engine, and the rest of us were moving along the other way, the boss
setting the pace with Maclise at his elbow. Three rail-lengths ahead of
the stopped light engine we came to the break. The head engineer and
another man were down on their hands and knees examining it, and when
they stood up at our coming, I saw that the other man was Mr. Van Britt.
"What?" said the boss; "you here?"
Our only millionaire nodded.
"I ride the line once in a while--just to see how things are going," he
returned crisply.
The boss didn't say anything more, but he knelt to look at the break. It
was a trap, all right, set, beyond all question of doubt, to catch the
private-car special. The fish-plates had been removed from a joint in
the left-hand rail and the end of the downhill rail had been sprung out
to make a derailing switch, which was held in position by the insertion
of one of the fish-plates between the rail-webs. If we had hit the trap,
going at even ordinary mountain-climbing speed, there would have been
nothing left to tell the tale but a heap of scrap at the bottom of the
thousand-foot dump.
There wasn't very much talk made by anybody. Under Mr. Van Britt's
directions the engineer and fireman of the pilot engine brought tools
and the break was repaired. All they had to do was to spring the bent
rail back into place and spike it, and bolt the fish-plates on again.
While they were doing it the boss stood aside with Mr. Van Britt, and I
heard what was said. Mr. Van Britt began it by saying, "We don't need
any detectives this time. You are on your way to Strathcona to put a
crimp in the smelter squeeze--the last of the Red Tower monopolies--so
Dawes told me. He was probably foolish enough to tell others, and the
word was pasted to scrag you before you could get to it. This trap was
set to catch your special."
"Evidently," barked the boss; and then: "How did you happen to be here
on that engine, Upton?"
"I've been ahead of you all the way up from Portal City," was the calm
reply. "I thought it might be safer if you had a pilot to show you the
way. I guess I must have had a hunch."
The boss turned on him like a flash.
"You had something more than a hunch: what was it--a wire?"
Mr. Van Britt gritted his teeth a little, but he told the truth.
"Yes; a friend of ours tipped me off--not about the broken track, of
course, but just in a general way. I knew you'd bully me if I should
tell you that I was going to run a pilot ahead of you, so I didn't tell
you."
The break was repaired and the men were taking the tools back to the
engine. As we turned to follow them, Mr. Norcross said: "Just one more
question, Upton. Did your wire come from the capital?"
But at this Mr. Van Britt seemed to forget that he was talking to his
general manager.
"It's none of your damned business where it came from," he snapped back;
and that ended it.
XXIII
The Major's Premonition
Notwithstanding the slow run and the near-disaster on Slide Mountain, we
had our meeting with the Strathcona mine owners the following morning;
and that much of the special train trip served its purpose, anyway. The
boss met the miners a good bit more than half-way, and gave them their
relief--and the Hatch-owned smelter its knock-out--by promising that our
traffic department would make an ore tariff to the independent smelter
on the other side of the range low enough to protect the producers.
They tried to give him an ovation for that--the Strathcona men--did give
him a banquet luncheon at the Shaft-House Grill, a luxurious club fitted
up with rough beams and rafters to make it look like its name. And on
account of the banquet it was nearly three o'clock in the afternoon
before we got away for the return to Portal City.
We had seen nothing of Mr. Van Britt during the day, and until we came
to start out I thought maybe he had gone back to Portal City on the
regular train. But at the station I saw the pilot engine just ahead of
us again, and though I couldn't be quite sure, I thought I caught a
glimpse of our athletic little general superintendent on the fireman's
box.
The boss was pretty quiet all the way on the run down the mountain to
Bauxite, and, for a wonder, he didn't pitch into the work at the desk.
Instead, he sat in one of the big wicker chairs facing a rear window,
smoking, and apparently absorbed in watching the crooked track of the
branch unreel itself and race backward as we slid down the grades.
I could tell pretty well what he was thinking about. For six months he
had been working like a horse to pull the Short Line out of the mudhole
of contempt and hostility into which a more or less justly aroused
public enmity had dumped it; and now, just as he was beginning to get it
up over the edge, he had been plainly notified that he was going to be
killed if he didn't let go.
