting your time in New York."
Curiously enough, Ford found his evaporated courage recrystallizing
under opposition.
"I can not believe that I have made the plan, and the present condition
of the system, sufficiently clear to you," he insisted; whereupon he
went patiently and good-naturedly over the argument again, emphasizing
the desperate straits to which the Pacific Southwestern was reduced.
"We know all that, Mr. Ford," was the unyielding reply. "But granting it
to be the fact, don't you see the absolute futility of asking for
thirty-five millions additional capital at such a crisis?"
"No, I don't," said Ford stubbornly. "I know--as I can not explain to
you in detail in a half-hour interview--that this plan of mine can be
made successful. For two years, Mr. Colbrith, I have been the man on the
ground: no word that I am saying to you is speculative. Every clause of
the proposition has a carefully established fact behind it."
"No doubt it seems so to you," came the rasping voice from the
chair-depths. "But thirty-five millions!"--with a quavering gasp. "And
at a time when our earnings are falling off steadily and the stock is
going down day by day. It's--it's simply preposterous! I must really
decline to discuss it any further."
Ford had his packet of data in hand.
"I have all the exhibits here, carefully tabulated and condensed. Won't
you reconsider far enough to examine them, Mr. Colbrith?"
A thin white hand of negation and protest waved out of the depths of
the engulfing easy-chair.
"I am sorry to disappoint you, Mr. Ford. I knew your father, and we were
great friends. You are like him," he added reminiscently. "He might have
died rich if he had gone into corn-buying with me when we were
graduated, as I wanted him to. But he was too enthusiastic. He wanted to
turn the world upside down--just as you do, my dear young man; just as
you do."
Ford got upon his feet. The time had arrived for the firing of the shot
of last resort, and he aimed it deliberately.
"I came first to you, Mr. Colbrith, because it was my duty as a
subordinate, and your own appointee, and because you were my father's
friend so many years ago. I may say, frankly, that I did it against good
advice. Men who profess to know you have counseled me to appeal directly
to the board. What I wish to know now is if you are willing to take the
entire responsibility of turning this plan of mine down. Will it not
relieve you of all responsibility if you will call a meeting of the
directors, and let me lay this absurd proposal of mine before it? You
can surely have no fears for the result."
The shot told. The president struggled to his feet and took a nervous
turn up and down the long room. When he replied, it was with the
indecisive man's reluctance to commitment of any sort.
"If I call the meeting, I shall be ridiculed; and if I don't call it, I
suppose you'll go to Brewster and Magnus and tell them I've muzzled you.
Have it your own way. I'll issue the call for ten o'clock, the day after
to-morrow, in McVeigh and Mackie's offices in Broad Street. But I warn
you in advance, Mr. Ford, I shall not be able to help you in the least.
And I may add this: that when you reach that part of your proposal where
you call for thirty-five millions additional capital, you may as well
put on your hat and go home. That will be the end of it."
"And of me," laughed the enthusiast. But in spite of the cold comfort,
and of the still colder promise of opposition, he took his leave with a
lighter heart, refusing Mr. Colbrith's rather perfunctory invitation to
stay to luncheon.
And on the gravelled drive, where he again had to make way for the
auto-car purring in on its return, he did not so much as look up at the
pair in the driving-seat.
V
WANTED: THIRTY-FIVE MILLIONS
The offices of McVeigh and Mackie, brokers and financial agents, are in
Broad Street, and the windows of the room used for board meetings look
down upon the angle where beats the money pulse of the nation.
Ford had successfully resisted the temptation to lobby for his scheme
during the one-day interval between his conference with Mr. Colbrith and
the date of the called meeting of the directors. It was not any mistaken
sense of loyalty to the president that restrained him; on the contrary,
he decided that Mr. Colbrith's declaration of war left him free to fight
as he would. But upon due consideration he concluded to set the
advantage of an assault _en masse_ over against the dubious gain of an
advanced skirmish line, and when he turned out of Broadway into Wall
Street on the morning of destiny the men whom he was to meet and
convince were still no more to him than a list of names in the _Poor's
Manual_, consulted within the hour for the purpose.
