Читать книгу The Short Line War - Samuel Merwin - Страница 5

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It was Monday morning, September 23d. The telephone bell on the big mahogany desk rang twice before Jim Weeks laid down the sheet of paper he was scrutinizing and picked up the receiver.

“Hello! Oh, that you, Fox? Yes—Yes. Hold on! Give me that name again. Frederick McNally. Dartmouth Building, did you say? Yes. Thank you. Good-by.”

The bell tinkled again and Jim swung round in his chair.

There was another desk in the room, where sat a young man busy over a pile of letters. He was private secretary to a man who was president of one railroad and director in others, and his life was not easy. The letters he was working over were with one exception addressed to the Hon. James Weeks, Washington Building, Chicago. The exception was a pale blue note addressed to Mr. Harvey West, and the young man had put that at the bottom of the pile and was working down to it.

The elder man spoke. “West,” he said, “Fox has just telephoned me that he's found out who's been buying M. & T. stock. It's Frederick McNally; he's in the Dartmouth Building. He isn't doing it on his own hook, but I don't know who he is doing it for. Somebody wants that stock mighty bad. There isn't a great deal of it lying around, though.”

“Do you think that Thompson—” began the secretary.

“Thompson would be glad to see me out and himself in,” said Jim Weeks, “and he leads Wing and Powers around by the nose, but he can't swing enough stock to hurt anything at next election. I don't believe it's he that's buying. Thompson hasn't got sand enough for that. He'll never fight.”

There was a moment's pause. Jim walked over to the ticker and looked back along the ribbon of paper. “It's quoted at 68–½ this morning,” he said, “but no sales to amount to anything.”

“You might go over and talk to Wing,” he went on. “You can find out anything he knows if you go at it right. I don't believe there's anything there. However, I'd like to know just what they are doing. You'd better do it now. Send Pease in when you go out, will you?”

Harvey slipped the blue envelope from the bottom of the pile of letters, called the stenographer, and started out. He read the note while he was waiting for the elevator.

The M. & T. is a local single-track road, about two hundred miles long, running between the cities of Manchester and Truesdale. The former is on the main line of the Northern, and the latter on the C. & S.C., both of which are trunk lines from Chicago to the West. The M. & T. was not a money-making affair; it had cost a lot of money, its stock was away down, and it trembled on the brink of insolvency until Jim Weeks took hold of it. He put money into it, straightened out its tangled affairs, and incidentally made some enemies in the board of directors. There were coal mines on the line near Sawyerville, which were operated in a desultory way, but they never amounted to much until some more of Jim Weeks's money went into them, and then they began to pay. This made the M. & T. important, especially to the C. & S.C. people, who immediately tried to make arrangements with Jim for the absorption of the M. & T. by their line. C. & S.C. had a bad name. There were many shady operations associated with its management, and Jim decided to have as little to do with it as possible, so the attempt apparently was abandoned.

The stock of the M. & T. was held largely by men who lived along the line of the road. Tillman City and St. Johns each held large blocks; they had got a special act of legislature to allow them to subscribe for it. These stockholders had great confidence in Jim, for under his management their investment was beginning to pay, and they, he felt sure, approved of his action in the C. & S.C. matter.

Everything was going well with the road, and the stock was climbing slowly but steadily. It was not liable to any great fluctuation, for most of its holders regarded it as a permanent investment and it did not change hands to any great extent. Comparatively little of it got into the hands of speculators.

But suddenly it began to jump. It was evident to every one who watched it that some important deal was afoot. Jim Weeks was as much in the dark as any one. He had watched its violent fluctuations for a week while he vainly sought to ferret out the motive that was causing them. And on this particular morning, though he sent his secretary, Harvey West, to talk to Wing, he had little idea that the young fellow would get hold of a clew.

When the elevator stopped at the main floor, Harvey thrust the half-read note back into his pocket. “No time for that sort of thing this morning,” he thought. “I wonder how soon I'll be able to run down to see her.” A moment later he was walking rapidly toward the Dartmouth.

The men he saw and nodded to glanced round at him enviously. “Case of luck,” growled somebody. That was true. Harvey was lucky; lucky first and foremost in that Ethel Harvey was his mother. He got his mental agility as well as his indomitable cheeriness from her. He was a healthy, sane young fellow who found it easy to work hard, who could loaf most enjoyably when loafing was in order, and who had the knack of seeing the humorous side of a trying situation. He had always had plenty of money, but that was not the reason he got more fun out of his four years in college than any other man in his class. He “got down to business” very quickly after his graduation, and now at the end of another four years he was private secretary to Jim Weeks. That of course wasn't luck. The fact that Jim had fallen in love with Ethel Harvey thirty years before might account for his friendly interest in her son, but it would not explain Harvey's position of trust. He knew that he could not hold it a day except by continuing to be the most available man for the place.