On the reverse curves he could see the pilot engine feeling its way down
the mountain ahead of us, and I guess that gave him another twinge. It's
tough on a man to think that he can't ride over his own railroad without
being hedged up and guarded. But the really tough part of it was not so
much the mere fact of getting killed. It was the other and sharper fact
that, just as the way seemed to be opening out to better things for the
Short Line, a mis-set switch or a bullet in the dark would knock the
entire hard-built reform experiment into a cocked hat.
There was every reason, now, to hope that the experiment was going to be
a success, at least, at our end of it, if it could go on just a little
farther. Slowly but surely the new policy was winning its way with the
public. Traffic was booming, and almost from the first the Interstate
Commerce inspectors had let us alone, just as the police will let a man
alone when there is reason to believe that he has taken a brace and is
trying his best to walk straight.
Also, for the drastic intrastate regulations--the laws about headlights,
and safety devices, and grade crossings, and full crews, and the making
of reports to this, that, and the other State official; laws which, if
enforced to the letter would have left the railroad management with
little to do but to pay the bills; for these something better was to be
substituted. We had Governor-elect Burrell's assurance for this. He had
met the boss in the lobby of the Bullard the day after the election, and
I had heard him say:
"You have kept your promise, Norcross. For the first time in its
history, your railroad has let a State campaign take its course without
bullying, bribery, or underhanded corruption. You'll get your reward. We
are going to have new laws, and a Railroad Commission with authority to
act both ways--for the people when it's needed, and for the carriers
when they need it. If you can show that the present laws are unjust to
your earning powers, you'll get relief and the people of this
commonwealth will cheerfully pay the bills."
Past all this, though, and even past the murderous machinations of the
disappointed grafters, there was the old sore: the original barrier that
no amount of internal reform could break down. There could be no
permanent prosperity for the Short Line while its majority stock was
controlled by men who cared absolutely nothing for the property as a
working factor in the life and activities of the region it served.
That was the way Mrs. Sheila had put it to the boss, one evening along
in the summer when they were sitting out on the Kendricks' porch, and I
had butted in, as usual, with a bunch of telegrams that didn't matter.
She had said that the experiment _couldn't_ be a success unless the
conditions could be changed in some way; that so long as the railroads
were owned or controlled by men of the Mr. Dunton sort and used as
counters in the money-making game, there would never be any real peace
between the companies and the people at large.
I knew that the boss had taken that saying of hers for another of the
inspirations, and that he believed it clear through to the bottom. But I
guess he didn't see any way as yet in which the Duntons could be shaken
out, or just what could be made to happen if they were shaken out.
It was at Bauxite Junction that we picked up Mr. Hornack. He had been
down in the sugar-beet country on a business trip, and had come up as
far as Bauxite on a freight, after the Sedgwick operator had told him
that our special was on the way home from Strathcona, and that he could
catch it at the Junction.
I was glad when I saw him come in. I had just been thinking that it
wasn't healthy for the boss to be grilling there at the car window so
long alone, and I knew Mr. Hornack would keep him talking about
something or other all the rest of the way in.
For a little while they talked business, and I took my chance to stretch
out on the leather lounge behind their chairs and kind of half doze off.
By and by the business talk wound itself up and I heard Mr. Hornack say:
"I saw Ripley going in on Number Six this morning, and he had company;
Mrs. Macrae, and the major's wife, and the husky little-girl cousin.
They've been visiting at the capital, so they told me, and I expect the
major will be mighty glad to see them back."
I didn't hear what Mr. Norcross said, if he said anything at all, but if
I had been stone deaf I think I should have heard the thing that Mr.
Hornack said when he went on.
"I heard something the other day in Portal City that seems pretty hard
to believe, Norcross. It was at one of Mrs. Stagford's 'evenings,' and I
was sitting out a dance with a certain young woman who shall be
nameless. We were speaking of the Kendricks, and she gave me a rather
broad hint that Mrs. Macrae isn't a widow at all; that her husband is
still living."
My heavens! I had figured out a thousand ways in which the boss might
get wised up to the dreadful truth, but never anything like this; to
have it dropped on him that way out of a clear sky!
For a minute or two he didn't say anything, but when he did speak, I saw
that the truth wasn't going to take hold.
"That is gossip, pure and simple, Hornack. The Kendricks are my friends,
and I have been as intimate in their household as any outsider could be.