He was early on the battle-ground; much too early, he thought, when a
clerk ushered him into the board room in the rear of the brokers'
offices. As yet there was only one person present--a young man who was
lounging in the easiest of the leather-covered chairs and yawning
dismally. At the first glance the face seemed oddly and strikingly
familiar; but when the young man marked the new-comer's entrance, the
small hand-bag in which the amateur promoter carried his papers, and got
up to shake hands, Ford found the suggestive gropings baffled.
"My name is Adair," said the lounger genially; "and I suppose you are
the Mr. Ford Uncle Sidney has been telling us about. Pull up a chair and
sit by the window. It's the only amusement you'll have until the clan
gathers."
Ford looked at his watch.
"I seem to be ahead of time," he remarked. "I understood Mr. Colbrith to
say that the meeting would be called for ten o'clock."
"Oh, that's all right; and so he did," rejoined the other cheerfully.
"But that means anything up to noon for a directors' meeting in New
York." Then, after a pause: "Do you know any of us personally, Mr.
Ford?"
Ford was rummaging in his memory again. "I ought to know you, Mr.
Adair. It isn't very decent to drag in resemblances, but--"
"The resemblance is the real thing, this time," said Adair. "You saw me
day before yesterday, driving out of the Overlook grounds as you were
going in."
Ford shook his head.
"No; it goes back of that; sometime I'll remember how and where. But to
answer your question: I know Mr. Colbrith slightly, but I've never met
any of the directors."
"Well, you are meeting one at this moment," laughed the young man,
crossing his legs comfortably. "But I am the easiest mark of the lot,"
he added. "I inherited my holdings in Pacific Southwestern."
Ford was crucially anxious to find out how the battle was likely to go,
and his companion seemed amiably communicative.
"Since you call Mr. Colbrith 'Uncle Sidney,' I infer that you know what
I am here for, Mr. Adair. How do you think my proposition is likely to
strike the board?"
Again the young man laughed.
"Fancy your asking me!" he said. "I haven't talked with any one but
Uncle Sidney; and the most I could get out of him was that you wanted
thirty-five million dollars to spend."
"Well," said the Westerner anxiously, "am I going to get it?"
"You can search me," was the good-natured rejoinder. "But from my
knowledge of the men you are going presently to wrestle with, I should
say 'no' and italicize it."
"Perhaps it might help me a little if I could know in advance the
particular reason for the italics," Ford suggested.
"Oh, sure. The principal reason is that your name isn't Hill or Harriman
or Morgan or Gates. Money is ridiculously sheepish. It will follow a
known leader blindly, idiotically. But if it doesn't hear the familiar
tinkle of the leader's bell, it is mighty apt to huddle and run back."
Ford's smile was grim.
"I don't mind saying to you, Mr. Adair, that this is one of the times
when it will be much safer to huddle and run forward. Have you seen the
half-yearly report?"
"I? Heaven forbid! I have never seen anything out of the Pacific
Southwestern--not even a dividend."
Ford would very willingly have tried to share his enthusiasm with the
care-free young man, whose face was still vaguely but persistently
remindful of some impression antedating the automobile passing; but now
the other members of the board were dropping in by twos and threes, and
privacy was at an end.
Just before President Colbrith took his place at the head of the long
table to call the meeting to order, Adair leaned forward to say in low
tones: "I couldn't give you the tip you wanted, Mr. Ford, but I can give
you another which may serve as well. If your good word doesn't win out,
scare 'em--scare 'em stiff! I don't know but you could frighten half a
million or so out of me if you should try."
"Thank you," said Ford. "I may take you at your word,"--and just then
Mr. Colbrith rose in his place, fingering his thin white beard rather
nervously, Ford thought, and rapping on the table for silence.
