of the board to no good purpose, he bowed himself out, closing the door
upon a second attempt on the part of the banker member to renew the
argument.
VI
THE AWAKENING OF CHARLES EDWARD
Ford went directly to his hotel from the meeting in the Broad Street
board room, paid his bill, and had himself shot up to the fifth floor to
prepare for a swift retreat from the scene of his humiliating defeat. It
was hardly in keeping with his boast of persistence that he should
suffer himself to be thus routed by a single reverse, however crushing.
But in a world where every problem contains its human factor, red wrath
accounts for much that is otherwise unaccountable.
Ford was thoroughly and unreasoningly angry and disgusted when he began
to fling his belongings into the small steamer trunk, and it was only
natural that he should turn with a little brow-wrinkling of resentment
when, a little later, Mr. Charles Edward Adair, following his card up to
the fifth floor front, lounged good-naturedly into the room.
"Beg pardon, I'm sure," said the intruder easily. "Didn't know you were
busy. I thought maybe you'd like to know the effect of your little
double-headed bombshell, and I couldn't be sure Uncle Sidney would take
the trouble to tell you."
Ford made no effort to conceal his contempt for the financial gods.
"I don't imagine it will take you very long to tell it," he retorted.
"Nothing short of a combined earthquake and volcanic eruption would have
any effect upon that crowd."
"Oh, but you're wrong!" protested Adair. "That shot of yours with the
semiannual summary for a projectile stirred 'em up good. It seems that
Uncle Sidney and Hertford and Morelock--they're the executive committee,
you know--have had the auditor's figures for some days, but they hadn't
thought it necessary to harrow the feelings of the other members of the
board with the cataclysmic details. So there was a jolly row. Magnus
wanted to know, top-loftily, why a small official from the farther end
of the system should be the first to bring the news; and Mackie was so
wrathy that he inadvertently put the hot end of his cigar in his mouth.
Even Connolly woke up enough to say that it was blanked bad politics."
"But nothing came of it?" said Ford, hope rising in spite of the
negative query.
"No; nothing but a general hand-out of pretty sharp talk. What was
needed right then was a unifier--somebody who could take command and
coax or bully the scrapping factions into line. Magnus tried it, but
he's too smooth. Brewster was the man, but he has too many other and
bigger irons in the fire to care much about P. S-W. Connolly could have
done it if the scrap had been a political split, but he was out of his
element."
"Humph!" growled Ford. "It didn't occur to me that there were any
differences of opinion to be reconciled. The entire board sat on my
proposition--as a unit."
Adair laughed with imperturbable good-humor.
"The factions were there, just the same. You see, it's like this:
Brewster and Magnus and two or three more are pretty well-to-do, and
their holdings in P. S-W. don't cut much of a figure with them, one way
or another. The others have more stock in the company, and fewer
millions. When the jangle came, Brewster and the heavy men said, 'Oh,
let it go; it isn't worth bothering with.' Naturally, the little
fellows, with more to lose and less money-nerve, said, 'No.'"
"It spells the same word for me, in any event," Ford commented, and went
on pitching things into his steamer trunk.
Adair got upon his feet and strolled away to the window.
When he turned again to face the beaten one he said:
"If I wasn't so infernally lazy, Mr. Ford, I more than half believe that
I could pull this thing off for you, myself. But that is the curse of
being born with too much money. I can take a plunge into business now
and then--I've done it. But my best friend couldn't bet on me two days
in succession."
Ford looked up quickly.
"Then don't put your hand to this plow, Mr. Adair. I'll be frank with
you. I can fit the mechanical parts of this scheme of mine together, so
that they will run true and do business. But I, or any man in my place,
would have to have solid backing here in New York; a board that would be
as aggressive as a handful of rebels fighting for life, and every man of
it determined to win out or smash something. Mr. Magnus spoke of the
opposition we should encounter from our competitors. He might have said
more. What the Transcontinental, for example, wouldn't do to obliterate
us needn't be catalogued. How do you suppose the present P. S-W. board
would fare in such a fight?"
The youngest member of the flouted board laughed again.
"You mustn't say in your wrath that all men are liars--or cowards. There
is plenty of fight in our crowd; and plenty of money, too, if you could
only get it sufficiently scared."
