# Scientific Sprague/Chapter 6
### VI The High Kibosh

SINCE it is a Western boast that the West does nothing by halves, the Brewster Town and Country Club owns two houses; a handsome pink-lava home on one of the quieter business streets of the city, and a rambling, overgrown bungalow at the golf-links on the north shore of the High Line reservoir lake, rechristened, in honor of Colonel Baldwin's pretty daughter, "Lake Corona."
On Saturday afternoons, which are bank holidays in the progressive little inter-mountain city, the links at Lake Corona are well patronized; and on a certain Saturday in early September, in the year written down in the annals of the inter- mountain region as "the year of the great rail- road war," one of the players was the big-muscled athlete who figured for the Brewsterites as an expert soil-tester in the Government service, and whose nickname in the Timanyoni country was "Scientific Sprague."
Sprague's opponent on the links on this particular Saturday afternoon was Stillings, the railroad lawyer; and at the conclusion of the game, which had been a rather easy walk-over for the big athlete, Stillings offered the winner a seat in his runabout for the return to Brewster.
"Sorry, but I can't go with you this time, Robert," said the heavy-weight, when he had tipped his caddie and struggled into his coat. "Maxwell is coming out to dinner and I promised to wait for him. He thinks he is up for another match game with the big-leaguers."
Stillings paused with his hand on the dash of the runabout. "That so?" he queried. "More piracy?
"Nothing actually in sight, as yet. But Dick has been getting fresh tips from the New York head-quarters. The big-money people who want your railroad have been keeping pretty quiet since the Mesquite fizzle; possibly they were afraid you folks might have the evidence on them. But now the air seems to be full of lightning again, and nobody, not even President Ford himself, appears to know just where it is going to strike."
The lawyer reached over and retarded the spark on the racing engines of the little car.
"It's a queer fight," he commented. "I never heard of anything just like it before. Of course, we all know what it means: the Transcontinental needs our five-hundred-odd miles of Nevada Short Line to put in with its Jack's Canyon branch for a short cut to the southern coast. Ordinarily, those things are fought out on the floor of the Stock Exchange, and the people who are operating the railroad never know what hits them until they're safely dead. If the big fellows want the Short Line so bad, why the dickens don't they go in and buy it up decently?"
The large man who had played such a successful game of golf winked one eye solemnly.
"You wouldn't expect a Government chemist to find you the answer to any such conundrum as that, would you?" he asked, in cheerful irony.
"I'll bet you know, just the same," asserted Stillings confidently.
"I do happen to know, Robert," was the even-toned reply. "A financial transaction entered into in the early summer by the Ford management—a transaction having nothing whatever to do with the fight—makes a break in prices absolutely necessary before the control can be acquired. What the Ford people did was to build a solid wall of protection around themselves without knowing it or intending to. They deposited something like sixty per cent of the Short Line stock with a syndicate of New York and Boston banks as collateral for a loan to be used in double-tracking."
"Still, I don't see," objected the lawyer.
"Don't you? That sixty per cent of the stock—which is the control—can't be touched by any fireworks business on the Exchange. The big-money people have played the market up and down with the forty per cent which is not pooled, and nothing has happened. The loaning banks have merely sat tight in the boat, knowing that they held the joint control of a good paying property, and that no amount of sky-rocketing on the Street could make any difference, any real difference, in the value of their collateral so long as the property itself was earning dividends."
"That is good as far as it goes," said Stillings, with a frown of perplexity. "But it doesn't explain why the big-money crowd, or somebody, has been turning heaven and earth upside down all summer to wreck, not the stock, but the property itself. You know that is what has been done. No stone has been left unturned, from demoralizing Maxwell's force to dynamiting tunnels and planning forty-mile washouts. If big business wants the road, why is it trying to wreck it physically?"
The big man who was fond of insisting that he was first, last, and all the time a Government chemist grinned amiably.
"It doesn't agree with your mentality to get beaten at golf, does it, Robert?" he said jokingly. "It is plain enough, when you get hold of the right end of it. Big money's play is to throw a real scare, not into the stockholders, but into these loaning bankers, don't you see? If the road's earnings fall off and it has bad luck enough to make these creditor-bankers really nervous about the value of their collateral, the trick will be turned. The Ford people will immediately be asked to make good or pay up; and there you are."
"Why, sure!" said the attorney, in a tone which sufficiently emphasized his complete understanding. Then he climbed slowly into the driving-seat of the runabout. "I don't see why some of the rest of us haven't caught on long ago," he went on. "I suppose any of us might have had the simple facts if we had taken the trouble to dig for them." Then, abruptly: "You're looking for more trouble, Sprague?"
"Maxwell is; and so is Ford, apparently," was the evasive reply.
"Never mind Maxwell or Ford; you're the man," snapped the lawyer.
"No, I'm not," was the decisive denial. "It's true, I have been willing to help out and take a hand in standing off a few of the attempted smashings; but that was only because Dick Maxwell is my friend, and it suited my humor to ride my little reasoning hobby in his behalf. I'm not a sleuth, Stillings; I'm a Government chemist, and I am out here for the ostensible purpose of making a technical report on the soils of this charming valley of yours. You forget that every now and then."
"Pardon me, old man; I did forget it," was the hearty apology. "Just the same, you mustn't throw us down while the fight is still on. Maxwell put it about right the other day when he said that the Nevada Short Line would have been dead and buried two months ago if it hadn't been for you. "
"Nevertheless, I can't help out this time, Stillings. That is why I am staying here this evening—to meet Maxwell and tell him that he'll have to fight for his own hand if the New Yorkers come after him again. "
"Good goodness, Sprague! what's happened?"
"A thing which nobody could have foreseen, and for which nobody is to blame. At the same time, it lets me out. I've got to quit you."
The attorney adjusted the spark and throttle and cut the wheels of the little car preparatory to the start.
"I can't very well argue with you—not having any grounds," he said. "But I hope you won't decide finally until after you've had another talk with Maxwell. Think it over between now and dinner-time, and weigh the consequences to Dick, Sprague. If there's another earthquake on the way, and you throw him down, he's a ruined man. I know what you will say: that he is well fixed and doesn't have to be a railroad superintendent. That's all right, but his job means more to him than it might to a poor man; it's his ambition. If there is anything I can do——"
The big chemistry expert shook his head. "There isn't anything that anybody can do, Robert," he said soberly; and at that, Sailings eased the clutch in and drove away.
Two hours later Maxwell was sitting out the after-dinner interval with his friend and classmate on the broad lake-fronting veranda of the bungalow club-house. It was a fine night, and the Saturday evening crowd was larger than usual. There was a dotting of canoes on the reservoir lake, and the verandas were filling slowly as the great dining-room emptied itself. For a time the two men had let the talk drift into college reminiscences; but it took a more strictly personal turn when the superintendent said:
"Do you know, Calvin, I've often wondered how you came to be assigned to this job of soil-testing—this particular job, I mean—for the Department. It has been a sort of special providence to me; but things don't often happen that way, unhelped."
"This thing didn't happen that way—unhelped," was the big expert's quiet rejoinder. "I asked for the job."
"I've wondered if you didn't. It was mighty good of you to maroon yourself out here in the tall hills for the sake of helping me fight the money pirates, Calvin."
Sprague was silent for a full minute before he said: "I wish I could claim a motive as disinterested as that, Dick; but if I should, it wouldn't be honest. I had quite another reason for wishing to return to the Timanyoni after my flying trip through it last July on my way back from California. I can't tell you what it was; it's too idiotic for a grown man to own up to."
The superintendent's curling mustaches took a grinning uptilt, and he laughed joyously.
"When you talk that way you don't need to tell me, " he chuckled. "It was a girl."
"It was," admitted the self-confessed simpleton, matching his accuser's grin. "Since you've guessed that much, I'll tell you a little more. I saw her first on your east-bound train, the train that took on the sham dead man at Little Butte and afterward picked up your office-car. You'll remember you asked me to stay over a day or two with you in Brewster, and I did. As a matter of fact, your persuasion wasn't needed. I would have stopped off anyway, because the girl stopped off."
"Heavens and earth!" ejaculated Maxwell, in ecstatic appreciation; "how are the mighty fallen! Lord of love! I never expected to see the day when Cal Sprague, the idol of the foot-ball rooters, would fall for a pretty face just seen, as you might say, in passing! Oh, gosh!"
"Have your laugh, you old married hyena!" grunted the late-comer in the sentimental field. "I can't get back at you because I didn't happen to be around when you were making seventeen different kinds of a donkey of yourself over old Hiram Fairbairn's daughter—as I have no doubt you did. But that's neither here nor there; the young woman I'm speaking of tagged me, and I'm It; I've been It ever since that first day on the east-bound train."
"And you say she stopped off in Brewster?"
"Yes."
"But you didn't meet her?"
"No. You've been calling me an amateur detective, Dick; I'm a fake! That girl and the people she was with just vanished into thin air the minute they hit the platform at the Brewster station. I lost them as completely as if they had stepped off into space."
"So you came back, later, to hunt her up?"
"I did; or to try to get some trace of her—just that."
"Of course, it says itself that you have found her."
Sprague's mellow laugh rumbled deep in his chest.
"Richard, I have been here seven weeks, and I found her—just three days ago! In all my knocking around with you and Starbuck and Stillings and the rest of you, not one man in the bunch has thought it worth his while to tell me that there is a cottage settlement of Eastern summer people up in the mountains on Lake Topaz. I had to blunder around and find out for myself, as I did last Wednesday, when Starbuck took me up to your mine on Mount Geechy."