It was admitted on all hands that the president of the Pacific
Southwestern was a careful man and a thrifty. It was these qualities
which had first determined his election. There were many small
stock-holders in the company, and it is the foible of small
stock-holders to believe that rigid economy counts for more than
adventurous outreachings in the larger field.
"Gentlemen," he began, his high, raucous voice rasping the silence like
the filing of a saw, "this meeting is called, as you have probably been
informed, for the purpose of considering a plan for betterments
submitted by Mr. Stuart Ford, who is at the present time superintendent
of our Plug Mountain Division.
"In making this unusual innovation, and in introducing Mr. Ford, I
desire to say that I have been actuated by that motive of prudence
which, while it stands firmly upon its own feet, is willing to consider
suggestions from without, even when these suggestions appear to be
totally at variance with a policy of careful and judicious financiering.
"In presenting Mr. Ford as the son of an old friend, long since gone to
his reward, I wish it distinctly understood that I am in no sense
committed to his plan. The policy of this company under the present
administration has been uniformly cautious and prudent: Mr. Ford would
throw caution and prudence to the winds. Our best efforts have been
directed toward the saving of the ultimate dollar of expense: Mr. Ford
urges us to spend millions. We have been trying to dispose of some of
our non-paying branches: Mr. Ford would have us acquire others and build
new lines."
While Mr. Colbrith was speaking, Adair was rapidly characterizing the
members for Ford, checking them off upon his fingers.
"The little man at Uncle Sidney's right is Mackie, and the miserly
looking one next to him is McVeigh," he whispered. "One of them will
furnish your coffin, and the other will drive the nails into it. The big
man with the beard is Brewster--a multimillionaire; and the one who
looks like Senator Bailey is Magnus, president of the Mohican National.
Connolly, the fat Irishman, is a politician--wads of money, but not much
interest in the game. The other three--"
But now the president had made an end and was beckoning to Ford.
The young engineer rose, feeling much as if a bucket of ice-water had
been suddenly emptied down the back of his neck. But one of his saving
qualities was the spring-like resilience which responds instantly to a
shock. Spreading his papers on the table, he began with a little
apology.
"I didn't come here this morning prepared to make a promoter's speech;
and perhaps it is just as well, since my gift, if I have one, lies in
doing things rather than in talking about them. But I can lay a few
facts before you which you may deem worthy of consideration."
From this as a beginning he went on swiftly and incisively. The Pacific
Southwestern, in its present condition, was a failure. It was an
incomplete line, trying vainly to hold its own against great and
powerful systems overlapping it at either end. The remedy lay in
extension. The acquisition of a controlling interest in three short
roads, which, pieced together, would bridge the gap between the Missouri
River and Chicago, would place the Pacific Southwestern upon an equal
footing with its competitors as a grain carrier. By standardizing the
Plug Mountain narrow gauge and extending it to Salt Lake and beyond, the
line would secure a western outlet, and would be in a position to demand
its share of transcontinental business.
To finance these two extensions a capital of thirty-five million
dollars would be needed; five million dollars for the purchase of the
majority stock in the three short roads, and the remainder for the
western outlet. These assertions were not guesses: by referring to
exhibits marked "a" "b" and "f," his hearers would find accurate
estimates of cost, not only of construction, but also of stock
purchases.
As to the manner of providing the capital, he had only a suggestion to
offer. The five million dollars necessary for the acquirement of a
controlling interest in the three short roads would be a fair
investment. It could be covered immediately by a reissue--share for
share--of the reorganization stock of the P. S-W., which would amply
secure the investors, since the stock of the most prosperous of the
three local roads was listed at twenty-eight, ten points lower than the
present market quotation of P. S-W.