"I've done my best," said Ford, slamming the lid of the trunk and
buckling the straps vigorously. "The next time I'll find my market first
and build my scheme afterward."
"Well, if I can say it without offense, I'm honestly sorry for you, Mr.
Ford; you've been butchered to make a Broad Street holiday," said Adair,
lounging toward the door. "You are going back to the West, I suppose?"
"Yes."
"What line?"
"Pennsylvania; five-ten this afternoon."
"That is a long time between drinks. Suppose you come up to the club and
have luncheon with me?"
Ford hesitated, watch in hand.
"I was about to lie to you, Mr. Adair, and plead business; but I shan't.
I'll tell you the plain truth. I'm too sore just now to be any good
fellow's good company."
"Which is precisely the reason why I asked you," laughed the golden
youth. "Come on; let's go now. You can take it out on me as much as you
like, you know. I shan't mind."
But the club luncheon ignored the business affair completely, as Adair
intended it should. Ford came out of the shell of disappointment with
the salad course, and by way of reparation for his former attitude
talked rather more freely of himself than he was wont to do on such
short acquaintance with any one. The young millionaire met him quite
half-way on this road to a better understanding, contrasting with mild
envy Ford's well-filled, busy life with his own erratic efforts at
time-killing.
"You make me half sorry for myself," he said, when they went to the
smoking-room to light their cigars. "It's no less than a piteous
misfortune when a fellow's father has beaten all the covers of
accomplishment for him."
Ford could laugh now without being bitter.
"The game isn't all corralled, even for you, Mr. Adair. There was
excellent good shooting for you in that directors' meeting this morning,
but you wouldn't take the trouble."
"That's the fact," was the easy-going rejoinder. "That is just what my
sister is always telling me--that I won't take the trouble. And yet I do
take the trouble to begin a lot of things; only they never seem worth
while after a few days' dip into them."
"Pick out bigger ones," suggested Ford. "My trouble is just the other
way about; I am always tackling things that are worlds too big for
me--just as I have this time."
"It isn't too big for you, Mr. Ford. It was too big for Colbrith,
Magnus, _et al_. And, besides, you're not going to give it up. You'll
drop off in Chicago, hunt up some meat-packer or other Croesus, and
land your new railroad independently of the P. S-W."
It was a measure of the sincerity of Ford's liking for his host when he
said: "That little shot of mine at your colleagues was merely a long
bluff. If my scheme can't be worked with the P. S-W., it can't well be
worked without it. We are lacking the two end-links in the chain--which
I could forge. But my two end-links without the middle one wouldn't
attract anybody."
It was quite late in the afternoon when they left the club, and Ford had
no more than time to check his luggage and get to his train. He wondered
a little when Adair went with him to the ferry, and was not ungrateful
for the hospitality which seemed to be directed toward a lightening of
the burden of failure. But Adair's word of leave-taking, flung across
the barrier when the chains of the landing-stage were rattling to their
rise, was singularly irrelevant.
"By the way, Mr. Ford; what time did you say your train would reach
Chicago?"
"At eight forty-five to-morrow evening," replied the beaten one; and
then the boat swung out of its slip and the retreat without honor was
begun.
VII
HAMMER AND TONGS
It was raining dismally the evening of the following day when Ford saw
from his Pullman window the dull sky-glow of the metropolis of the
Middle West. It had been a dispiriting day throughout. When a man has
flung himself at his best into a long battle which ends finally in
unqualified loss, the heavens are as brass, and the future is apt to
reflect only the pale light of the past failure.
It was after the train had entered the suburbs of Chicago that a
blue-coated messenger boy came through the Pullman, with the car
conductor for his guide. Ford saw himself pointed out, and a moment
later was reading a telegram, with a tumult, not of the drumming car
wheels, roaring in his ears.
Had a talk with my sister and made up my mind to see you
through--if I don't get tired and quit, as usual. Secure
options on that short-road stock quick, and wire me care McV. & M.
Funds to your credit in Algonquin National, Chicago. Another
directors' meeting to-day, and things look a little less chaotic.
Answer. ADAIR.