"Great guns!" exclaimed the superintendent; "how in the name of common-sense was anybody going to suspect that you needed to know? That summer colony is as old as Brewster. But go ahead and tell me more. I'm interested, if I don't look it."
"There isn't much to tell. I found her; met her. She is stopping with an aunt of hers, and by chance—good luck you'd say—I have something a little better than a speaking acquaintance with the aunt—through some common friends in New York. There's nothing to it, Richard. The girl can have her pick—she has already turned down a couple of English titles—and she isn't going to pick any such overgrown slob of a man as your humble. Let's talk about something else."
"If I branch off, it will be into my own grief," said Maxwell half-reluctantly. "I had another wire from Ford this afternoon. The big-money people are getting ready to swat us again, and Ford admits that he can't find out where it is to come from, or what it is to be. If it wasn't for the name of the thing, and what I owe Ford, I'd be about ready to throw up my job, Calvin. I have money enough to live on, and this business of dragging along from day to day with the feeling that any minute you may get the knife between your ribs isn't very exhilarating."
"You say Ford can't give you any hint of what is coming next?"
"Not the slightest. But there is something in the wind. You know Kinzie, the president of the Brewster National Bank? He cornered me last night at the club and asked a lot of queer questions that didn't seem to have any particular bearing on anything."
"What kind of questions?" inquired the expert.
"Oh, about our right-of-way through the town of Copah, and about our outstanding floating debts, and finally about a ridiculous damage suit that has been dragging its way through the courts."
Sprague sat up and relighted his fat, black cigar.
"What about the damage suit?" he asked.
"It's a piker's graft," was the half-impatient rejoinder. "We have a little branch line over to the bauxite mines in the western edge of the county. The telegraph company doesn't maintain an office, and our agent is authorized to handle what few commercial telegrams there are. It seems that one came for a man named Hixon, a prospector whose exact whereabouts could not be ascertained at the moment. The message was three days old when it was delivered, and Hixon sued for ten thousand dollars damages; said he'd lost the sale of a mine by the delay."
"You are fighting the suit?"
"Of course—it's point-blank robbery! Stillings has had the case postponed two or three times in the hope of wearing Hixon out. It comes up again next week, I believe."
"And you say Kinzie was curious about this lawsuit?"
"Yes. It seems that Hixon is, or has been, a customer of the bank; and Kinzie suggested that we ought to compromise."
"Um," said the big-bodied man thoughtfully. "In whose court does the case come up?"
"In Judge Watson's."
"Has Hixon a good lawyer?"
"He has the Kentucky colonel, suh," laughed Maxwell; "our one original, dyed-in-the-wool, fire-eating spellbinder from the Blue-grass. When Colonel Bletchford gets upon his feet and turns loose, you can hear the bird of freedom scream all the way across Timanyoni Park."
The big chemistry expert with the athletic slant was moving uneasily in his chair. After a little interval of silence he said: "I can't be with you in any more of these little two-steps with the money trust, Richard. I'm going back to Washington to-morrow."
Maxwell's start carried him half-way out of his chair, and he dropped his short pipe and broke the stem of it.
"Great Scott, Calvin—don't say that!" he implored. "You can't throw us down that way! Why, good Lord, man, if it hadn't been for you and your brains . . . But, pshaw! there's no use in talking about it; you simply can't go and leave us hanging over the ragged edge!"
"I can; and I guess I must," insisted Sprague gently. "And the worst of it is, Dick, I can't tell you or anybody else the why. It's just up to me, and I've got it to do."
Maxwell's perturbation had cleared his brain like a bucketing of cold water. "Tell me, Calvin," he broke out; "is the girl mixed up in it?"
"She is," was the brief admission.
"Is she gone, or going—back East, I mean?"
"N-no; not immediately, I believe."
Maxwell sat back in his chair and began to twist nervously at the charm on his watch-fob.
"I suppose I haven't any kick coming," he said at length. "What you have done for me this summer couldn't be measured in money, and I have no right to ask you to go on giving your time and your brains on the score of friendship."
"There isn't any bigger score in this little old round world of ours, Dick," said the other gravely. "I'm a cold-blooded fish, and I know it. I ought to stand by you; every decent thing in me but one urges me to stand by you. But that one exception queers me. I hope you'll win out; I hope to God you'll win out, Dick; but I can't be the man to put the club into your hands this time."
The snappy little superintendent took his defeat hard. For some further time he used every argument he could devise to persuade Sprague to change his mind. But at the end the big man was shaking his head regretfully.
"It's no use, Richard," he said finally. "If you were in my place, you'd do just as I'm doing—and for the same reason. Let's go back to town. It's too cheerful here to fit either one of us just now."
Maxwell had driven out to the club-house on the shore of Lake Corona in his small car, and when he returned to town Sprague occupied the mechanician's seat beside him. It was a run of only a few miles, over the best driving road in the county, and there was neither time nor the occasion for much talk.
When the car had trundled across the Timanyoni bridge and the viaduct over the railroad tracks, Maxwell would have set Sprague down at his hotel across the plaza from the station; but Sprague himself objected. "You are going over to your office? I'll go with you, if you don't mind. It's my last evening, and I'm not in the humor to sit it out alone. I won't interfere, if you want to work," was the way he put it.
It was thus it happened that they climbed the stair to the second story of the railroad building together, and together walked down the corridor to the door of the despatcher's room. Connolly, the fat night despatcher, was at his glass-topped table behind the counter railing, and when he saw the superintendent he held up a pudgy hand.
"Benson's been trying to get you on the wire from Copah for an hour or more, Mr. Maxwell," he said. "I didn't know where to raise you."
"Is he on the wire now?" asked Maxwell, letting himself and his companion through the wicket in the counter rail.
"No; but I'll call him for you." Followed a sharp rattling of the key and a few broken snippings from the sounder, and then the despatcher got up out of his chair. "Here he is," he said. "He wants to talk to you, personally."
Maxwell took the vacated chair and key, and Connolly stood aside with the big expert. "Seems right good to have you dropping in every now and then, Mr. Sprague," said the fat one. "You'd ought to belong to us out here. We'd sure make it warm for you in the Short Line family."
Sprague looked the dumpling-like despatcher over in mild and altogether friendly criticism.
"Speaking of families: you got married yourself a little while ago, didn't you, Dan?" he asked.
"You bet I did!" was the enthusiastic reply. "Sadie ain't got done talking yet about that set of knives and forks you sent her from Philadelphia."
Again the big-muscled man was looking the despatcher over critically, this time with a quizzical twinkle in his gray eyes.
"Tell me how you did it, Dan," he urged soberly. "You're fatter than I ever dared to be. How did you manage to make a girl believe that there might be a man inside of a big body as well as in a medium-sized one?"
The night despatcher laughed until his moon-like face was purple; until the car-record clerk in the distant corner of the room looked up from his type-writer to see if he, too, might not share the joke.
"Gi-give me a little time," wheezed Connolly; and he was presumably going to tell how it had been done when Maxwell got up from the glass-topped table and broke in.
"Twenty-six is asking for orders, Dan," he said; and when Connolly had resumed his chair and his key: "That's all, Calvin. We'll go across to my office, if you like."
It was behind the closed door of the superintendent's room, after Sprague had chosen the easiest of the three chairs and settled himself for a smoke, that Maxwell said:
"I'm going to miss you like the devil, Calvin; I'm missing you right now. "
Sprague blew a series of smoke rings toward the disused gas-fixture hanging from the centre of the ceiling.
"Something that Chief Engineer Benson has been telling you over the wire from Copah?" he suggested.
"Yes."
Another series of the smoke rings, and then: "Well, I didn't tell you you couldn't talk, did I?"
Maxwell did not haggle over the inverted terms of the permission to talk. The necessity was too pressing.
"Benson has struck something that he can't account for. For a week or more the Transcontinental people have been gathering a working camp at the Copah end of the bridge on which their Jack's Canyon branch crosses the Pannikin. Nobody seems to know what they are going to do, or where they are going to do it. At Leckhard's suggestion, I sent Benson over to pry around a little."
"And he hasn't found out what the T-C folks have in mind?"
"No, he hasn't. But it is plainly some sort of a track-building job. He says they have a hundred or more scraper teams in camp, a train-load of new steel, and forty car-loads of cross-ties. And this afternoon they brought down a mechanical rail-layer—a machine much used nowadays for rushing a job of track-laying."
The big guest smoked reflectively for a full minute or more before he said: "No jangle with the Copah city authorities about any trackage rights in the town, or street crossings, or anything of that sort?"
"Not that I have ever heard of. The T-C. has its own Copah yard, and has a switching connection with the Pacific Southwestern yard tracks; though, naturally, there is little exchange of business between the two competitive systems."
"Do they connect with you?" asked Sprague.
"Not directly. Our yard was originally an independent lay-out, lying a mile to the west of town. When the Short Line became a grand division of the Pacific Southwestern, the two yards, ours and the P. S-W., were operated as one, though they are still separate lay-outs. "
"I see. What else does Benson say?"
"He has been asking questions and chewing the rag with anybody who would talk, he says; but we all know Jack. He is too downright and bluff to be much of a detective."
Maxwell turned to his desk and began on the ever-present pile of waiting work; and the big expert settled himself more deeply into his chair and smoked on with his gaze fixed upon the ceiling gas-pendant. After the lapse of many minutes he said: "Have you a blue-print of the Copah yards, Dick?"
Maxwell rose and went to a filing-case in the corner of the office. After a little search he found the required blue-print and gave it to Sprague, explaining the locations and the relative positions of the three railroad yards. The expert studied the map thoughtfully, even going so far as to scrutinize the fine lettering on it with the help of a small pocket magnifying-glass.