It's merely idle gossip, I can assure you."
"Maybe so," said Mr. Hornack, sort of drawing in his horns when he saw
how positive the boss was about it. "I'm not beyond admitting that the
young woman who told me is a little inclined that way. But the story was
pretty circumstantial: it went so far as to assert that 'Macrae' wasn't
Mrs. Sheila's married name at all, and to say that her long stay with
her Western cousins was--and still is--really a flight from conditions
that were too humiliating to be borne."
"I don't care what was said, or who said it," the boss cut in brusquely.
"It's ridiculous to suppose that any woman, and especially a woman like
Sheila Macrae, would attempt to pass herself off as a widow when she
wasn't one."
"I know," said the traffic manager, temporizing a little. "But on the
other hand, I've never heard the major, or any one else, say outright
that she was a widow. It seems to be just taken for granted. It stirred
me up a bit on Van Britt's account. You don't go anywhere to mix and
mingle socially, but it's the talk of the town that Upton is in over his
head in that quarter."
I shut my eyes and held my breath. Mr. Hornack hadn't the slightest idea
what thin ice he was skating over, or how this easy mention of Mr. Van
Britt might be just like rubbing salt into a fresh cut. By this time it
was growing dark, and we were running into Portal City, and I was mighty
glad that it couldn't last much longer. The boss didn't speak again
until the yard switches were clanking under the car, and then he said:
"Upton is well able to take care of himself, Hornack, and I don't think
we need worry about him," and then over his shoulder to me: "Jimmie,
it's time to wake up. We're pulling in."
As he always did on a return from a trip, Mr. Norcross ran up to his
office to see if there was anything pressing, before he did anything
else. May was still at his desk, and in answer to the boss's question he
shook his head.
"No; nobody that couldn't wait," he said, referring to the day's
callers. "Mr. Hatch was up with a couple of men that I didn't know, but
he only wanted to inquire if you would be in the office this evening
after dinner. I told him I'd find out when you came, and let him know by
'phone."
I thought, after all that had happened, Hatch certainly had his nerve to
want to come and make a talk with the man his hired assassins were
trying to murder. But if Mr. Norcross took that view of it, he didn't
show it. On the contrary, he told Fred it would be all right to
telephone Hatch; that he was coming down after dinner and the office
would be open, as usual.
When things got that far along I slipped out and went to Mr. Van Britt's
office at the other end of the hall. Bobby Kelso was there, holding the
office down, and I asked him where I could find Tarbell. Luckily, he was
able to tell me that Tarbell was at that moment down in the station
restaurant, eating his supper; so down I went and butted in with my
story of the Hatch call, and how it was to be repeated a little later
on.
"I'll be there," said Tarbell; and with that load off my mind, I mogged
off up-town to the club to get my own dinner.
When I broke into the grill-room at the railroad club, I found that Mr.
Norcross had beaten me to it by a few minutes; that he had already
ordered his dinner at a table with Major Kendrick. I suppose, by good
rights, I ought to have gone off into a corner by myself, but I saw that
the boss had tipped a chair at the end of the table where I usually sat,
so I just went ahead and took it.
Coming in late, that way, I didn't get the first of the talk, but I took
it that the boss had been saying something about his rare good luck in
having the major for a table-mate two days in succession.
"The honoh is mine, my deah boy," the genial old Kentuckian was telling
him as I sat down. "They told me in the despatchuh's office that youh
special was expected in, so I telephoned Sheila and the madam not to
wait for me."
"Then you stayed down town purposely to see me?" asked the boss.
"In a manneh, yes. I was by way of picking up a bit of information late
this afte'noon that I thought ought to be passed on to you without any
great delay."
The boss looked up quickly. "What is it, Major?" he inquired. "Are you
going to tell me that something new has broken loose?"
"I wish I might be that he'pfully definite--I do so, Graham. But I
can't. It's me'uhly a bit of street talk. They're telling it, oveh at
the Commercial Club, that Hatch and John Marshall--you know him,--that
Sedgwick stock jobbeh who has been so active in this Citizens' Storage &
Warehouse business--have finally come togetheh."
"In a business way, you mean?"
The major gave a right and left twist to his big mustaches and shrugged
one shoulder.
"They are most probably calling it business," he rejoined.