For some time Ford could only read and re-read the exciting telegram,
scarcely trusting the evidence of his senses. That the coldly
indifferent members of the P. S-W. board, with a man like President
Colbrith at their head, could be swung into line in the short space of a
single day by a young fellow who seemed to be little more than a spoiled
son of fortune, was blankly incredible.
But he was not long in realizing that the cherished scheme for which he
had studied and struggled was actually beginning to stagger to its feet;
or in reaching the equally stirring conclusion that his part in the
suddenly reopened game called instantly for shrewd blows and the
swiftest possible action.
The stock-holders in the three local roads which were to be united to
bridge the Chicago-Missouri River gap were scattered all over the Middle
West. To secure the necessary options on working majorities of the stock
would be a task for a financial diplomat, and one who could break the
haste-making record by being in a dozen different places at one and the
same moment. Moreover, secrecy became a prime factor in the problem. If
the opposition, and particularly the Transcontinental people, should
get wind of the move, it would take fifteen millions to do the work of
five, as Banker Magnus had intimated.
Notwithstanding the thickly marshaled obstacles, Ford had his plan of
campaign pretty well thought out by the time his train was slowing into
the Union Station. Before going to New York he had painstakingly
"located" the required holdings of the three stocks. Some of them were
in Chicago, but the greater number of the men to be bargained with were
local capitalists living in the smaller cities along the lines of the
three short railroads.
In his bag was a carefully compiled list of these stock-holders, with
their addresses and the amounts of their respective holdings. At the
worst, he concluded, it should mean nothing more formidable than a deal
of quick traveling, some anxious bargaining, perhaps, and a little
finesse to keep his object in securing the options safely in the
background.
This was how it appeared in the prospect; and the young engineer had yet
to learn that the securing of options is a trade by itself--a trade by
no means to be caught up in passing, even by the most gifted of tyros.
Hence, it was extremely fortunate for this particular tyro--more
fortunate than he could possibly know at the moment--that his telephone
message sent from the first telephone he could reach after his train
stopped in the Union Station, caught Kenneth at the Green Bag Club. It
was a mere chance that he knew that Kenneth, the senior member of the
firm of attorneys having general oversight of the Pacific Southwestern's
legal department, was at the moment in Chicago; a chance hanging upon
the fact that he had met Kenneth as he was passing through on his way
eastward. But it was not by chance that the first familiar face he saw
on entering the rotunda of the Grand Pacific Hotel was that of Kenneth.
The sight was merely the logical result of Ford's urgent request
telephoned to the lawyer's club.
"By Jove, Kenneth; this comes within two inches of being a miracle!--my
catching you here before you had started West," Ford ejaculated. And
then: "When are you going back?"
"I am supposed to be on the way now," was the lawyer's reply. "I had
made all my arrangements to start back to-night on the slow train, but I
dined with some friends on the North Side and made a miss. Where have
you been?"
"I'm just in from New York. Let me register and get a room; and you put
away any lingering notion you may have of heading westward to-night.
I've got to have your ear for a few hours to begin with, and the whole
of you for the next few days. No; don't probe me here. Wait, and I'll
unload on you gradually. You won't be sorry you missed your train."
Fifteen minutes later Ford had his adviser safely behind a closed door,
and had put him succinctly in possession of the world-subverting facts,
as far as they went. When he concluded, the lawyer was shaking his head
dubiously, just as Auditor Evans had done.
"Ford, have you any adequate idea of what a tremendous proposition you
are up against?" he asked quietly, helping himself to a cigar out of the
engineer's freshly opened box.
"I don't believe I have underrated the difficulties, any of them," said
Ford, matching the attorney's gravity. "There are bones all the way
along, but I think I have struck the biggest of them just here. I ought
to be in a dozen places at once, and not later than to-morrow noon.
That's something I can't quite compass."
"Getting these options, you mean? That is very true; but it isn't all of
it, by long odds. There are the thousand and one mechanical details to
be worked out: the coupling up of these three local lines at their
connecting points, the securing of proper trackage or trackage rights at
these junctions, the general ordering of things so that a through line
may be opened immediately when the stock is secured. If there were ten
of you, you couldn't get things licked into shape in time to get in on
the grain carrying this season."
Ford had relighted his cigar, which had gone out in the explanatory
interval, and was blowing smoke-rings toward the ceiling.