"And right over here by the river is where you say the new camp has been pitched?" he asked, indicating the spot with the handle of the magnifier.
"Yes; Benson says it's at the south end of the bridge, and just west of the T-C. bridge siding."
Sprague looked up quickly. "Did Benson say they had an electric-light outfit for night work?"
"Why, no; I don't remember that he did."
"Go and ask him," said Sprague shortly; and the superintendent, who had learned to take the expert's suggestions without question, left the office to do it.
He was back in a few minutes, with the light of a newly kindled excitement in his eyes.
"By Jove, Calvin, you're a wizard!" he exclaimed. "Your guess is better than another man's eyesight. They've not only got the light outfit—they've strung it up and gone to work! Benson says they are laying a track out across the valley of the Pannikin like this," and he traced a curving line on the blue-print, which Sprague was still holding spread out on his knees.
Sprague nodded slowly. "That is move Number One, " he said. "Dick, you're in for a fight to a finish, this time. They've got you foul in some way, and they are so sure of it that they are already beginning to take possession. Don't you see what this new track means?"
"No, I don't," Maxwell confessed, with a frown of perplexity.
"You will see before to-morrow night. Pull yourself together, old man, and do a little clear-headed reasoning. Why are these people starting out to build a railroad at ten o'clock Saturday night? Surely you've had experience enough in crossing fights to know what that means!"
Maxwell straightened up and swore out of a full heart.
"You mean that they are going to cut a crossing through the Southwestern main line, and do it on Sunday, when our people can't stop them with a court injunction?"
"You've surrounded at least half of it," said the expert. "The other half will come later. If I wasn't going away to-morrow——"
Maxwell walked to the window and stared across at the flaming arc light hanging in front of the Hotel Topaz on the opposite side of the plaza. When he turned again, Sprague had rolled the blue-print into a tube and was laying it on the desk.
"Calvin, you've had time to think it over," said the man at the window. "You haven't made it very plain for me, but I can understand that it's friendship against—against the girl. I'm human enough to know what that means, but——"
Sprague was holding up one of his big square-fingered hands in protest.
"I have been thinking it over, Dick," he admitted gently. "I'll stay—for the line-up, anyway. But it's only fair to warn you that I may drop out at any minute; perhaps when the game is going dead against you. Now we'll get action. You go back to the wire and keep in touch with Benson. We want to know at the earliest possible moment exactly what it is that the T-C. people are trying to do. While you're wiring, I'll go out and try to find Stillings."
This was the situation at ten o'clock on Saturday night. At the nine-o'clock Sunday morning breakfast in the Topaz café, when Maxwell, hollow-eyed and haggard from his night's vigil at the wires, next had speech with Sprague, the news from the seat of war at Copah was sufficiently exciting.
As Maxwell had predicted, the Transcontinental track-layers had built up to the South-western main line, and had finally succeeded in cutting a crossing through it, though not without a fight. The Southwestern force, with Leckhard, the division superintendent, at its head, had resisted as it could. Since it was past midnight, with no hope of obtaining legal help until Monday morning, Leckhard had "spotted" a locomotive on the crossing, and when the men in charge of it were overborne by numbers, the engine had been derailed and "killed" before it was abandoned.
The stubborn resistance had purchased nothing more than a short delay. The marauders had a wrecking-crane as part of their equipment; and half an hour after its abandonment the derailed Southwestern engine had been toppled over into the ditch, and the track-layers were at work installing the crossing frogs.
"And after that?" queried Sprague, when Maxwell had told of the losing fight at the main-line crossing.
"After that they went on building across the valley and heading for the western end of our yard. At the last report, which came about eight o'clock, they had less than a mile of steel to lay before they would be on our right-of-way. Benson is crazy. He is yelling at me now to petition the governor for the militia."
"You haven't done anything?"
"There isn't anything to do. They are on neutral ground, now, and will be until they reach our right-of-way—if that is what they are heading for. We have no manner of right to interfere with them until they become actual trespassers; and as for that, no physical force we could muster would stop them. Benson says there are between four and five hundred men in that track gang, and many of them are armed."
Sprague nodded. "It is a fight to a finish, as I told you last night. And they have the advantage because we don't know yet where or how they are going to hit us. Have you communicated with Ford?"
"I have tried to; but I don't get any reply."
"Tally!" said the big man on the opposite side of the table. "I've been having the same kind of bad luck. I can't locate Stillings."
"Did you try his house?"
"I did that first. His family is out of town, and he has been stopping at the club. But nobody there seems to know anything about him. A little after midnight I found your division detective, young Tarbell, and put him on the job. We're needing Stillings, and needing him badly."
"Tarbell hasn't reported back yet?"
"Not yet; it is beginning to look as if he had dropped out, too. But the day is still young. You'd better go up stairs and get a little sleep. I'll stay on deck and call you if you are needed."
Maxwell had finished his simple breakfast and he took the good advice. It was nine hours later, and the electrics were twinkling yellow in the sunset pinks and grays flooding the quiet Sunday evening streets and the railroad plaza, when he came down and found Sprague just ready to go in to dinner.
"News!" demanded the superintendent eagerly. "I had no idea of wasting the day this way."
Sprague made him wait until they were seated at a table for two in the corner of the café.
"The Copah fight is over, and the T-C. people have broken into your yards with their new track," the expert announced briefly. "Benson had to give up and go to bed about noon, but Leckhard has kept us posted. The track is in, and frogged to a connection with your main line; and the entire attacking force has camped down at the two points of trespass; presumably to keep you and Leckhard from interfering and tearing up their job. Move Number One, whatever it may mean, is a move accomplished."
"I can't understand; I can't begin to understand!" said Maxwell, in despair. And then: "No word yet from Ford?"
"No; and what is more to the point, there is none from Stillings—nor from Tarbell. I'm beginning to think that this is a bigger game than any we've played yet, Dick. I dug up Editor Kendall, of The Tribune, this afternoon, and had a little heart-to-heart talk with him. There is big trouble of some sort in the air; he has smelled it, but he can't tell what it is. He has his young men out everywhere, 'on suspicion,' and he has promised to keep in touch with us up to the time his paper goes to press."
"That ought to help us to get at the facts," said the superintendent. "Kendall is our friend, and he has some mighty keen young fellows on his staff. By the way, there's one of them now—just coming in at the door. He's looking for somebody, too."
The young incomer was not long in finding his man. With a nod to the head-waiter, he came across to Sprague's table. "A note for you, Mr. Sprague—from Mr. Kendall," he said. "There's no answer, I believe," and he went on to another table and began to chat with two other young men, strangers to Maxwell, who had come in on the evening train.
Sprague glanced at his note and passed it across the table. Maxwell read it and found that it merely added to the mysteries without offering anything in the way of enlightenment.
   "Dear Sprague:
   "Have followed your suggestion, and our young men have spotted at least a score of the strangers at the different hotels. Nobody seems to know any of them, and they won't talk. You will find a list of names, copied from the hotel registers, on enclosed slip. It has occurred to me that Maxwell might know some of them, if your suspicions are well founded.
   "Kendall."
Maxwell frowned over the list for a moment before handing it back.
"A few of them are familiar," he said. "Tom Carmody is a division superintendent on the west end of the T-C, and this man Hunniwell used to be in their legal department. Vance Jackson is, or used to be, Carmody 's chief despatcher; and—why, say! this is a T-C. crowd; here's Andy Cochran, their Canyon Division trainmaster."
"Any more?" asked Sprague quietly.
"No; the other names are all strange to me."
Sprague took the list and pointed with a square-ended forefinger to one of the names.
"This man Dimmock; you don't know him?" he queried.
"No."
"Well, I don't know him, either; but I happen to know something about him. Two years ago I was doing a little soil work down in Oklahoma. It was during the time they were having the scrap with the oil companies. Mr. Dimmock was there, ostensibly as an independent capitalist from the East looking for bargains in oil-wells, but really as a representative of the trust."
"Is this the same man?"
The expert held his fork pointing diagonally across his plate. "Follow the line of this fork," he directed in low tones, "and you'll see him—at the farther table by the door."
Maxwell looked and saw a generously built, smooth-shaven, cold-featured man who looked like big money, dining at a table alone. The big-money look was not obtrusive; but it was sufficiently apparent in the city cut of the Sunday broadcloth, in the spotless linen, and not less in the attitude of the obsequious waiter who hovered around the great man's chair.
"I took the trouble to look up Mr. Dimmock in the Oklahoma period," Sprague went on. "I found that he was pretty well known in New York as the right hand of a certain great money lord whose name we needn't mention here. That being the case, it is hardly necessary to add that his presence in Brewster at this particular crisis is a bit ominous."
"Have you told Kendall this about Dimmock?" asked the superintendent.
"No; but he'll be pretty sure to trace the gentleman for himself. Where a question of pure news is involved, Kendall is apt to be found running well ahead of the field. "
"But that doesn't help us out any," Maxwell objected.
"No. We seem to be forced to await developments; and that, Richard, is always a mark of the losing side. I wish to goodness Stillings would turn up."
"It's odd about Bob. He doesn't often drop out without leaving a trail behind him. Have you finished? Then let's go over to the office and see if there is any further word from Benson or Leckhard."
It was when they were leaving the dining-room together that they came upon Tarbell, the ex-terror of Montana cattle thieves. The young man was way-worn and dusty, and his eyes were red for want of sleep. Sprague's question was shot-like.
"You've found him, Archer?"
"Yep; as good as," was the short rejoinder.
"Turn it loose," commanded Sprague.
