He got no immediate reply. The minds of his guests were traversing the
flat fields in which cattle grazed, that lay between the rapids and the
town.
"You have seen to-day something of what we propose to do, but only some
of it," he went on. "What's the present population of St. Marys?"
"About sixteen hundred," said Filmer thoughtfully.
"Well, gentlemen, assume that what you have seen is but the beginning,
only the breaking of the ground. You may take it from me, you are safe
in that. The population of St. Marys, five years from to-day, should
be,--" here he paused for an impressive moment--"sixteen thousand, and
in ten years, twenty-six thousand. Now where are those people going to
live? Mr. Manson, here, doesn't take me quite seriously, but you,
Judge, can you answer me; or you, Mr. Filmer? A good deal of it will
fall on your shoulders."
"I don't doubt you," answered the mayor, "but I can use all my money in
my business."
"As for me, I'm a government official and haven't any," added Worden,
with a tinge of regret.
"Money has been borrowed before this"--Clark's tones were distinctly
impersonal--"the bank is good and so is the future of the town, as I
see it."
"Why don't you buy some yourself?"
"I don't want any more money," said Clark very simply, "but, gentlemen,
I don't assume that every one feels that way. From this window I can
see farm lands that can be bought for forty dollars an acre on easy
terms, and how would you feel if, after two or three years, it changed
hands at a thousand? I merely mention this because I've seen it take
place elsewhere. Now I'm not going to say that it's going to be worth
a thousand, and I'm not persuading you. I never persuade any one, at
least," he added with a little smile, "not in St. Marys. I only draw
your attention to the circumstances and leave the rest of it, of
course, to your own judgment."
"Then you suggest that we buy?" came in Dibbott.
"Nothing of the kind. It's a matter of indifference to me whether you
gentlemen do the buying or some one else. All I can prophesy is, that
it's going to be done, but not by me or my associates. We have enough
to occupy our attention for some time to come."
Manson edged a bit nearer. "The idea is that while you're investing
millions, we take no risk in investing hundreds, eh?"
"I made no such inference. You will remember that so far as St. Marys
is concerned I have depended on the town for nothing since my first
proposal was accepted."
Dibbott nodded. "That's right. I reckon we're going to be a
residential suburb to the works."
Clark smiled a little. "I lean on just four things, and St. Marys
supplied none of them."
"What are they?"
"Natural laws, physical geography, ample financial backing, and the
need of the world for certain manufactured products. And," he
concluded quizzically, "you'd better forget that I said anything about
land."
There was something suggestively final about this, and presently the
group moved off, loitering across the flat, untenanted fields. Manson
was in the rear, decapitating daisies with his heavy oak stick. A few
minutes later Clark looked up and saw the chief constable's bulk
filling the doorway. He waited placidly.
"Did you mean just what you said about that land?" Manson's voice
sounded a little sheepish, "because I've got a bit saved up, and--"
"Mr. Manson," struck in Clark, "you may approve of me personally, but I
know that you don't believe in my project. You've been at no pains to
conceal that and I respect you for it, but that being the case why
should you, of all men, be interested in land? No, no, don't protest.
I don't mind what you think and you've a perfect right to your own
opinion. What did I say about land? Did I advise you to buy?"
"No, but you evidently wondered why we didn't."
Clark laughed outright. "I wonder at many things, that's my privilege,
and anything I said just now is in contradiction to your judgment. You
strike me as being a man of strong views, so by all means hold on to
them."
But Manson's eyes were turned fixedly on the main chance and he could
not look away. "Of course, I may be wrong," he began awkwardly, "but--"
"And, of course, I may be too, and now you'll excuse me, I've a good
deal to attend to."
Very slowly the chief constable took his way to town. Like many who
came in contact with Clark he had conceived the impression of a strong
and piercing intelligence that, while it gave out much, withheld more;
and it was what he imagined was withheld that now piqued and stimulated
the austerely masked project he had had in view ever since Clark's
directors had so breezily invaded his office months before. Manson
was, in truth, an example of those who, externally impassive and
unemotional, harbor at times a secret and consuming thought at variance
with all outward semblance, and, keeping this remotely hidden, feed it
with all the concentrated fire of an otherwise inactive imagination.