"I may be the biggest ass this side of the jack trails, and the most
conceited, Kenneth; but you're over on my side of the ring when you talk
about the mechanical obstacles. What I'm worrying about now is the fact
that I can't do two things at once. The options must be secured before
we can make the fifth part of a move in the other field; and the Lord
only knows how long that will take. To hurry is to lose out."
The lawyer nodded. "And not to hurry is to lose out, too," he qualified.
Then he smoked in thoughtful silence for five full minutes before he
said, abruptly: "Give me your list of stock-holders and turn the option
business over to the legal department, where it properly belongs. That
will leave you foot-loose to go after the mechanical matter. How does
that suit you?"
Ford sprang to his feet.
"By Jove, Kenneth, you're a man and a brother; I'm not forgetting that
you are taking this entire fairy tale on my personal say-so; and I
shan't forget it, either. It's what I wanted to ask--and was afraid to
ask, after I got you safely jailed up here."
The attorney's smile was grim but friendly.
"I'm not forgetting how you took a sick man over into the Pannikin
wilderness on a two-months hunting trip last fall and made a well man of
him, Ford," he said. "Any man who can shoot as straight as you do
wouldn't be sitting here telling me lies about a trifling little matter
involving the expenditure of a beggarly thirty-five millions. But to
come down to earth again: you haven't shifted any considerable part of
the burden, you know. I can do this bit of routine work; but the main
thing is up to you, just as it was before I said yes."
Ford rose, stretching himself like a man who has just been relieved of a
burden whose true weight was appreciable only in its lifting.
"I know," he said cheerfully. "It has been up to me, all along. In the
morning we'll go around to the Algonquin National, and I'll put you into
the financial saddle. Then I'll get out on the line, and by the time you
have the stock corralled, we'll be practically ready to pull through
freight--if not passengers--from Denver to Chicago. Oh, I know what I am
talking about," he added, when the general counsel smiled his
incredulity. "This is no affair of yesterday with me. I have every mile
of these three short roads mapped and cross-sectioned; I have copies of
all their terminal and junction-point contracts. I know exactly what we
can do, and what we can't do."
The lawyer's comment was frankly praiseful, not to say flattering.
"You're a wonder, Ford--and that's no figure of speech. How on earth did
you manage to do it all at such long range?"
Ford's smile was reminiscent of the obstacles.
"It would take me all night to tell you in detail, Kenneth. But I did
it. It's no mere brag to say that I could walk into the Chicago, Peoria
& Davenport general offices here to-morrow morning and organize a
through service over the P. S-W. and the three stub lines within
twenty-four hours, if I had to."
"Well, that part of it is far enough beyond me," said the attorney. "The
stock-chasing is more in my line. I hope we can keep quiet enough about
it so that the opposition won't guess what we are trying to do. You're
sure it won't be given away from the New York end?"
It was the engineer's turn to shake his head and to look dubious.
"Now you are shouting, Kenneth. I can't tell anything about it. You'll
remember that when I left New York the board had turned the plan down,
definitely and permanently, as I supposed. I should say that our only
safety lies in lightning speed. When you get the options on those
controlling stock majorities snugly on deposit in the Algonquin
National, we can draw our first long breath. Isn't that about the way it
strikes you?"
"It is, precisely," agreed the general counsel, rising and finding his
hat. "And because it does strike me that way, I think I'll go down and
do a little telegraphing to-night."
"Hold on a minute," said Ford, "and I'll give you a message to take
down, if you don't mind. I must answer Adair, and it won't do any harm
to prod him a little--on the secrecy side."
Kenneth waited, with his hand on the door-knob, as it chanced. Hence the
opening of the door a minute or two later was quite without any
preliminary stir of warning in the room of conference. That was possibly
the reason why the lawyer almost fell over a man crouching in the
corridor.
"Hello, there!" said Kenneth; "I beg your pardon."
The man got upon his feet, exhibiting all the signs of intoxication.
"Beg yoursh, I'm sure," he mumbled, and was lurching crookedly away when
the lawyer suddenly came to his senses and grabbed at him. The clutching
hand fell short, and there was an agile foot-race down the corridor,
fruitless for Kenneth, since the fugitive suddenly developed sobriety
enough to run like a deer. Beaten in the foot-race, Kenneth went back
for a word with Ford.