It is probable that on this morning, the contents of the pale blue note contributed largely to his cheerfulness. It was evident that Miss Porter liked him, and Harvey liked to be liked.

Wing's office on the sixth floor of the Dartmouth was a beautifully furnished suite, presided over by a boy in cut-steel buttons. Wing himself was a dapper little man, a capitalist by necessity only, for his money had been left to him. His one ambition was to collect all the literature in all languages on the game of chess; a game by the way which he himself did not play. “Mr. Wing had gone out to lunch about an hour before,” said the boy in buttons. “Would Mr. West wait?” Harvey, who knew Mr. Wing's luncheons of old, said no, but he would call again in the afternoon. As he walked back to the elevator his eye fell upon another office door which bore the freshly painted legend, “Frederick McNally, Attorney-at-law.”

Harvey lunched at the Cafe Lyon, which is across the street from the main entrance to the Dartmouth. The day was warm for late September, and he selected a seat just inside the open door. From his table he could see people hurrying in and out of the big office building. He watched the crowd idly as he waited for his lunch, and finally his interest shifted to the big doors, which seemed to have something human about them, as they maliciously tried to catch the little messenger boys who rushed between them as they swung.

Suddenly his attention came back to the crowd, centring on a party of four men who turned into the great entrance. Three of them he knew, and the fact that they were together suggested startling possibilities. They were Wing, Thompson and William C. Porter of Chicago and Truesdale, First Vice-President of the C. & S.C. and, this was the way Harvey thought of him, father of the Miss Katherine Porter whose name was at the bottom of the note in the blue envelope. Thompson, a fat, flaccid man with a colorless beard, was laboriously holding the door open for Mr. Porter, then he preceded little Mr. Wing. The fourth man was a stranger to Harvey.

He was starting to follow them when the waiter came up with his order. That made him pause, and a moment's reflection convinced him that he had better wait. He decided that if the meeting of Porter with the two M. & T. directors were not accidental they would be likely to be in consultation for some time, and he would gain more by inquiring for Mr. Wing at the expiration of a half hour than by doing it now. So he lunched at leisure and then went back to the sixth floor of the Dartmouth.

He was met by a rebuff from Buttons. “No, Mr. Wing had not come back yet,” and again “Would Mr. West wait?” Harvey could think of nothing better to do, so he sat down to think the matter out. He was puzzled, for the three men were in the building, he felt sure. Then it came to him. “Jove,” he murmured, “McNally! McNally was that fourth man.” He sat back in his chair and tried to decide what to do.

Meanwhile four men sat about the square polished table in Mr. McNally's new office and anxiously discussed ways and means. The scrappy memoranda and what appeared to be problems in addition and subtraction littered about, made it appear that some ground had been pretty thoroughly gone over. There was a momentary lull in the conversation, and the silence was broken only by the tapping of Mr. Wing's pencil as he balanced it between his fingers and let the point rebound on the top of the table. There really seemed to be nothing to say. The alliance between C. & S.C. and Thompson's faction of the M. & T. directors had been arranged some days before. They had met to-day to see how they stood. McNally told what he had done, and it was not so much as they had hoped he would be able to do. The combination was not yet strong enough to take the field. For the past twenty minutes Thompson had been leaning over the table making suggestions in his thick voice, and McNally had sat back and quietly annihilated them by demonstrating their impracticability, or by stating that they had been unsuccessfully tried.

Beyond asking one or two incisive questions of McNally, Porter had said nothing, but had stared straight out of the window. For the past ten minutes he had been waiting for Thompson to run down. It was he who broke the silence.

“We're stuck fast”—he was speaking very slowly—“unless we can get control of that Tillman City stock.”

McNally shook his head doubtfully. “I'm afraid it's no good,” he said. “Look what we've offered them already. They think the stock is going to go on booming clear up to the sky, and they won't sell. We couldn't get it at par.”

Porter's chair shot back suddenly. He walked over to the empty fireplace, the other men watching him curiously. He spread his hands behind him mechanically as if to warm them. Then he said:—

“I think we could get it if we were to offer par.”