"He's at the bottom of an old prospect hole up on Mount Baldwin; him and Mr. Maxwell's brother-in-law, Billy Starbuck. I had to come back to town to get a rope to pull 'em out."
"What?" said Maxwell. "How did they get there?"
The young special deputy shook his head.
"I don't know the whys an wherefores any more 'n a goat," he said simply. "I got onto it through the barkeep' at the road-house out on the Topaz pike. He said a bunch o' fellas came along in an auto late last night and stopped for drinks. They come in two at a time, and two of 'em didn't come in at all. Just as they was startin' off, there was a scrap o' some sort in the auto, and the barkeep', who was lookin' out o the window, swore to me he got a glimpse o' Mr. Stillings. I found the auto tracks and followed 'em. They left the road this side o' the lake, crossed the Gloria on the bridge, and shoved that machine up an old wood trail on Baldwin."
"Well, go on," said Maxwell, impatiently.
"I found where they'd stopped and took Mr. Stillings and Billy out o' the car; and it sure looked as if there'd been another scrap, the way the bushes was tore up. About a quarter back from the trail I found the hole. Starbuck hollered up at me when I peeked in. I couldn't see 'em none, but Billy he said they was both there, and wasn't hurt none to speak of—only in their feelin's. He told me to chase back and get a rope."
Maxwell looked at his watch, "How deep is this hole, Archer?"
"’Bout a hundred foot, or maybe more."
"We'll get a car and go after them," was the superintendent's instant decision. "You say this was last night; have they had anything to eat?"
"Yep; Billy said a basket o' grub had been lowered down to 'em a little spell after they was chucked in."
"All right. Go over to the shops and get a coil of rope out of the wrecking-car, and I'll get an auto. Want to go along, Calvin?"
"Sure," was the prompt reply.
Maxwell, being a reasonably wealthy mine owner, as well as the superintendent of the railroad, kept two cars; a runabout and a big touring- machine which, in the absence of his family, were both housed in a down-town garage. In the big car the twenty-mile drive over the Topaz Lake pike was quickly made.
Just before they came to the bridge over the Gloria, they passed an auto with two men in it going toward town. Oddly enough, as it seemed, the in-bound car gave them a wide berth, steering almost into the ditch at the passing, and speeding up to a racing clip as soon as the ditched machine had been yanked back into the roadway. Tarbell, who was driving the Maxwell car, stopped, jumped out, and examined the tracks of the other car by the help of a lighted match.
"That's them," he said laconically, when he resumed the steering-wheel. "That was the same car. It's got a set o' them new-fangled tires with creepers on 'em."
"Hurry!" snapped Maxwell. "We don't know what they've been doing to Stillings and Billy, this time."
Happily they soon found that the evening visit of the two unknown men to the abandoned prospect shaft had been charitable rather than malevolent. Stillings, who was the first of the two captives to be hauled out of the dark pit on the mountain side, told them that another basket of food had just been lowered by a string into the shaft. And when Starbuck came up he brought the basket with him.
Singularly enough, the two rescued ones had no explanation to offer; or, at least, none that served to explain anything. It transpired that they had dined together in the town house of the club the evening before, and had afterward gone to the theatre together. After the play they had taken a taxi to go to Stillings's house in the suburbs to sleep. An auto had followed them, and when they had dismissed the taxi they had been set upon by a number of masked men who tumbled out of the pursuing car. Since they had no weapons, they were quickly overpowered, thrown into the car, carried off to the mountains, and dumped into the prospect hole, the rope by which they had been lowered being thrown in after them. That was all.
"And you don't know what it was for?" asked Sprague, when they were rolling evenly back to the city with Starbuck at the steering-wheel.
"No more than you do," was the lawyer's answer. "Billy and I have speculated over it all day—having no other way of amusing ourselves—and it's a perfectly blind trail. Billy says he knows I must have been the one they were after, and I say he must have been the one. You can take your choice."
At the club town house the two rescued ones were set down, and Tarbell was released to go and get his well-earned rest after the twenty-four-hour task of shadow work.
"Get yourself in shape to go on an advisory committee with us as soon as you can, Robert," was Sprague's injunction to the attorney; and then Maxwell drove down to the railroad building, and the expert was with him when he went up to the despatcher's office.
There was no more news from the Copah seat of war, two hundred miles to the eastward, or, at most, nothing different. The huge alien track-laying force was still guarding the crossing through the Southwestern main line and the new junction with the Nevada Short Line in the western yards. Leckhard reported that Benson was sleeping off his fatigues of the previous night, and said that all was quiet on the late battle-ground.
"And still no word from Ford!" said Maxwell, as he and Sprague, having put the car up at the garage, walked back to the hotel. "By and large, Calvin, that is the most mysterious thing in the bunch. I can't understand it."
"Unless I am much mistaken, we shall all understand many things to-morrow that we can't appreciate to-night," was Sprague's prediction; and long after Maxwell had gone back to his office to put in a make-up period at his desk, the big-bodied man from Washington sat out on the loggia porch of the hotel smoking in thoughtful solitude and staring absently at the unwinking eyes of the mast-head electrics in the railroad yard diagonally opposite.
The Monday morning dawned bright and fair, as a vast majority of the mornings do in the favored inter-mountain paradise known as Timanyoni Park. Notwithstanding his long Sunday sleep, Maxwell came down late to his breakfast, and the café waiter told him that Sprague had eaten at his usually early hour and was gone.
While he was waiting to be served, the superintendent glanced through the morning Tribune. There was a rather exciting first-page news story of the track-laying fight at Copah. The story was evidently an Associated Press despatch, and was carefully non-committal in its reference to the Transcontinental's purpose in rushing the new trackage through to a connection with the Nevada Short Line yards. None the less, the impression was given that the Southwestern's opposition to the move had been only perfunctory and for public effect. Also, the impression was conveyed that the Copah public, at least, believed that there was a secret understanding between the two railroad corporations.
Turning to the inside pages, Maxwell found no editorial comment on the news story, and he was still wondering why Editor Kendall had missed his chance when Stillings came in and took the chair at the end of the table.
"They told me I'd find you here," said the lawyer, "and I wanted to have a word with you before the wheels begin to go round. This is our day in court on the Hixon damage suit, and we'll have to fish or cut bait this time. In all probability, we sha'n't be able to get another postponement, and if we let the case come to trial, it's all off. The jury will give Hixon his verdict, if only for the reason that he is one man fighting a corporation. The only question is, shall I try to compromise before it is too late?"
"Is there any chance for a compromise?" asked Maxwell.
"I don't know positively. Bletchford was willing a few weeks ago, but his figure was so high that I refused to talk to him."
"It's a hold-up!" snapped the superintendent shortly. "I haven't changed my mind."
"All right," said the attorney, rising to go. "I thought I'd give you one l&st chance at it. The case is called for ten o'clock in Judge Watson's court. If you're foot-loose, you might come up and see us lose ten thousand dollars. I guess that is what it will come to." And then, as he was turning to go: "By the way, that was a mighty cold-blooded thing the T-C. people did yesterday, wasn't it? What does it mean?"
"If Sprague hasn't told you, I'm sure I can't."
"I haven't seen Sprague. He left a note at the office this morning, saying he'd be around later; but he hasn't shown up yet. Will you come over to the court-house and see the jury sand-bag us?"
Quite naturally, the hard-working superintendent had no notion of wasting his forenoon in a court-room, and he said so tersely. And beyond Stillings's departure and the finishing of the late breakfast, he went across to his office and plunged into the day's tasks.
There was an unusual quantity of the work that morning, it seemed, and no sooner was he through with one file of referred papers than Calmaine, the chief clerk, was ready with another. Only once during the forenoon was the steady office grind lightened by an interruption from the outside world. At ten o'clock Benson wired from Coparh, saying that the T-C. track-layers were at work again, carefully surfacing and ballasting the new track as if it were to be a permanency. Also, the chief engineer asked if any legal steps had been taken looking to the prevention of further trespass.
Maxwell broke the routine pace long enough to dictate to Calmaine the reply to Benson's asking. It stated the facts briefly. No legal steps had as yet been taken. A full report of the intrusion had gone to the Pacific Southwestern head-quarters in New York, and no action would be taken until New York had spoken.
It was a little before noon when Calmaine carried away the final files of claim correspondence with the superintendent's notations on them, and Maxwell sat back in his chair and relighted his cigar, which had gone out many times during the stressful morning. In the act the door of the private office suddenly opened and the heavy-set, neatly groomed gentleman whom Sprague had pointed out at the hotel dinner-table the previous evening walked in and took the chair at the desk-end, removing his hat and wiping his brow with a handkerchief filmy enough to have figured as the mouchoir of a fine lady.
"Mr. Maxwell, I believe?" he said, dropping a card bearing the single line, "C. P. Dimmock," on the desk.
"That is my name," returned Maxwell, bristling with a wholly unaccountable prickling of antagonism.
"I have come, as an officer of Judge Watson's court, to take over your railroad," announced the cold-featured man calmly, and as he said it, the telephone buzzer under Maxwell's desk went off as though a general fire-alarm had been sounded from the central office.
Maxwell reached for the telephone and put the receiver to his ear. It was Stillings who was at the other end of the wire, and he was frantically incoherent. But out of the attorney's coruscating babblement the superintendent picked enough to enable him to surround the principal fact. In the face of all precedent, in defiance of all its legal rights, the Nevada Short Line had been practically declared bankrupt and a receiver had been appointed.
Notwithstanding his nerve, which was ordinarily very good, the snappy little superintendent's hand trembled when he replaced the ear-piece on its hook and turned to his visitor.
