Chapter 9

Captain Hallam knew, of course, that Duncan could not get much sleep that night, but he had long ago learned that Guilford Duncan utterly disregarded personal comfort whenever duty called, and so he had no hesitation in thus ordering his young lieutenant to take an early morning train on the heels of a night of dancing.

"Perhaps you'd better go up there with me," suggested Duncan.

"No, that would embarrass matters. I've been up several times, and I want you to bring a fresh mind to bear upon the trouble. I'll telegraph the people there to put everything at your command. I want you to study the situation and make up your mind, just as if the whole thing belonged to you. Part of it does, you know, and more of it shall, if you find a way out. If the thing can be made to go, I'll give you ten more of the hundred shares, in addition to the five you already own. Good-night, and good-bye till you're ready to report."

Captain Will Hallam had recently bought this coal mine on a little branch railroad in the interior of Illinois. He had not wanted to buy it, but had done so by way of saving a debt. The mine had been badly constructed at the beginning, and latterly it had been a good deal neglected. There were other difficulties, as Duncan soon discovered, and the coal resources of the property had never been half developed. In recognition of his services in examining titles and other matters connected with the purchase, Hallam had given the young man five per cent. of the company's stock. He was thus, for the first time, working in part for himself, when he was sent to study the situation.

Quietly, but insistently, in face of the surly opposition of the superintendent, who was also styled chief engineer, Duncan looked into things. It was true, as the superintendent sullenly said, that this young man knew nothing of coal mining; but it was also true, as Duncan answered, that he knew how to learn.

And he did learn. He learned so much that after three or four days, he sent a telegram to Captain Will Hallam, saying:

Give me a perfectly free hand here or call me home. I must have all the authority you possess or I can be of no use. Answer by telegraph.

For response, Will Hallam telegraphed:

Consider yourself the whole thing. I give you complete and absolute authority. Hire or discharge men at will. Order all improvements you think best. Draw on the bank here for any sum you need. Only make the thing go if you can.

Telegraphing was much more expensive in those days--forty years ago--than it is now. And yet in neither of these dispatches was there any seeming effort to spare words. That was Captain Will Hallam's rule and practice. His frequent instruction to all his subordinates ran somewhat in this wise:

"Never save a word in telegraphing at the risk of being misunderstood. Mistakes are the most costly luxuries that a man can indulge in. Never forget that we live in the Nineteenth Century."

In that spirit Captain Will sent a dozen other telegrams that day, addressed to all the different men at the mines who had even the smallest pretension to authority. In each of them he said:

Guilford Duncan represents me fully and absolutely. His authority is unlimited. Obey him or quit. Obey him with all good will. Help him if you can, and in every way you can. There must be no interference, no kicking, no withholding of information. These are orders.

Thus armed, Duncan set to work in earnest.

"Why isn't your output of coal larger than it is?" he asked of Davidson, the superintendent.

"I can't make it larger under the circumstances."

"What are the circumstances? What difficulties are there in the way? You have miners enough, surely."

"Well, for one thing, the mine is badly ventilated. Many of the best galleries are filled with choke-damp, and must be kept closed."

"Why don't you improve the ventilation? As an engineer you ought to know how to do that much."

"It isn't feasible, as you would know, Mr. Duncan, if you knew anything about mining."

"Oh, never mind my ignorance. It is your knowledge that I'm concerned about just now. Do I understand you to say that a mine lying only seventy-five feet or so below the surface cannot be ventilated?"

"I suppose it might be if the business could afford the expense."

"The business can and will afford any expense that may be necessary to make it pay. If you know enough of engineering to devise a practicable plan for ventilating the mine, I'll furnish you all the money you need to carry it out."

He had it in mind to add: "If you don't know enough for that, I'll find a more competent engineer," but he kept his temper and refrained.

"Twouldn't be of any use," answered Davidson, after a moment. "We're producing more coal now than we can market."

"How is that? I don't understand. Your order book--which I looked over to-day--shows orders a full month ahead of shipments, besides many canceled orders, countermanded because not filled promptly enough to satisfy the customers. You're superintendent as well as engineer. I wish you'd try to clear up this puzzle."

"Oh, it's simple enough. The railroad people won't furnish us cars enough. I could ship a hundred carloads to-morrow if I had the cars, but I haven't got 'em, and I can't get 'em."