The thirty million dollar extension fund might be raised by issuing
second mortgage bonds upon the entire system, or the new line itself
could be bonded mile for mile under a separate charter. Ford modestly
disclaimed any intention of dictating the financial policy; this was not
in his line. But again he would submit facts. The grain crop in the West
was phenomenally large in prospect. With its own eastern terminal in
Chicago, the Pacific Southwestern could control the grain shipments in
its own territory. With the moving of the grain, the depressed P. S-W.
stock would inevitably recover, and on a rising market the new issue of
bonds could doubtless be floated.
The enthusiast closed his argument with a hasty summing-up of the
benefits which must, in the nature of things, accrue. From being an
alien link in the great transcontinental chain, the Pacific Southwestern
would rise at a bound to the dignity of a great railway system; a power
to be reckoned with among the other great systems gridironing the West.
Its earnings would be enhanced at every point; cross lines which now fed
its competitors would become its allies; the local lines to be welded
into the eastern end of the system would share at once in the prosperity
of a strong through line.
For the western extension he could speak from personal knowledge of the
region to be penetrated. Apart from the new line's prime object--that of
providing an outlet for the system--there was a goodly heritage of local
business awaiting the first railroad to reach the untapped territory.
Mines, valueless now for the lack of transportation facilities, would
become abundant producers; and there were many fertile valleys and mesas
to attract the ranchman, who would find on the western slopes of the
mountains an unfailing water supply for his reservoirs and ditches. Ford
did not hesitate to predict that within a short time the extension would
earn more, mile for mile, than the grain-belt portion of the system.
When he sat down he felt that his cause was lost. There was no
enthusiasm, no approval, in the faces of his auditors. After a short and
informal discussion, in which the engineer was called on to explain his
plans and estimates in detail to one and another of the members, Magnus,
the bank president, sufficiently summed up the sense of the meeting when
he said:
"There is no question about the ingenuity of your plan, Mr. Ford. You
must have given a great deal of time and thought to it. But it is rather
too large for us, I'm afraid, and there are too many contingencies. Your
province, I understand, is the building and operating of railroads, and
it is nothing to your discredit that you are unfamiliar with the
difficulties of financing an undertaking as vast as this proposal of
yours."
"I don't deny the difficulties," said Ford. "But they wouldn't seem to
be insuperable."
"Not from your point of view," rejoined the banker suavely. "But you
will admit that they are very considerable. The opposition on the part
of the competing systems would be something tremendous. No stone would
be left unturned in the effort to dismount us. To go no further into the
matter than the proposed purchase of the majority stocks in the three
short roads: at the first signal in that field you would find those
stocks flying skyward in ten-point advances, and your five millions
wouldn't be a drop in the bucket. In view of the difficulties, I think I
voice the conviction of the board when I say that the plan is too
hazardous."
The nods of assent were too numerous to leave Ford any hope of turning
the tide in his favor. He rose, gathered up his papers, and reached for
his hat.
"It is very pointedly your own funeral, gentlemen," he said curtly.
"'Nothing venture, nothing have' is an old proverb, but it is as true
now as it was when it was coined. With P. S-W. stock at thirty-eight and
steadily declining; with another dividend about to be passed; and with
the certainty that the July interest on the bonds will have to be
defaulted unless some compromise can be effected with the bondholders--"
"What's that you're saying?" broke in Mackie, whose P. S-W. holdings were
large.
Ford drew a folded paper from his pocket and laid it on the table.
"I was merely quoting from the auditor's semiannual report, of which
that is a summary," he said, indicating the folded paper. "The report
itself will doubtless reach you in a day or two. It would seem to an
unprejudiced observer that the present condition spells something like a
receivership, unless you have the bondholders with you."
"One moment, Mr. Ford," interposed the banker member; but Ford was
working up to his climax and refused to be side-tracked.
"Of course, as an officer of the company, I have felt in duty bound to
bring my grist first to the company's mill. But if you gentlemen don't
wish to grind it, it will be ground, notwithstanding. I could very
easily have found a market for my proposal without coming to New York."