"So you've got us at last, have you, Mr. Dimmock?" he said, constraining himself to speak calmly. "It was on the Hixon case, our attorney tells me."
The visitor nodded blandly.
"You should have compromised that case, Mr. Maxwell—if you will allow me the privilege of criticising, after the fact. But we needn't come to blows over the purely academic question. Judge Watson has appointed me receiver—temporary, of course—for the railroad property. I am here to take charge in the interest of all concerned, and I am assuming that you won't put yourself in contempt of court by any ill-considered resistance. Here is the court order." And he tossed a folded paper across to the desk.
For the moment Maxwell was speechless. Then he slowly straightened up and took a few packets of papers out of the desk pigeon-holes marked "R. Maxwell, Private," putting them into his pocket. That done, he removed the desk and door keys from his pocket ring and laid them upon the desk.
"I think that is about as far as I have to go, personally," he said, rising and reaching for his hat. "And, of course, I have nothing to ask for myself. But for the staff and the rank and file, Mr. Dimmock—I hope you're not going to make a clean sweep. We have a mighty good working organization, and it will cause a great deal of hardship if you take the usual course of discharging and replacing all heads of departments."
The new head of all departments smiled, and in the smile much of the cold hardness of his face disappeared.
"That is a matter with which I shall have very little to do, Mr. Maxwell," he returned. "Mr. Carmody, lately in charge of the Transcontinental's Pacific Division, will be my operating chief, and I am sure that you yourself, as a practical railroad man, would counsel me to give him a free hand."
Maxwell took the additional bitter dose of the medicine of defeat like a man, but he made one more attempt—an attempt to save Calmaine's head.
"My chief clerk,—the young man who admitted you here,—I hope you can provide for him, Mr. Dimmock. Apart from any personal relations, I have found him the most faithful, the most painstaking "
The new receiver lifted a faultlessly manicured hand in genial protest.
"You know I couldn't do that, Mr. Maxwell," he objected. "Your young man has probably been much too close to you to make it possible or prudent. You are a rich man yourself, and you can very easily provide for your secretary, as I make no doubt you will. Must you go? Don't be in a hurry. We needn't make this a personal fight, I'm sure."
The ex-superintendent looked at his watch and told a lie for the sake of keeping the peace.
"It is my luncheon hour," he said. "If there are any routine matters upon which you may wish to consult me, you will find me over at the hotel." And he went out with his hat pulled over his eyes and his blood boiling. To have stayed another minute would have been to risk an explosion.
It was a small but exceedingly fervent indignation meeting which gathered in Attorney Stillings's office in the Kinzie Building a little after twelve o'clock on this day of cataclysms. When Maxwell entered, Stillings was trying to explain to Starbuck and Sprague and Editor Kendall—who had been hauled out of bed to lend his presence to the conference—just how it had come about.
As it appeared in the wrathful summing-up, it had happened very easily; so easily as to present every indication of careful prearrangement. When the Hixon case had been called in court, Stillings had risen and asked for a further postponement, having, as it chanced, a very good excuse in the fact that the witness by whom he expected to prove that Hixon's claim of a lost mining sale was a pure invention was absent. Instantly the Kentucky-colonel counsel for the plaintiff had jumped up, not to protest against the further delay, but to introduce his colleague in the cause—the stranger whose name on the Hophra House register was Mr. Peter Hunniwell.
Before Stillings could get his breath, Hunniwell was on his feet, making an impassioned plea for justice. Rapidly rehearsing the course of the defendant railroad company, which he charged with maliciously striving to defeat the ends of justice, he summed up with a still more serious charge, namely, that the railroad was not only unwilling to pay the just claims upon it, but was unable to do so; was, in effect, practically bankrupt, as the thick packet of affidavits, which he here passed up to the judge, would sufficiently prove.
"After that," Stillings went on, "it was biff! bang! and the fight was over. Judge Watson merely glanced through the affidavits—which may or may not be purely faked—while Hunniwell, in a voice like a steam calliope, was demanding that the court appoint a receiver. It was so ridiculous, so absolutely beyond all precedent, that it didn't seem worth while to try to call him down. When Hunniwell finally quit, the judge was looking over his spectacles at us in that mild, half-vacant way of his, and saying, 'I think your point is very well taken. It is time that something was done to bring these defendant corporations to a sense of their responsibilities to the plain people. I shall appoint, as temporary receiver, Mr. C. F. Dimmock, the appointment to take effect this day at noon.' At noon, mind you!" choked Stillings. "And it was at that moment half-past eleven!"
"Of course, you tried to break in," said Maxwell.
"Sure! But I might as well have gone out on the court-house steps and shouted at the scenery! Watson told me, in the same half-absent way, that the receivership was only temporary, and that we should have ample opportunity to show cause, if we could, why the receiver should be discharged at the regular hearing, which he there and then set for the twelfth of the month, naming his chambers as the place. Before I could wedge in another word, court was adjourned and Watson was leaving the bench."
Sprague was nodding slowly.
"Now we know the meaning of the Sunday track-laying, and the sudden influx of strangers—most of whom will doubtless turn out to be T-C. officials and employees—and the mysterious kid- napping of the Short Line's attorney night before last," he said. And then to Maxwell: "I suppose the thing is definitely done, and you have been properly kicked out of your office, Dick?"
Maxwell briefed the short interview with Dimmock for the benefit of the others.
"Dimmock and Carmody are in charge," he concluded, "and before night they will have tried and executed everybody in the service whose head sticks up far enough to give them an excuse for cutting it off. They are going to make a clean sweep. Dimmock practically admitted it. By this time to-morrow the Nevada Short Line will be part and parcel of the Transcontinental System, with only T-C. men in charge."
"Holy Smoke!" said Kendall, and the ejaculation from him meant more than the most frenzied outburst of the average man: and then again he said, "Holy Smoke!"
It was Starbuck, himself a small stockholder in the confiscated railroad, who first got his feet upon the solid earth again.
"I reckon we-all are just going to sit around and bite our thumbs and let these hold-ups put it all over us," he said, in his slow drawl; adding, after the proper pause: "I don't think!"
Maxwell sprang out of his chair.
"I must go to the commercial office and wire Ford!" he broke out. "He'll know what to do, if there is anything that can be done. Stillings, you get in touch with our general counsel in Chicago. We're an interstate road, and this thing can't be settled in a Timanyoni county court!"
"Hold on," said Stillings. "That is where we're lame. We allowed ourselves to be sued in this cause, as we have in a good many others, under the old corporate name—The Red Butte Western. That, as you know, was a purely intra-state corporation. Our newer lines are only 'extensions.’"
"Then we can't carry it up to the Federal courts?" gasped Maxwell.
"We can try it, and, of course, we shall try it. But the presumptive facts are against us. What I am hoping is that our Pacific Southwestern backers will be able to help us make a killing and dump these pirates at the regular hearing."
"Then you needn't hope any more," said Sprague quietly. "Apart from the fact that they've put the high kibosh on you to-day, the element of time comes in to cut the largest figure. For the stock-smashing purpose in this particular instance, a short receivership will prove as efficacious as a long one. You've had one experience with the steam-roller to-day, and you'll have as many more of them as may seem necessary. It wouldn't make any difference if you should import a trainload of eastern lawyers; the thing's done, and it is going to stay done until it has accomplished the end in view—which is to transfer the stock control of the Short Line to the T-C. Your only chance is to strike back, and strike quickly—before the mischief is done in New York."
"But how?" pleaded Stillings. "Tell us how!"
"By proving clearly, what I presume we all accept as the undoubted fact, that Judge Watson has been bribed."
True to his calling, Stillings was the first to object to so sweeping a charge.
"Oh, hold on!" he exclaimed. "I wouldn't go so far as that. That is a pretty serious charge, Sprague."
"I know it is. But when I say bribery, it doesn't necessarily mean the grosser form of buying with cash money. Let us say that Judge Watson has been 'influenced.' If you can't make that charge and sustain it, you may as well call the incident closed."
Maxwell was leaning against the door-jamb. His eyes were fiery and his breath was coming quickly.
"If you say there has been crooked work, Calvin, that settles it; I believe it. Now tell us what to do, and we'll do it."
Kendall's lean, leathery jaw was set hard, and he was furtively watching the big expert. That a fierce struggle of some kind was going on behind the mask of the ruddy, half-boyish face, he made no doubt. And Sprague's answer quickly confirmed the editor's conclusion.
"You don't know what you're asking, Dick," said the big man slowly.
"I do!" said Maxwell hotly. "I'm asking you to help us send a bunch of criminals—just low-down, ordinary thieving criminals—to jail! Sprague, if you can do it, and won't do it——"
There was a strained silence in the shabby little law office that seemed as if it would never be broken. Kendall turned his face away, and Starbuck slid noiselessly out of his chair and went to stand at the window with his back to the others. At length the reply to Maxwell's demand came, wrung out, as it seemed, from the very heart of reluctance.
"It can be done. Every chain that was ever forged has its weak link. For reasons which are purely personal to me, I'd rather be shot than go into this thing with you. I'd refuse, if I could in common decency; and, in any event, I may fall down on you when it comes to the pinch. But I'll go as far as I can. Will that do?"
"Say it!" snapped the ex-superintendent eagerly.
"All right. Stillings, you may come to my room in the hotel at two o'clock, and bring Mr. David Kinzie, our downstairs bank president, with you if you have to club him to do it. Kendall, I'm going to ask you to make just as little as possible of this railroad grab in your news columns for the present, taking my word for it that you shall have the biggest story of the year if we win out. Starbuck, you'll come over to the hotel with me now, and I'll give you your stunt. That's all; the meeting's adjourned."
