The Wreckers

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 – "