The boss nodded. "I know what has happened. In spite of the fact that
the local people know that their economic salvation depends upon a wide
and even distribution of their C. S. & W. stock, there has been a good
bit of buying and selling and swapping around. I remember you prophesied
that in a little while we'd have another trust in the hands of a few
men. You may recollect that I didn't dispute your prediction. I merely
said that our ground leases--the fact that all of the C. S. & W. plants
and buildings are on railroad land--would still give us the whip-hand
over any new monopoly that might be formed."
"Yes, suh; I remember you said that," the major allowed.
"Very good. Marshall and his pocket syndicate may have acquired a voting
control in C. S. & W., and they may be willing now to patch up an
alliance with Hatch. But in that case the new monopoly will still lack
the one vital ingredient: the power to fix prices. If there is a new
combine, and it tries to make the producers and merchants pay more than
the agreed percentages for storage and handling----"
"I know," the major cut in. "You-all will rise up in the majesty of youh
wrath and put it out of business by terminating the leases. I hope you
may: I sutt'inly do hope you may. But you'll recollect that I didn't
advise you on that point, suh. You took Misteh Ripley's opinion. Maybe
the cou'ts will hold with you, but, candidly, Graham, I doubt it--doubt
it right much."
The boss didn't seem to be much scared up over the doubt. He just smiled
and said we'd be likely to find out what was in the wind, and that
before very long. Then he spoke of Hatch's afternoon call at our
offices, and mentioned the fact that the Red Tower president would
probably try again, later in the evening.
The major let the business matter drop, and he was working his way
patiently through the salad course when he looked up to say:
"Was there anything in youh trip to Strathcona to warrant Sheila's
little telegraphic dangeh signal, Graham?"
"Nothing worth mentioning," said the boss, without turning a hair; doing
it, as I made sure, because he didn't want Mrs. Sheila to be mixed up in
the plotting business, even by implication.
The major didn't press the inquiry any farther, and when he spoke again
it was of an entirely different matter.
"Away along in the beginning, somebody--I think it was John
Chadwick--spoke of you as a man with a sawt of raw-head-and-bloody-bones
tempeh, Graham: what have you done with that tempeh in these heah latteh
days?"
This time the boss's smile was a good-natured grin.
"Temper is not always a matter of temperament, Major. Sometimes it is
only a means to an end. Much of my experience has been in the
construction camps, where I have had to deal with men in the raw. Just
the same, there have been moments within the past six months when I have
been sorely tempted to burn the wires with a few choice words of the
short and ugly variety and throw up my job."
"Which, as you may say, brings us around to President Dunton," put in
the old lawyer shrewdly. "He is still opposing youh policies?"
"Up to a few weeks ago he was still hounding me to do something that
would boost the stock, regardless of what the something should be, or of
its effect upon the permanent value of the property."
Again the major held his peace, as if he were debating some knotty point
with himself--the table-clearing giving him his chance.
"Did I undehstand you to say that these--ah--suggestions from Dunton had
stopped?" he inquired, after the little coffees had been served.
"Temporarily, at least. I haven't heard anything from New York--not
lately."
"Then Dunton's nephew hasn't made himself known to you?"
"Collingwood? Hardly. I'm not in Mr. Howie Collingwood's set--which is
one of the things I have to be thankful for. But this is news: I didn't
know he was out here."
The news-giver bent his head gravely in confirmation of the fact.
"He's heah, I'm sorry to say, Graham. He has been heah quite some little
time, vibratin' round with the Grigsbys and the Gannons and a lot mo' of
the new-rich people up at the capital."
It was the boss's turn to go silent, and I could guess pretty well what
he was thinking. The presence of President Dunton's nephew in the West
might mean much or nothing. But I could imagine the boss was thinking
that his own single experience with Collingwood was enough to make him
wish that the nephew of Big Money would stay where he belonged--among
the high-rollers and spenders of his own set in the effete East.
"I can't quite get the proper slant on men of the Collingwood type," he
remarked, after the pause. "The only time I ever saw him was on the
night before the directors' meeting last spring. He was here with his
uncle's party in the special train, and that night at the Bullard he had
been drinking too much and made a braying ass of himself. I had to knock
him silly before I could get him up to his room."