To say that the little inter-mountain city was stirred to the depths by the news which quickly spread from lip to lip is putting it mildly. In its beginnings, Brewster had been a railroad town in the strictest sense, owing its location and its phenomenal after-growth largely to the fostering policy of the railroad. Under Maxwell's wise and just management the Nevada Short Line had identified itself very closely with the growth and prosperity of the entire inter-mountain region, and it had stood as a shining example of a "good" corporation. To have the popular management swept ruthlessly aside and the rule of another company, operating under the thin mask of a receivership, set up in its place, provoked a storm of indignant protest.
Moreover, many of the well-to-do citizens of the Timanyoni were stockholders in the Short Line, and upon these the blow fell as a disaster. Prominent among these local stockholders stood the owner of the Kinzie Building, Brewster's one multimillionaire and the president of the Brewster National Bank. At precisely two o'clock David Kinzie, gray and pale, and with his small ferret-like eyes peering shrewdly from under the rim of the soft, gray hat which he always wore, stepped into the Hotel Topaz elevator with Stillings. It had not been necessary for the attorney to bludgeon him to induce him to come to the conference with Sprague.
What went on behind the locked door of Room 403 after the two had been admitted was a secret that was not shared with any fourth party, though one of Editor Kendall's young men promptly waylaid Stillings at the close of the conference.
"Tell Mr. Kendall he shall have the news, and have it first, when there is any," was all the lawyer would say; but Connabel, the star reporter who had done the waylaying, died hard.
"Give me a hint, Mr. Stillings—just the barest shadow of a hint," he begged. "Will the case be taken to the Federal courts?"
"Not for publication, Fred," laughed the lawyer, who was evidently in better spirits. Then he added: "There's a big story in this, my boy, and you shall have it when it's ripe; I'll promise you that—I'll ask Kendall to detail you. And that is positively all you'll get out of me now."
Fifteen minutes after the lawyer and Mr. Kinzie had left Room 403 the door opened again, this time to admit Starbuck.
"Well?" said the big-bodied expert, when Maxwell's brother-in-law had taken the chair recently vacated by the banker.
"The judge is sick, or playing sick," was the answer. "Doc Mangum has just gone out to the house, and the servants have their orders to admit nobody."
"What is the nature of his sickness? Does anybody know that?"
"Oh, yes; it's heart trouble and too much altitude. He's had it before."
Sprague's eyes narrowed and his big hands closed in a vice-like grip on the arms of his chair.
"Billy, does it occur to you that this is a most opportune time for him to be taken sick again? What do they do for patients with heart trouble in this country?"
"Order 'em down to a lower altitude," said the mine owner.
"Exactly. And we shall find that this is what Doctor Mangum will advise in the present case. When he does so, Judge Watson will go."
Starbuck was deftly rolling a cigarette of dry tobacco. "And then what?" he queried.
"Then the regular hearing, which is set for the twelfth of the month, can't be held, and the temporary receivership will hold over until it is either confirmed or set aside by the higher courts. In the meantime the delay will have accomplished its purpose. The New York bank pool of the stock will be broken, the T-C. people will buy it in, and the nail will be driven and clinched."
Starbuck winked gravely.
"You're not going to let Judge Watson get out of town," he predicted. "I can ride up the trail that far without falling off."
"No," said Sprague, "we are not going to let him get away until we are through with him. Did you make the other arrangement I spoke of?"
"I sure did. If anybody's fool enough to let the cat out o' the bag, we'll get the cat. Tarbell's on that part of the job."
Sprague went to the wardrobe at the other end of the room and got out his hat and a light top-coat.
"Yes, we'll get the cat, Billy. The only thing I'm afraid of is that we may get the kitten, too. If that should happen, your Uncle Calvin might fly the track. Let's go. I have an appointment to meet Judge Walsh, of the United States District Court, at half-past three, and I'm going to ask you to borrow Maxwell's car and drive me out to the judge's house."
Before nightfall of the Monday it became plainly evident that the new management of the Short Line had climbed fairly into the executive saddle and was making due preparations to stay there. As Maxwell had prophesied, Receiver Dimmock made a clean sweep, and before the first through train came in over the new routing a score of minor department heads had been let out and their places filled by T-C. men. Even the train-despatchers were discharged; and after dinner Maxwell held a "consolation" meeting in the hotel club-rooms with his fired staff, and listened patiently to the bad language which the wholesale hardship evoked.
To one and all of the losers he said the same thing, however; they were to sit tight and say nothing for the present. It was a long lane that had no turning, and the next turn in the Short Line lane might not be very far distant.
"Just one thing, Mr. Maxwell," Connolly, the fat despatcher, put in, as the meeting was about to break up. "If you'll tell us that Mr. Scientific Sprague is with us I guess we'll all sleep better to-night."
"He is," said Maxwell. "That's all for the present. Just sit tight and don't talk. Go home and take your lay-off. If we win out, you're all under pay, just the same as if you were on the job."
It was late that night, after Maxwell had gone to his room, that the long-delayed word came from New York. Maxwell read the telegram from President Ford, and, late as it was, took it immediately to Sprague's room, which was on the floor below. The expert got out of bed to admit him, and read the few type-written lines thoughtfully.
"He puts it up to you good and hard, doesn't he?" was his comment. "But that is about what I expected. He is up to his neck in the fight to keep those lending bankers from dumping the majority stock and running around in circles. Go to the wire and tell him to keep a stiff upper lip; that you're not dead yet. Also, you might add that Kinzie's backing him with those bankers."
"By Jove!" said Maxwell. "Was that what you wanted Kinzie for to-day?"
"It was one of the things. Get your message in so that Ford will have it in the morning. Good-night."
With the opening of the second day the Brewster excitement had died down to some extent, and the new railroad routine was getting itself shaken into the working rut. On every hand it was evident that the coup had been carefully planned long in advance. Almost without a break the through service was established over the new routing, and a hard-and-fast law was laid down for the Short Line rank-and-file employees, the vast majority of whom were retained under the receivership. The law briefly exacted loyalty to the new management. There would be no more removals except for cause; but anything less than a hearty acceptance of the court order would be considered sufficient cause for prompt dismissal.
Copies of the receiver's circulars and general orders found their way quickly to Maxwell, and the firm, strong hand of authority appeared in every line of them. How Sprague would go about it to break down the wall of possession which every hour was building higher and stronger, was a puzzle as yet unsolved; and it was not until the forenoon of the Wednesday that the various burrowings which the expert had set afoot began to yield results.
Tarbell brought the first of the results to the lobby of the Topaz at eleven o'clock on this third day in the shape of a note from Banker Kinzie. Hixon, the suing bauxite miner, had received his ten thousand dollars from somebody, and had deposited it in the bank.
Sprague passed the note to Maxwell, who came in just as Tarbell was leaving.
"That's good news, in a way," said the expert. "It tells us that the paymaster has begun to get busy. Any further word from Starbuck?"
"I saw him about half an hour ago. He says that Judge Watson's condition remains the same, and Doctor Mangum makes no secret of the fact that he has ordered him to a lower altitude. I had another message from Ford this morning. He says we are dying by inches at the New York end, and the final smash may come at any minute."
"We've got to have a little time," was the quiet rejoinder. "The trap is baited and set, Dick, but we can't very well spring it ourselves. Any word from Mr. Dimmock?"
"Not to me, no."
Sprague's smile was mirthless. "I haven't escaped so easily," he asserted. "Mr. Dimmock came over to my rooms this morning after breakfast and read me a carefully expurgated edition of the riot act. Translated into plain English, what he said was to the effect that my Government job wouldn't be worth much to me if I meddled in this railroad jangle."
"Then he knows you?"
"He knows of two or three things that I have done in the reasoning line, and—well, I'm inclined to think that he is a little nervous about something. He went so far as to hint that he had reason to believe that his mail had been tampered with."
"What? He didn't charge you with anything like that, did he?" demanded Maxwell, in generous indignation.
"Oh, no; not personally, of course. He merely intimated that, as an officer of the court, he wouldn't stand for any interference."
Maxwell was silent for a time. Then he said: "What are you waiting for, Calvin?—more evidence?"
"No; I'm waiting for the click of the trap, and a word from the man who is watching it."
"Will the trap be sprung?"
"It will. Twice since yesterday there have been nibbles at the bait, and both times the nibbler has been afraid."
"Watson, you mean?"
"Yes."
"What is he afraid of?"
"A man with heart trouble is afraid of many things."
Maxwell put an unlighted cigar in his mouth and began to chew on it absently.
"Dimmock's daughter is here. Did you know that?"
The big-bodied chemistry expert was staring fixedly at the revolving street door which was whirling slowly to admit a group of passengers from the lately arrived Red Butte accommodation.
"I didn't know that he had a daughter; or rather I do know that he hasn't one. He was married only three or four years ago," he returned half-absently.
"That's where you're off wrong," retorted the railroad man. "He certainly has one, and she is here; she was at breakfast with him when I came down this morning. She is so distractingly pretty that I couldn't believe she was the daughter of that hard-featured piece of financial machinery which is running our railroad. So I asked the head-waiter. He said she was Mr. Dimmock's daughter."
"It's a mistake," insisted Sprague. Then he changed the subject abruptly, rising and buttoning his coat. "I have an appointment that I've got to keep, and I may not get away for a couple of hours. Meet me here for a one-o'clock luncheon. If I make the point I'm going to try to make, you'll be needed."
When he was left alone, Maxwell did his best to kill time easily and to possess his soul in patience. The inaction of the past two days had been a keen agony, unrelieved by any glimpse into the mysterious depths in which Sprague, after his usual fashion, was groping alone.