“Offer par!” thundered Thompson. “We could get Jim Weeks's holdings by paying par.”

Porter smiled indulgently. “I didn't say we'd pay par for anything. But I think if Mr. McNally were to sign a contract to pay par the day after the M. and T. election, that he could vote the stock on election day.”

McNally's plump hand came down softly on the table. “Good!” he said under his breath.

But Mr. Thompson failed to understand. “But the contract?” he said.

“Such a contract would be a little less valuable than that waste paper,” Porter replied politely, indicating the crumpled sheets on the table. Then he turned to McNally and asked, “How many men will it take to swing it?”

“Three, if we get the right ones. Yes, I know the men we want. I can get them all right,” he added, in response to the unspoken question. “It will need a little—oil, though, for the wheels.”

“I suppose so,” said Porter, dryly. “I think you'd better get at it right away. It's two o'clock now. The two-thirty express will get you to Manchester so that you can reach Tillman about seven-thirty. It doesn't pay to waste any time when you're trying to get ahead of Jim Weeks. He moves quick. Have you got money enough?”

McNally nodded.

Thompson had come to the surface again. He was breathing thickly, and his high, bald forehead was damp with perspiration. “That's bribery,” he said, “and it's—dangerous.”

“I'm afraid that can't be helped, Mr. Thompson,” said Porter. “It's neck or nothing. We've got to have that Tillman City stock.”

There were but four people in the room when he began speaking. There were five when he finished, for Harvey West had grown tired of waiting. He bowed politely.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen. Ah! Mr. Porter. How do you do? I beg your pardon for intruding.”

Porter recovered first. “No intrusion, Mr. West. We had just finished our business.”

McNally took the cue quickly.

“Mr. West?” he said interrogatively.

Harvey bowed.

“I will be at your service in a moment. Excuse me.”

Wing and Thompson had already taken the hint, and were moving toward the door. Porter hung back, conversing in low tones with McNally. Then he bowed to West and followed the others. McNally gathered up the papers on the table, folded them, and put them in his pocket.

“Please sit down, Mr. West. What can I do for you? Wait a moment, though. Won't you smoke?” He held out his cigar case to Harvey, who took one gladly. Lighting it would give him a moment more to think, and thinking was necessary, for he didn't know what McNally could do for him. But McNally seemed to be doing his best to help him out.

“Don't you think it very warm here?” he said, as Harvey struck a match. “Something cool to drink would go pretty well. If you'll excuse me for a moment more I'll go down and see about getting it,” and without waiting for a reply, McNally put on his silk hat and stepped out into the corridor.

“He certainly seems friendly,” thought Harvey, as the footfalls diminished along the floor, and then he puzzled over what he should say when McNally came back. At last he smiled. “That's it,” he said to himself, “I'll try to rent him that vacant suite in our office building.”

When West had made up his mind that the party of four were not to meet in Wing's office, he had decided to see if they were in McNally's. He could not ask for Wing, of course, so he asked for McNally and trusted to the spur of the moment for a pretext for his call. Now that McNally's absence had enabled him to think of one he took a long breath of satisfaction. He had accomplished what he had set out to accomplish, and contrary to Jim Weeks's expressed expectation. There was no doubt that it was a combination of the C. & S.C. and Thompson's gang that was booming the M. & T. Moreover there was no doubt as to their next move. “But it won't work,” he thought. “Jim owns about half of Tillman City, and anyway they'll never sell when our stock is jumping up the way it is.”

And having settled this important matter he switched his train of thought off on another track. It reached Truesdale in a very short time, but it had nothing to do with M. & T., or with Mr. McNally. He took the note out of his pocket and read it through twice, and then smoked over it comfortably for some time before he began vaguely to wonder why Mr. McNally didn't come back. Five minutes later he glanced at his cigar ash. It was an inch and a half long. “That means twenty minutes,” he said thoughtfully, and then it dawned on him that things had happened which were not down on the schedule.

He walked quickly to the telephone, and a moment later Pease was talking to him.

“No,” said the stenographer; “Mr. Weeks went out to lunch about an hour ago. He said he wouldn't be back to the office this afternoon.”

There had been no words wasted in the two minutes' conversation between Porter and McNally after Harvey's abrupt entrance, and as a result of it, while the young secretary waited and thought over the good stroke of work he had done for Jim Weeks and of another good stroke he might some day do for himself, Mr. Frederick McNally took the two-thirty express for Manchester and Tillman City.