"The battle is on," was the form the word took. "There was a man here,
listening at the key-hole, when I opened the door. How much he overheard
we'll be likely to find out to-morrow when we begin to pull the strings.
Thought I'd give you the pointer. Good night, again."
VIII
THE AUTOMATIC AIR
Set out in cold type, Ford's itinerary for the four days following his
conference with Kenneth would read like the abbreviated diary of a man
dodging the sheriff. His "ticker" memorandum for that period is still in
existence, but the notes are the hurried strokes of the pen of haste,
intelligible, we may say, only to the man who made them. To quote:
"Thursday, nine a.m., Peoria--see Sedgwick; ten--make trackage
contract with T.P. & W.; eleven a.m., Davenport--inventory
motive power--see chief despatcher--get profiles and maps--get copies of
yard contracts--get crossing rights--get total tonnage of grain cars.
Three p.m., Hannibal--see Berdan and whip him into line--inspect
shops--get contracts--get--"
But the string of "gets" fills the page, and is vital now to no living
soul of man, least of all to us who are interested only in finding out
if our young captain of industry actually did make good his boast of
flogging the three short roads into some semblance of a through line in
the brief interval at his disposal; and this without advertising to the
railroad world at large who he represented and what he was doing.
He did it, and without a slip for which he could be held responsible. It
was a wire from the chief office of the Transcontinental in New York, a
telegram inspired by sundry leakages from Pacific Southwestern sources,
that gave him a silent and observant follower in all of his dodgings. Of
this, however, he was in blissful ignorance. Twice, indeed, he sat in
the same Pullman section with his "shadow," quite without suspecting it;
and once he was saved from disaster--also without suspecting it.
It was at a way station in Missouri, and the section-sharing traveling
companion, who had paid only for an hour's ride in the Pullman, was
leaving the train. His hand-bag chanced to be the exact counterpart of
Ford's: what more natural than that he should make the mistake of taking
the wrong one? Ford caught him in the vestibule, and there was a
reëxchange, accompanied by grateful acknowledgments and profuse
apologies from the debarking one. Ford, immersed fathoms deep in his
problems, thought nothing of it; but a moment lost would have been a
cause lost, if he had guessed it. For the mistake was no mistake, and
the hand-bag rescued contained documents for which the Transcontinental
Company would have paid a month's salary of its board of
vice-presidents, charging the amount, not to profit and loss, but rather
to salvage.
It was on the fourth day of the campaign, while Ford was working his way
on an inspection trip over the third link in the short-lines chain, that
two telegrams overtook him.
One was from Adair, announcing the tardy, but now certain triumph of the
expansionist faction in the board of P. S-W. directors, and begging
pathetically for news of the option-getting. The other was signed "K,"
and Ford had a sharp attack of joy when he read it. The attorney had
been successful at all points. The necessary stock majorities were
secured and the certificates were safely on deposit in the Algonquin
National Bank, in Chicago. What remained was only a matter of routine,
provided the P. S-W. bidders would furnish the capital for the purchases.
Ford swamped the local operator at the next way station with a thick
sheaf of "rush" telegrams, left the west-bound train at the first
cross-road junction, and caught a night express on a fast line for
Chicago. Kenneth was waiting for him at the hotel; and after breakfast
there was another telegram from Adair. Matters were still progressing
favorably, and President Colbrith, traveling in his private car,
"Nadia," _via_ the Lake Shore, would be in Chicago the following
morning to take final action in the stock purchases.
Ford gave the message to Kenneth, and the attorney drummed softly on the
table with his finger-tips when he read the announcement.
"We are in for it now," he said with a grimace of dismay. "If Mr.
Colbrith doesn't manage to queer the whole deal, it will be because he
has suffered a complete change of heart."
Ford answered the grimace with a scowl, and the masterful side of him
came uppermost.
"What in the name of common sense were they thinking of to send him out
here?" he gritted.
The general counsel laughed.
"You don't know Mr. Colbrith as well as I do, I fancy," he suggested.
"He is rather hard to suppress. He'll be president until his successor
is elected--or he'll know all the reasons why."