Was it possible that Sprague could reason out a way of escape for the captured Short Line? For the hundredth time Maxwell went over the well-intrenched position of the enemy, searching vainly for the weak point in the lines which had been so swiftly and surely drawn about the confiscated property. Every legal requirement had been astutely met, and the law itself seemed to bar the way to any attempt at recovery. True, Judge Watson had grossly misused the authority given him by his high office, but the equity of his act could be questioned only in the courts; questioned, and set aside, it might be, but too late to save the bewildered and panic-stricken stockholders.
Lighting the dry cigar, Maxwell got up to stroll to the clerk's desk. The register lay open on the counter, and he absently read the later signatures. Among them there was a woman's name, written in a firm, bold hand, and lacking the identifying "Miss" or "Mrs." "Diana Carswell" was the name, and in the place-column was written, "New York."
Maxwell's teeth met in the centre of the newly lighted cigar when he saw the signature. He did not know Miss Carswell, truly, but all the world knew of her, and the masculine half of it, at least, was wont to wax eloquent over her beauty, her accomplishments, and her vast wealth. Maxwell remembered vaguely of hearing that her father was dead, and that the Carswell many-millions had been left to the mother and daughter; also that Miss Carswell was the niece of a still larger fortune—namely, that of the great captain of finance whom he and Ford had all along credited with the planning of the raids made on the Nevada Short Line.
Here was food for reflection, plenty of it. What was Miss Diana Carswell doing in Brewster, which was as far apart from her world as if it had been the smallest village on an alien planet? Curiously Maxwell scanned the register for other names which might answer the query. There were none. Miss Carswell was alone, or at least she was not accompanied by any other New Yorkers. It was another mystery, and the ex-superintendent was growing sensitive in his mystery nerve. Possibly Sprague——
Sprague came in a few minutes before one o'clock, and there was a grim set to his big jaw that Maxwell had seen there more than once on the foot-ball field when the game was desperate.
"We'll eat first," was the incomer's crisp dictum. "Shall we go in now?"
Together they went to the café, taking their accustomed table in the far corner of the many-pillared room. At the serving of the bouillon, Maxwell broke out.
"Up to a certain point, Calvin, I can blunder along in the dark with my eyes shut, and do it more or less cheerfully. But past that point——"
"I know; it has been rather hard on you, Dick. But the suspense is nearly over. At two o'clock we are due in Judge Walsh's chambers in the Federal Building, and you will then learn all you need to know—and possibly a good bit more. You'll have to forgive me for fogging you up as I went along. I guess that is part of the detective slant in me; to want to go my own way, and to go it alone. The minute I begin to talk over the reasoning process with somebody else I begin to lose the keen sense of values. Writer people have told me that the same thing is true of plotting and novelling."
Maxwell smiled grimly. "Speaking of novel plots, I hit upon the start for a good one this forenoon—just after you went away. I was glancing over the hotel register and I saw a name there that was full of all sorts of mysteries and plotting suggestions."
"Whose name?" queried the expert.
"I'm going to devil you for a while now, and let you find out for yourself," laughed the railroad man. "I don't know the owner of the name, and I don't suppose you do; but I'll bet a piebald pinto worth fifty dollars that, when you see what I saw, you'll sit up and take notice and do a little stunt of wondering that will make mine look like a cheap imitation."
The big man grinned good-naturedly.
"Rub it in," he said. "I don't wonder that you are getting a bit collar-sore. But don't forget to eat. Two o'clock is the time, you know. And, by the way, I hope you haven't failed to keep in touch with the various members of your staff—the men whom Dimmock was in such an indecent hurry to discharge. We may need their help a little later,"
Maxwell told circumstantially what had been done, and from that the table-talk slipped easily into a discussion of human loyalty in the abstract, and so continued until the waiter brought the cigars. Sprague was looking at his watch as they made their way among the well-filled tables toward the door, and it was in the midst of a sentence pointing to the need for haste to keep the two o'clock appointment that he found Maxwell halting him.
Now it may say itself that a man may be a very Solon among reasoners and a modern Vidocq in the fine art of unravelling mysteries, without in the least approaching the type which is so aptly described by the slang phrase, "Johnnie-on-the-spot." When Sprague dropped his watch back into its pocket he found himself halted beside a table at which were seated the cold-featured, accurately groomed chief raider of the captured railroad, and a young woman whose radiant beauty was bedazzling more eyes than those of the interested on-lookers at the surrounding tables.
Sprague looked, lost himself, and then came slowly back to earth in the realization that Dimmock was speaking.
"Excuse me, Mr. Maxwell," he was saying: "I wanted you to meet my daughter. Diana, this is Mr. Richard Maxwell, whose wife is one of the Fairbairn girls, you know, and Mr. Maxwell's friend, Mr. Sprague, of the Department of Agriculture."
It was the young woman herself who broke in.
"Oh, yes; Mr. Sprague and I have met before; haven't we, Mr. Sprague?" with a mocking smile for Sprague's benefit. And then: "We've been missing you at Topaz Tepees. Have you been finding it too far to ride?"
What the athletic chemistry expert managed to stammer out in reply, what he went on saying to Miss Carswell during the fraction of a minute or so that Dimmock was holding Maxwell in talk, he could not remember a single second after the swinging together of the glass doors which shut them out of the dining-room. That was because the astounding discovery was still crippling him to blot out all the intermediate details.
But one large fact stood clear in the confusing medley. Clutching Maxwell's arm he shoved him headlong into the near-by writing-room, which was opportunely deserted.
"Richard, I'm out of it!" he gasped hoarsely. "Dimmock knew what card to play, and he has played it. My Lord! Why didn't I guess that the Mrs. Carswell he married four years ago was Diana's mother? I didn't guess it; it never entered my mind! I knew Diana was a niece of the chief wrecker—the man we've been after all summer; I found that out last week, and that was why I told you I couldn't stay with you. And now: oh, dammit, dammit, dammit!"
"Take it easy, old man," said Maxwell soothingly; "and remember that as yet I'm only groping around the edges. What is it that Dimmock has done to you?"
"Heavens and earth! don't you see? For Diana's sake I've monkeyed and schemed and side-stepped on this receivership business until I've got it in shape to pull you out without pulling her uncle in. But to do that, I've put Dimmock, her step-father, so deep in the hole that a yoke of oxen couldn't haul him out! He knows it, too; and that was the reason for that bit of by-play just now at the luncheon-table. He was saying to me in just so many words, 'Now you know who you're hitting; go ahead, if you dare!’"
"And, naturally, since Miss Carswell is the one altogether lovely, you don't dare. I can't blame you, Calvin. Drop it, and we'll do the best we can without you."
Sprague was walking the floor of the little writing-room with his big hands jammed deep in the pockets of his short business coat. Suddenly he stopped and smacked a huge fist into a hollowed palm.
"By George, Dick, we'll do it yet!" he broke out. "I'll beat him at his own game—come on!" And again seizing the railroad man's arm, he dragged him out of the hotel and almost flung him into the nearest waiting taxicab.
The order to the cab-driver ran to the Brewster National Bank; and two minutes later Sprague, with Maxwell at his heels, shouldered his way through a group of waiting customers to the president's room. Gray old David Kinzie was at his desk, and he nodded toward a door in the opposite wall of the business office leading to the isolated directors' room. "Stillings and Hunniwell are in there," he said, "and Starbuck has gone after the culprit."
"And the other man?" queried Sprague sharply.
"He didn't want to come, but he will. He thinks it is a conference to discuss the bank's attitude, and he doesn't want to commit himself. I convinced him that he'd better come."
Again Sprague led the way, pausing at the inner door, however, to push Maxwell in ahead of him. The two lawyers were sitting opposite each other at the far end of the long committee table which filled the centre of the room; and their greetings to the new-comers were wordless. Maxwell had scarcely taken the chair next to Stillings when the door opened again, this time to admit a stoop-shouldered, thin-haired man whose face was even grayer than Banker Kinzie's. This last arrival was Judge Watson, and when he saw Sprague and Maxwell he would have withdrawn, only Starbuck was behind him to make it impossible.
As before, the greetings were merely nodded; and a silence that could be felt settled down upon the room. It was the judge who broke it first.
"I think I have made a mistake, gentlemen," he began. "I was expecting to meet Mr.—ah—er—a gentleman who is not here."
The words were hardly out of his mouth before the door was opened for the third time, and Dimmock, closely followed by Kinzie, entered. Like the judge, the receiver would have withdrawn when he saw the group around the table; but again Starbuck intervened, this time to shut the door and to stand with his back against it.
At the click of the latch, Sprague rose ponderously in his place at the head of the table.
"Sit down, Mr. Dimmock," he directed. "This is a little business meeting preliminary to another and more important one, and our time is exceedingly limited."
The receiver looked sharply at the speaker. "My time is much more limited than yours, Mr. Sprague," he retorted crisply. "I shall have to ask you to excuse me."
"Certainly," said Sprague suavely, "if you wish it. But in that case, I must tell you that Mr. Starbuck, who is standing just behind you, has been properly sworn in as a United States deputy marshal, and he will promptly take you into custody on a charge of conspiracy."
If the chemistry expert had suddenly rolled a bomb, with the fuse lighted, down the length of the long table, the sensation could scarcely have been greater or more startling. Dimmock took a back-ward step and put up his hands as if to ward off a blow; and Hunniwell, the imported attorney, sprang to his feet as if his chair had been suddenly electrified.
"What's this?" he stormed. "This is not a court of law! I demand that that door be opened! We cannot be held in duress!"
