There fell a moment's silence, instantly recognized by all four as the
precursor of grave events. Birch had spoken the thought that lurked in
all their minds. To continue running meant another payroll to be met.
It now appeared suicidal to have stretched their resources to the limit
of their credit, but not one of them had remotely dreamed that a few
thousand tons of steel rails were to drag the whole structure to toppling
destruction. Birch, as usual, first pulled himself together.
"It's put up or shut up, and we've got to tell Clark right now."
Little Riggs sighed despondently. This meeting would soon be over and
the decision made, after which he would have to face a totally unexpected
set of conditions and a circle of friends and investors who would regard
him with close and uncomfortable interest.
"Well, I suppose it's shut up!" he hazarded unsteadily.
Birch looked inquiringly at the other two, who nodded without speaking,
then began to write. The rest did not even glance at each other, but
found absorption in walls and windows and the big map of poignant memory,
while the long, waxen fingers moved inexorably on.
"What about this?"
"'Under existing conditions and the impossibility of making immediate
financial arrangements for current needs directors decide best to close
down all work of every kind at once, giving notice that this will be only
temporary. You will report here as soon as in your judgment you can
wisely come down.' Is that all right?"
Stoughton bit at his thumbnail and nodded. "I suppose so--and there'll
be hell to pay in St. Marys, eh, Wimperley? Our friend the chief
constable will be working over time. Remember the beggar? The damn fool
was right too."
"Yes, it's all right," said Wimperley, "and now I suppose there'll be
writs and injunctions enough to fill the tailrace. We'd better get out
and arrange some support for the market. Birch, you compound a
comforting statement for the papers. We adjourn till tomorrow at
nine-thirty."
They did adjourn, but lingered for an hour digging into the past seven
years. It was a talk such as one might expect under the circumstances.
Charged with an apprehension but thinly veiled by manner and speech,
events took on for them no perspective. They were too close at hand.
All this was so intimately their own and Clark's responsibility that
every other consideration became instantly submerged, and it was a matter
of living for the day, if not for the hour. Had any one at this time
told Wimperley or Stoughton that for a pace or two they had merely fallen
out of step in the march of progress, and that however depressing might
be the present aspect of affairs it did not really affect the preordained
outcome, they would have flouted the thought. It is not given to many
men to place themselves correctly in the general scheme of the world, and
to fairly estimate their own contribution. Thus it was that Wimperley
and his associates read on the screen of the present only the word
"failure," and were conscious chiefly of a certain self contempt for the
arduous part they had played. At the last moment success had been
snatched from their grasp.
Stoughton walked slowly home. He was thinking of Manson, the pessimist,
who had been right. And such is the interlinking chain of life. Manson,
at this moment, was sitting in his office, while his mind harked
aimlessly back to the first time he had met the men from Philadelphia.
He stared at a telegram that trembled between his thick fingers. His
broad face was gray and ghastly. He had been here motionless for some
time, when a gentle knock sounded at the door and his wife came timidly
in. One glance at his face, and her arms were round his neck.
"What is it, Peter?" she quavered.
He did not look up but held the message so that she might read it.
Sold you out to-day on stop loss order at thirty-two margin being
exhausted. Farthing.