For a full minute Philip paced back and forth without speaking. Then he
stopped, and faced Gregson, who was staring at him.
"A million, Greggy," he repeated, in the same soft voice. "A hundred
thousand dollars to my credit--in a First National Bank! While I was up
here hustling to get affairs on a working basis, eager to show the
government and the people what we could do and would do, triumphing in
our victory over the trust, and figuring each day on my scheme of
making this big, rich north deal a staggering blow to those accursed
combinations down there, they were at work, too. While I was dreaming
and doing these things, Brokaw and the others had formed the Great
Northern Fish and Development Company, had incorporated it under the
laws of New Jersey, and had already sold over a million dollars' worth
of stock! The thing was in full swing when I reached headquarters. I
had authorized Brokaw to act for me, and I found that I was
vice-president of one of the biggest legalized robbery combinations of
recent years. More money had been spent in advertising than in
development work. Hundreds of thousands of copies of my letters from
the north, filled to the brim with the enthusiasm I had felt for my
work and projects, had been sent out broadcast, luring buyers of stock.
In one of these letters I had said that if a half of the lakes I had
mapped out were fished the north could be made to produce a million
tons of fish a year. Two hundred thousand copies of this letter were
sent out, but Brokaw and his associates had omitted the words, 'If a
half of the lakes mapped out were fished.' It would take fifteen
thousand men, a thousand refrigerator cars, and a capital of five
million to bring this about. I was stunned by the enormity of their
fraud, and yet when I threatened to bring the whole thing to smash
Brokaw only laughed and pointed out that not a single caution had been
omitted. In all of the advertising it was frankly stated that our
license was provisional, subject to withdrawal if the company did not
keep within laws. That very frankness was an advertisement. It was
something different. It struck home where it was meant to strike--among
small and unfledged investors. It roped them in by thousands. The
shares were ten dollars each, and non-assessable. Five out of six
orders were from one to five shares; ninety-nine out of every hundred
were not above ten shares. It was damnable. The very people for whom I
wanted the north to fight had been humbugged to the tune of a million
and a quarter dollars. Within a year Brokaw and the others had floated
a scheme which was worse than any trust, for the trusts pay back a part
of their steals in dividends. And _I_ was responsible! Do you realize
that, Greggy? It was I who started the project. It was my reports from
the north which chiefly induced people to buy. And this company--a
company of robbers licensed under the law--I am its founder and its
vice-president!"
Philip dropped back into his chair. The face that he turned to Gregson
was damp with perspiration, though the room was chilly.
"You stayed in," said Gregson.
"I had to. There wasn't a loophole left open to me. There wasn't a
single point at which I could bring attack against Brokaw and the
others. They were six veritable Bismarcks of deviltry and shrewdness.
They hadn't over-stepped the law. They had sold a million and a quarter
of stock on a hundred-thousand-dollar investment, but Brokaw only
laughed when I raged at this. 'Why, Philip,' he said, 'we value our
license alone at over a million!' And there was no law which could
prevent them from placing that value upon it, or more. There was one
thing that I could do--and only one. I could resign, decline to accept
my stock and the hundred thousand, and publicly announce why I had
broken off my connections with the company. I was about to do this when
cooler judgment prevailed. It occurred to me that there would have to
be an accounting. The company might sell a million and a quarter of
stock--but in the end there would have to be an accounting. If I was
out of the game it would be easily made. If I was in--well, do you see,
Greggy? There was still a chance of making the company win out as a
legitimate enterprise, even though it began under the black flag of
piratical finance and fraud. Brokaw and the others were astonished at
the stand I took. It was like throwing a big, ripe plum into the fire
Brokaw was the first to hedge. He came over to my side in a private
interview which we had, and for the first time I convinced him
completely of the tremendous possibilities before us. To my surprise he
began to show actual enthusiasm in my favor. We figured out how the
company, if properly developed, could be made to pay a dividend of
fifty cents a share on the stock issued within two years. This, I
thought, would be at least a partial return of the original steal.
Brokaw worked the thing through in his own way. He was authorized to
vote for one of the directors, who was in Europe, and he won over two
of the others. As a consequence we voted all of the money in the
treasury, nearly six hundred thousand dollars, and the remainder of the
stock that was on the market, for development purposes. Brokaw then
made the proposition that the company buy up any interest that wished
to withdraw. The two M. P.'s and a professional promoter from Toronto
immediately sold out at fifty thousand each. With their original
hundred thousand these three retired with an aggregate steal of nearly
half a million. Pretty good work for yours truly, eh, Greggy! Good
Heaven, think of it! I started out to strike a blow, to launch a
gigantic project for the people, and this was what I had hatched!
Robbery, bribery, fraud--"
He paused, his hands clenched until the blue veins stood out on them
like whipcords.
"And--"
Gregson spoke, uneasily.
"And what?"
Philip's fingers relaxed their grip on the table.