"You did that, Graham?--for a strangeh?"
"I did it for the comfort of all concerned. As I say, he was making an
ass of himself."
There was another break, and then the major looked up with a little
frown.
"That was befo' you had met Sheila?" he asked, thoughtfully.
"Why, no; not exactly. It was the same night--the night we all dropped
off the 'Flyer' and got left behind at Sand Creek. You may remember that
we came in later on Mr. Chadwick's special."
The major made no reply to this, and pretty soon the boss was on his
feet and excusing himself once more on the after-dinner smoking stunt,
saying that he was obliged to go back to the office. The major got up
and shook hands with him as if he were bidding him good-by for a long
journey.
"You are going down to keep that appointment with Misteh Rufus Hatch?"
he said. "You take an old man's advice, Graham, my boy, and keep youh
hand--figuratively speaking, of cou'se--on youh gun. It runs in my mind,
somehow, that you are going to be hit--and hit right hard. No, don't ask
me why. Call it a rotten suspicion, and let it go at that. Come up to
the house, afte'wards, if you have time, and tell me I'm a false
prophet, suh; I hope you may."
The boss promised plenty cheerfully as to the calling part, as you'd
know he would since he hadn't seen Mrs. Sheila for I don't know how
long; and a few minutes later we were on our way, walking briskly, to
keep the Fred-May-made engagement with the chief of the grafters.
XXIV
The Dead-Line
We found the three disappointed afternoon callers already on hand when
we reached the headquarters. Fred May was back from his dinner, and he
had let them in as far as the ante-room. The boss said, "Good evening,
gentlemen," as pleasant as a basket of chips; told Fred he might go, and
invited the waiting bunch into the private office, snapping on the
lights as he opened the door.
In the big room he indicated the sitting possibilities, and the three
callers planted themselves in a semicircle at the desk end. No
introductions were needed. One of the pair Hatch had brought with him
was a lawyer named Marrow, whose home town was Sedgwick; a sharp-nosed,
ferret-eyed man who figured as one of the many "local counsels" for Red
Tower. The other, Dedmon, was a political place-hunter who had once been
sheriff of Arrowhead County.
"You've kept us cooling our heels in your waiting-room for just about
the last time, Mr. Norcross!" was the spiteful way in which Hatch opened
fire. "We've come to talk straight business with you this trip, and it
will be more to your interest than ours if you'll send your clerk away."
While they had been dragging up their chairs and sitting down, I had
heard Fred May lock up his typewriter and go, and had been listening
anxiously for some noise that would tell me Tarbell was on deck. I
thought I heard the door of the outer office open again just as Hatch
spoke and it comforted me a whole lot.
The boss didn't pay any attention to Hatch's suggestion about sending me
away; acted as if he hadn't heard it. Opening his desk he took a box of
cigars from a drawer and passed it. Dedmon, the ex-sheriff, helped
himself, but the lawyer and Hatch both refused. With this concession to
the small hospitalities the boss swung his chair to face the trio.
"My time is yours, gentlemen," he said; and Hatch jumped in like a man
fairly spoiling for a fight.
"For six months, Norcross, you've been mowing a pretty wide swath out
here in the tall hills. You've been posing as a little tin god before
the people of this State, and all the while you've been knifing and
slugging and black-jacking private capital and private business wherever
and whenever they have happened to get in your way. Now, at the end of
the lane, by Jupiter, we've got you dead to rights--you and your damned
railroad!"
"Cut out as many of the personalities as you can, and come to the
point," suggested the boss quietly.
"You think I haven't any point to come to?" barked the grafter, with
rising anger. "I'll show you! You've beaten us in the courts, and your
imported lawyers have----"
"Excuse me, Mr. Hatch," was the curt interruption. "Abuse isn't
argument. State your case, if you have one."
"Oh, I've got the case, all right. You've been keeping your finger on
the pulse, or you think you have, but I can wise you up to a few things
that have got away from you. You thought you were the only original
trust-buster when you started your scheme of locally owned elevators and
warehouses and coal- and lumber-yards and ran us out of business. But
I'm here to tell you that your fine-haired little deal to rob us began
to die about as soon as it was born."
"How so?" inquired the boss, just as though Major Kendrick hadn't
already given him his pointer about the how.