That afternoon he quietly secured an option on a portion of the fields
across which he walked so stolidly, and, with this as a beginning,
turned his thoughts to the acquisition of more and more land.
Simultaneously his expressed views on the outcome of Clark's activities
became more pessimistic than ever.
Early that summer the streets of St. Marys were torn with trenches and
the glass fronts of the wooden stores trembled with the vibration of
blasting. The pipe lines followed exactly the route laid out by the
blue prints Belding had long since deposited with the town council, and
so well known was this route that the slightest variation would have
been pounced upon instantly. Clark, it appeared, did not take much
interest in the work, but turned it over entirely to the engineer, his
own imagination having moved to other things.
New faces in the town ceased to create comment, and, what was more to
the point, mention of St. Marys began to appear in metropolitan papers.
These were read with the peculiar thoroughness of those who, for the
first time, found themselves of definite interest to the outside world.
Simultaneously the air became full of prophecy, rambling and inchoate.
The citizens had not yet come to regard developments as being in any
particular their own. They had--for the best reasons--put no money in,
but now began to profit by changed conditions. The works were still a
thing apart, a new and somewhat romantic area from which anything,
however startling, might any day materialize. Sometimes a few Indians
paddled up to trade and, leaving Filmer's store, would slip silently up
stream, and edging into the backwater at the foot of the rapids, lay
their paddles across the thwarts and stare silently at the great
structures that began to arise. And this, in a way, was the attitude
of most of the folk of St. Marys. They were in it but not of it, and
the long somnolence of the past was too tranquil to be easily
dispelled. But in spite of their indifference the masterful hand of
Clark had set the town definitely on the industrial map. A little
later, the water was turned on and rows and rows of electric lights
glittered down the streets. It was just about this time that Clark
summoned Belding and told him that he desired a house.
This command was, in a way, so intimate that Belding looked foolish.
"What kind of a house?" he said awkwardly.
Clark leaned back in his chair. "You know how, years ago, the Hudson
Bay Company built block houses for their factors? Well, I want one
such as the company used to build, and I expect to be ready to occupy
it within six weeks."
Belding had learned not to ask too many questions, so, for a moment
thought hard. "Where?" he ventured.
"You remember where the old Hudson Bay lock is,--just a hundred feet
beyond that. By the way, do you know how to build a block house?"
Belding got a little red. He had designed power houses and pulp mills
and canals and head gates, but a block house baffled him.
"In those days," began Clark ruminatively, "they were places of
defense. Two stories, the bottom one of stone so that the Indians
couldn't set fire to it. That part is eight feet high and had
loopholes. On top is the other story built of logs, and, by the way, I
want my logs peeled and varnished, and with a pitched roof. That part
overhangs the other by about five feet all round, and that was to make
it possible to drop things on the Indians if they did get up to the
loopholes. Got the idea? And, by the way, I want the Hudson Bay lock
cleaned out and rebuilt just as it was before. No cement--but random
masonry and gates of hewn timber--they hewed everything a hundred years
ago--grass around it and a sign saying what it was and when. Fix it up
and make a job of it--that's all, and make that block house basement of
field stone--you can see why."
Whereupon Clark turned to a pile of letters and telegrams and promptly
forgot all about Belding.
In six weeks, to a day, he moved in, and it is a question whether any
of his subsequent achievements occasioned such interest in St. Marys.
Old inhabitants were there who had memories of the Hudson Bay Company
and the thirty foot bark canoes that once voyaged from Lake Superior,
and, treading the upper reaches of a branch of the rapids, slid into
the old lock and were let gingerly down while the crew held their
paddles against the rough stone walls of the tiny but ancient chamber.
Now the thing in its entirety had been recreated. The block house sat
squat beside the lock, with its mushroom top projecting just as in
years before. Clark, it seemed, was, after all traditional, and not
one who lived entirely in the future, and with this touch of romance he
took new attributes. His Japanese cook inhabited the lower story
through which one entered to mount to the main floor. Inside the place
revealed the taste of the man of the world. It looked pigmy beside the
enormous structures which began to rise hard by, but was all the more
diminutively impressive. One passed it on the way to the works, and
often by night drifted out the sound of Clark's piano mingling with the
dull boom of the rapids. For it would seem that these were the two
voices to which the brain of this extraordinary man took most heed.