The Grafters Part 23

"Still I fail to 'connect up,' as the linemen say."

"Do you? Ah, David, David! will you leave it for a woman to point out what you should have suspected the moment you read that bit of gossip in Mr.

Hunnicott's letter?"

Her hand was on the arm of her chair. He covered it with his own.

"I'll leave it for you, Portia. You are my good angel."

She withdrew the hand quickly, but there was no more than playful resentment in her retort.

"Shame on you!" she scoffed. "What would Miss Brentwood say?"

"I wish you would leave her out of it," he frowned. "You are continually ignoring the fact that she has promised to be the wife of another man."

"And has thereby freed you from all obligations of loyalty? Don't deceive yourself: women are not made that way. Doubtless she will go on and marry the other man in due season; but she will never forgive you if you smash her ideals. But we were talking about the things you ought to have guessed. Fetch me the atlas from the book-case--lower shelf; right-hand corner; that's it."

He did it; and in further obedience opened the thin quarto at the map of the United States. There were heavy black lines, inked in with a pen, tracing out the various ramifications of a great railway system. The nucleus of the system lay in the middle West, but there was a growing network of the black lines reaching out toward the Pacific. And connecting the trans-Mississippi network with the western was a broad red line paralleling the Trans-Western Railway.

She smiled at his sudden start of comprehension.

"Do you begin to suspect things?" she asked.

He nodded his head.

"You ought to be a man. If you were, I should never give you a moment's peace until you consented to take a partners.h.i.+p with me. It's as plain as day, now."

"Is it? Then I wish you would make it appear so to me. I am not half as subtile as you give me credit for being."

"Yet you worked this out."

"That was easy enough; after I had seen Mrs. Brentwood's letter, and yours from Mr. Hunnicott. The Plantagould people want your railroad, and the receivers.h.i.+p is a part of a plan for acquiring it. But why is Major Guilford spending so much money for improvements?"

"His reasons are not far to seek now that you have shown me where to look.

His instructions are to run the stock down so that the Plantagould can buy it in. Cut rates and big expenditures will do that--have done it. On the other hand, it is doubtless a condition of the deal that the road shall be turned over whole as to its property values--there is to be no wrecking in the general acceptance of the word. The Plantagould doesn't want a picked skeleton."

Miss Portia's eyes narrowed.

"It's a skilful bit of engineering, isn't it?" she said. "You'd admire it as artistic work yourself if your point of view were not so hopelessly personal."

"You don't know half the artistic skill of it yet," he went on. "Besides all these different ends that are being conserved, the gang is taking care of its surplus heelers on the pay-rolls of the company. More than that, it is making immense political capital for itself. Everybody knows what the policy of the road was under the old regime: 'All the tariff the traffic will stand.' But now a Bucks man has hold of it, and liberality is the word. Every man in Trans-Western territory is swearing by Bucks and Guilford. Ah, my dear friend, his Excellency the governor is a truly great man!"

She nodded.

"I've been trying to impress you with that fact all along. The mistake you made was in not joining the People's Party early in the campaign, David."

But Kent was following out his own line of thought and putting it in words as it came.

"Think of the brain-work it took to bring all these things into line.

There was no hitch, no slip, and nothing was overlooked. They picked their time, and it was a moment when we were absolutely helpless. I had filed our charter, but our local organization was still incomplete. They had their judge and the needful case in his court, pending and ready for use at the precise moment. They had Hawk on the ground, armed and equipped; and they knew that unless a miracle intervened they would have n.o.body but an unprepared local attorney to obstruct them."

"Is that all?" she asked.

"No. The finest bit of sculpture is on the capstone of the pyramid. Since we have had no hearing on the merits, Guilford is only a temporary receiver, subject to discharge if the allegations in Hawk's amended pet.i.tion are not sustained. After the major has sufficiently smashed the stock, Judge MacFarlane will come back, the hearing on the merits will be given, we shall doubtless make our point, and the road will revert to the stock-holders. But by that time enough of the stock will have changed hands on the 'wreck' price to put the Plantagould people safely in the saddle, and the freeze-out will be a fact accomplished."

Miss Van Brock drew a long breath that was more than half a sigh.

"You spoke the simple truth, David, when you said that his Excellency is a great man. It seems utterly hopeless now that we have cleared up all the little mysteries."

Kent rose to take his leave.

"No; that is where they all go out and I stay in," he said cheerfully.

"The shrewder he is, the more credit there will be in making him let go.

And you mark my words: I am going to make him let go. Good night."

She had gone with him to the door; was in the act of closing it behind him, when he turned back for a belated question.

"By the way, what did you tell Mrs. Brentwood to do?"

"I told her not to do anything until she had consulted you and Mr. Loring and Brookes Ormsby. Was that right?"

"Quite right. If it comes up again, rub it in some more. We'll save her alive yet, if she will let us. Did you say I might come to dinner to-morrow evening? Thank you: you grow sweeter and more truly compa.s.sionate day by day. Good night again."

XV

THE JUNKETERS

When Receiver Guilford took possession of the properties, appurtenances and appendages of the sequestered Trans-Western Railway, one of the luxuries to which he fell heir was private car "Naught-seven," a commodious hotel on wheels originally used as the directors' car of the Western Pacific, and later taken over by Loring to be put in commission as the general manager's special.

In the hands of a friendly receiver this car became a boon to the capitol contingent; its observation platform served as a s.h.i.+fting rostrum from which a deep-chested executive or a mellifluous Hawk often addressed admiring crowds at way stations, and its dining saloon was the moving scene of many little relaxative feasts, at which _Veuve Cliquot_ flowed freely, priceless cigars were burned, and the members of the organization unbent, each after his kind.

But to the men of the throttle and oil-can, car Naught-seven, in the gift of a hospitable receiver, shortly became a nightmare. Like most private cars, it was heavier than the heaviest Pullman; and the engineer who was constrained to haul it like a dragging anchor at the tail end of a fast train was p.r.o.ne to say words not to be found in any vocabulary known to respectable philologists.

It was in the evening of a wind-blown day, a week after Kent's visit to Gaston, that Engineer "Red" Callahan, oiling around for the all-night run with the Flyer on the Western Division, heard above the din and clamor of Union Station noises the sullen thump betokening the addition of another car to his train.

"Now fwhat the divvle will that be?" he rasped, pausing, torch in hand, to apostrophize his fireman.

The answer came up out of the shadows to the rear on the lips of M'Tosh, the train-master.

"You have the Naught-seven to-night, Callahan, and a pretty severe head wind. Can you make your time?"

"Haven't thim b.l.o.o.d.y fools in the up-town office anything betther to do than to tie that sivinty-ton ball-an'-chain to my leg such a night as this?" This is not what Callahan said: it is merely a printable paraphrase of his rejoinder.

M'Tosh shook his head. He was a hold-over from the Loring administration, not because his place was not worth taking, but because as yet no political heeler had turned up with the requisite technical ability to hold it.