"If that had been all, I wouldn't have called you up here," he
continued. "I've taken a long time in coming down to the real hell of
the affair, because I wanted you to understand the situation from the
beginning. After I left Brokaw I came north again. I possessed all the
funds necessary to make an honest working organization out of the
Northern Fish and Development Company. I hired two hundred additional
men, added twenty new fishing-stations, began a second road-bed to the
main line, and started a huge dam at Blind Indian Lake. We had thirty
horses, driven up through the wilderness from Le Pas, and twenty teams
on the way. There didn't appear to be an important obstacle in the path
of our success, and I had recovered most of my old enthusiasm when
Brokaw sprung a new mine under my feet.
"He had written a long letter almost immediately after I left him,
which had been delayed at several places. In it he told me that he had
discovered a plot to wreck our enterprise, that some powerful force was
about to be pitted against us in the very country we were holding. I
could see that Brokaw was tremendously worked up when he wrote the
letter, and that for once he felt himself outwitted by a rival faction,
and realized to the full a danger which it took me some time to
comprehend. He had discovered absolute evidence, he said, that the
bunch of trust capitalists whom he had beaten were about to attack us
in another way. Their forces were already moving into the north
country. Their object was to stir up the country against us, to bring
about that condition of unrest and antagonism between the people of the
north and ourselves which would compel the government to take away our
license. Remember, this license was only provisional. It was, in fact,
left to the people of the north to decide whether we should remain
among them or not. If they turned against us there would be only one
thing for the government to do.
"At first Brokaw's letter caused me no very great uneasiness. I knew
the people up here. I knew that the Indian, the Breed, the Frenchman,
and the White of this God's country were as invulnerable to bribery as
Brokaw himself is to the pangs of conscience. I loved them. I had faith
in them. I knew them to possess an honor which is not known down there,
where we have a church on every four corners, and where the Word of God
is preached day and night on the open streets. I felt myself warming
with indignation as I replied to Brokaw, resenting his insinuations as
to the crimes which a 'half-savage' people might be induced to commit
for a little whisky and a little money. And then--"
Whittemore wiped his face. The lines settled deeper about his mouth.
"Greggy, a week after I received this letter two warehouses were burned
on the same night at Blind Indian Lake. They were three hundred yards
apart. There is absolutely no doubt that it was incendiarism."
He waited in silence, but Gregson still sat watching him in silence.
"That was the beginning--three months ago. Since then some mysterious
force has been fighting us at every step. A week after the warehouses
burned, a dredge and boat-building yard, which we had constructed at
considerable expense at the mouth of the Gray Beaver, was destroyed by
fire. A little later a 'premature' explosion of dynamite cost us ten
thousand dollars and two weeks' labor of fifty men. I organized a
special guard service, composed of fifty of my best men, but it seemed
to do no good. Since then we have lost three miles of road-bed,
destroyed by a washout. A terrific charge of dynamite had been used to
let down upon us the water of a lake which was situated at the top of a
ridge near our right of way. Whoever our enemies are, they seem to know
our most secret movements, and attack us whenever we leave a vulnerable
point open. The most surprising part of the whole affair is this: in
spite of my own efforts to keep our losses quiet the rumor has spread
for hundreds of miles around us, even reaching Churchill, that the
northerners have declared war against our enterprise and are determined
to drive us out. Two-thirds of my men believe this. MacDougall, my
engineer, believes it. Between my working forces and the Indians,
French, and half-breeds about us there has slowly developed a feeling
of suspicion and resentment. It is growing--every day, every hour. If
it continues it can result in but two things--ruin for ourselves,
triumph for those who are getting at us in this dastardly manner. If
something is not done very soon--within a month--perhaps less--the
country will run with the blood of vengeance from Churchill to the
Barrens. If what I expect to happen does happen there will be no
government road built to the Bay, the new buildings at Churchill will
turn gray with disuse, the treasures of the north will remain
undisturbed, the country itself will slip back a hundred years. The
forest people will be filled with hatred and suspicion so long as the
story of great wrong travels down from father to son. And this wrong,
this crime--"
Philip's face was white, cold, almost passionless in the grim hardness
that had settled in it. He unfolded a long typewritten letter, and
handed it to Gregson.
"That letter is the final word," he explained. "It will tell you what I
have not told you. In some way it was mixed in my mail and I did not
discover the error until I had opened it. It is from the headquarters
of our enemies, addressed to the man who is in charge of their plot up
here."
"He waited, scarce breathing, while Gregson bent over the typewritten
pages. He noted the slow tightening of the other's fingers as he turned
from the first sheet to the second; he watched Gregson's face, the slow
ebbing of color, the gray white that followed it, the stiffening of his
arms and shoulders as he finished. Then Gregson looked up.
"Good God!" he breathed.
For a full half-minute the two men gazed at each other across the
table, without speaking.