"Sit down!" said Sprague shortly. "Mr. Dimmock is your client, and you are here, not to defend him, but to advise him. As to the duress you're so much afraid of, I'll say this: I am going to make one short statement of facts. After you have heard it, if you and your client wish to withdraw, the door will be opened."
"I—I am ill," said the judge weakly, and he made a motion to rise from his chair. Kinzie grimly poured out a glass of water from the pitcher on the table and gave it to him without comment, while Dimmock took the chair Starbuck was offering him and sat down.
"I'll be very brief, gentlemen," Sprague went on, taking out his watch and laying it on the table. "The facts are these. There has been a conspiracy entered into for the purpose of depriving the stockholders of the railroad known as the Nevada Short Line of their property under a form of law. That purpose has apparently succeeded, but I have here"—taking a packet of papers from his pocket—"documentary evidence inculpating various and sundry persons who figure as the conspirators. Three of these persons are here in this room. In another room, namely, in Judge Walsh's chambers in the Federal Building, there is waiting another and quite informal gathering: it is composed of the leading members of the Bar Association of the Timanyoni District, and it is presided over by Judge Walsh. It is assembled to prevent, if possible, one of the greatest scandals that has ever threatened the fair name of the courts of this State."
"I object!" shouted Hunniwell, struggling to his feet again; and this time Sprague pushed him back into his chair without ceremony.
"To this statement of fact," the self-appointed chairman continued, quite as if there had been no interruption, "we will add a demand and impose an alternative. The demand is that the railroad be turned over to its rightful owners at once. If it is not complied with, you, Judge Watson, and you, Mr. Dimmock, and you, Mr. Hunniwell"—indicating each in turn with a squarely pointed forefinger—"may choose your alternative: which is to go with me to Judge Walsh's chambers, where I shall lay before the gentlemen there assembled this packet of evidence."
"It's a bluff!" yelled the attorney for the defence. "Do you think we're going to be taken in by any such flim-flam as that? We'll call your bluff, you damned amateur! You don't dare to show up that evidence here!"
Sprague looked down with a good-natured grin upon the red-headed lawyer. Then he dropped the packet of papers on the table in front of Hunniwell.
"I'll stay with you," he said quietly. "Read for yourself. Those are only copies, however. The originals are locked up in Judge Walsh's safe."
Hunniwell ran through the papers hurriedly and the color came and went in his florid face. Dimmock was staring straight ahead of him at nothing, and his shapely fingers were beating a nervous tattoo on the arm of his chair. The judge had sunk into a shapeless heap in the easy chair he had chosen and his face was ashen.
At the end of his hasty examination of the papers, Hunniwell looked up, and Stillings, who sat opposite, saw defeat in his eyes.
"If I could speak to Mr. Dimmock and Judge Watson in private—" he suggested; and Sprague nodded. There was a small ante-room at the right of the larger directors' room, and the three withdrew, the attorney lending the judge a much-needed arm.
Almost immediately the conferees returned, and Hunniwell acted as spokesman.
"You've turned the trick, Mr. Sprague, for this one time," he said briefly, "but only because one man—a sick man—cannot stand the pressure—which is doubtless what you figured on. Judge Watson will rescind his order at once, and the road will be turned over to its former management—on one condition; that you surrender the original papers which you say are locked up in Judge Walsh's safe."
"No," said Sprague instantly. "The condition does not stand. Stillings, get Judge Walsh on the 'phone, will you?"
That was enough. Hunniwell quickly withdrew the condition; or, rather, he modified it, lawyer-wise.
"Never mind," he cut in hastily. "We'll waive that, with this proviso—that you'll put the papers into Mr. Kinzie's hands, to be destroyed in the presence of such witnesses as we each may choose, after we shall have proved that we have acted in good faith. Do you agree to that?"
Sprague nodded, and Starbuck stepped aside and opened the door leading out through the banker's office. At the upper end of the table, Maxwell and Stillings and the gray-faced bank president were all trying to shake hands with Sprague at one and the same moment; and when Hunniwell had led the tremulous judge away, Dimmock walked the length of the table and took his turn. Stillings, being Western-bred, anticipated violence; but instead of falling upon the big-bodied ex-athlete, Dimmock, too, held out his hand.
"Mr. Sprague, you've outgeneraled us," he said, with more frankness than his hard-lined face and austere manner promised, even as a possibility. "Diana tells me that you are wedded to your Government position, and if that is so, you are simply throwing yourself away. Come to New York, and we'll put you in the way of doing something worth while." Then he added, with the charming smile he seemed to be able to summon at will: "You played a finer game than I thought you would; in fact, I thought I had trumped your ace to-day at the luncheon-table."
"You did—mighty nearly," laughed the big one. And then to Stillings: "Robert, will you go over to Judge Walsh's chambers and tell the gentlemen who are waiting there—well, tell them what is necessary. You'll know how."
But Dimmock was not to be so easily turned aside.
"I say you played it fine," he repeated, still amiable. "You knew that, under the circumstances, the—er—sentimental circumstances, we may call them—you couldn't afford to go before that larger committee with your evidence, Mr. Sprague."
Sprague's mellow laugh rang in the empty room.
"Just now I am the prisoner at the bar, Mr. Dimmock, and I'm not obliged to incriminate myself," he retorted jokingly. And at that the three who remained went out through the banker's office together. On the sidewalk Dimmock paused for one other word; the word which had been at the bottom of his friendly approach to Sprague.
"Diana knows nothing of this?" he said.
"Nothing more than you have told her," said Sprague.
"And that is less than nothing," was the prompt return. After which they separated, Dimmock going up the street toward Hunniwell's hotel, Maxwell hurrying off to the telegraph-office to wire the good news to Ford, and Sprague sauntering slowly back to the Hotel Topaz, wondering if, by any hook or crook of good fortune, he should be lucky enough to find Miss Diana Carswell disengaged and willing to accord him an hour or so of an afternoon which was still young.
It was in the evening of the same day, after Maxwell had been reinstalled in his office by order of the court, and the summarily discharged staff had been reinstated, that the superintendent turned upon Sprague, who was sitting, as his evening custom was, in the easiest of the office chairs, puffing at a black cigar, and with his gaze fixed upon the disused gas chandelier marking the exact centre of the ceiling.
"How did you do it, Calvin?" came the abrupt demand from Maxwell's corner. "Did you really have any evidence against Miss Diana's step-father and her uncle?"
The big-bodied man from Washington chuckled softly.
"Oh, yes; I had the evidence. There was a hitch between Watson and Dimmock, and they were both of them injudicious enough to send notes back and forth; notes which, by the help of two good friends of yours and mine, were intercepted, carefully copied, the originals preserved, and the copies forwarded. It was a little off-color, but when you are fighting the devil you can't always stop to pick your weapons. Watson was to have a Federal judgeship, and Big Money was to see that he got it. The hitch came in reference to Watson's leaving town. He was afraid to go; afraid of public sentiment; and Dimmock was holding him on the rack. I don't know whether the evidence of the letters would have held in an ordinary court, but I do know that I had Judge Walsh on my side."
Maxwell whirled around in his chair.
"Sprague, did those letters incriminate Dimmock and Miss Diana's uncle?"
"Oh, don't let's say 'incriminate'; let's use the milder word, 'inculpate. Yes, I guess they did, Dick."
"Now I've got you!" snapped the square-shouldered one at the desk. "You would never—never in this wide world—have let that evidence get out. You know you wouldn't!"
The big man was grinning affably. "You're only half right," he rejoined. "Up to luncheon-time to-day I meant to do it; I had it framed up so that the uncle, who is really the high spellbinder of the entire push, could slip out and the whole load would come down on Mr. Dimmock's shoulders. But that luncheon play queered me, and I had to think quick to invent a new way out. It worked, and that's all there is to it; all but one little item—Miss Diana let me drive her out to Lake Topaz this afternoon, and I stole your car to do it."
"No; there is one other little item," said Maxwell, rising and closing his desk upon the evening's work. "I wired Ford, as you know, and I gave you the credit that belonged to you—which you may not know. Our New York crowd is properly grateful, and they promptly wired Kinzie. I don't know how you're fixed, Calvin, but I guess this won't come amiss if you're going to try to marry Diana Carswell," and he handed Sprague a slip of paper which bore Banker Kinzie's promise to pay ten thousand dollars to the order of one Calvin Sprague.
Sprague took the draft, glanced at the figure of it, and handed it back with another of his deep-chested laughs.
"Where on top of earth did you get the idea that I needed money, Dick?" he asked. "Why, Lord love you!l didn't you know that my California uncle, Uncle William, died five years ago and left me more money than I know what to do with? It's the solemn fact, and I'm working on the Government job purely and simply because I don't know how to loaf comfortably—never did. Of course, I can't quite match up with the Carswell millions; but if that were the only thing in the way——"
"What is the other thing?" demanded Maxwell, in mock solicitude.
Sprague had risen and was stretching his arms over his head and yawning sleepily.
"If you'd see me step on the scales, you wouldn't ask. I'm such a whale of a man, Dick! And, say: did you notice her at table to-day? 'Pretty,' you'd say, but that isn't the word; it's 'dainty', dainty in every look and move and touch. Imagine a girl like that saying, 'Yes, honey,' to a great big overgrown stale foot-ball artist like me! Let's go over to the house and smoke a bed-time. Nobody loves me, and I'm going out in the garden to eat——"
"That is what makes you so frightfully fat—you eat too many of the fuzzy kind," laughed the snappy little superintendent unsympathetically. And then he flicked the switch of the office lights and they went out together into the calm September night.