"Do you mean that you are offering coal as freight to this railroad, and the road is refusing it?"

"Yes, that's about it. I've asked for cars and can't get 'em, except a few each day."

"Do the other mines along this little branch railroad have the same trouble?"

"There is only one other mine on this line."

"Well, does it encounter the same difficulty in marketing its coal?"

"No--at least not to so great an extent. You see somebody there is standing in with the railroad people. I suppose they've had a little block of stock given to them--the railroad people, I mean. So the Quentin mines get all the cars they want, and we get only their leavings."

"Well, now, Mr. Davidson, I give you this order: Set to work at once and bring out every ton of coal you've got ready in the mine. There'll be cars here to haul it when you get it ready. Good-night, Mr. Davidson. I'll talk with you another time about the other matters. I have a good deal to do to-night, so I can't talk further with you now."

Davidson went out after a grudging "good-night." Duncan did not yet know or suspect, though he was presently to find out, that to Davidson, also, the proprietors of the rival mine were paying a little tribute, as a reward for silence and for making trouble.

Duncan sat for an hour writing letters. The typewriting machine had not been invented at that time, and even if it had been Duncan would have preferred to write these letters himself.

One of them was addressed to the General Freight Agent of the little railroad on which the mine was situated. It read as follows:

Within six days I shall have one hundred car loads of coal at the mouth of this mine, ready for shipment upon orders. After that time I shall have about sixty car loads ready for shipment each day. Please see to it that an adequate supply of cars to move this freight are side-tracked here on time.

Duncan signed that letter with all needed circumspection. The signature read:

For the Redwood Coal and Iron Company; Guilford Duncan, Manager and Attorney at Law and in Fact for the Company.

That subscription was intended as an intimation.

When on the next afternoon the General Freight Agent, who had several times met Duncan at Captain Hallam's house, read the letter, his attention was at once attracted--precisely as Guilford Duncan had intended that it should be, by the elaborate formality of the signature.

"So Hallam's got that smart young man of his at work, has he?" the Freight Agent muttered. "Well, we'll see what we can do with him." But he deliberately waited till nine o'clock that night before responding. Then opening the telegraph key at his elbow, he called Duncan, and Duncan, who had learned telegraphing, as he had learned many other things, as a part of his equipment for work, promptly went to his key and answered the call. The General Freight Agent spelled out this message:

"Simply impossible to furnish cars you ask. Haven't got them."

Duncan responded:

"The Quentin mine gets all cars needed. We demand our share and I shall insist upon the demand."

The reply came:

"I tell you we can't do it. I'll run down to your place to-morrow or next day and explain."

"Don't want explanations," answered Duncan. "I want the cars."

"But we simply can't furnish them."

"But you simply must."

"What if I refuse?"

"Then I'll adopt other measures. But you won't refuse."

"Why not?"

"Because I know too much," answered Duncan. "I shall send to you by special messenger, on the train that will pass here within an hour, a letter making a formal tender of the freight. I make that tender by telegraph now, and you may as well accept it in that way. Your road is a chartered common carrier. Your lawyers will advise you that you cannot refuse freight formally tendered to you for carriage, unless you can show an actual inability; in that case you must show that you are doing your best by all shippers alike; that you are treating them with an equal hand. You perfectly well know you are not doing that. You know you have cars in plenty. You know you are deliberately discriminating against this mine, and in favor of its rival. I make formal demand, on behalf of the company I represent, for all cars needed for the shipment of this freight. If they are not forthcoming, as you say they will not be, I give notice that I will dump the coal by the side of your loading side-track and leave it there at your risk. Good-night." And Duncan shut off the telegraph instrument and devoted himself to the preparation of his letter of demand.

It should be explained that the young man was not "making a bluff"--in the figurative phrase of that time and country--when he telegraphed in this way to the General Freight Agent. He had his facts well in hand. As soon as Davidson's intimation had come to him to the effect that the railroad officials were "standing in" with the proprietors of the Quentin mine, he had telegraphed for Joe Arnold to come to him by a train that would arrive at midnight. Joe Arnold was a detective of rare gifts and, incidentally, a reporter on a Chicago newspaper. Captain Will Hallam often had occasion to employ Joe, and thus Duncan had come into acquaintance with the young man's peculiar abilities for finding out things. Joe Arnold had an innocent, incurious, almost stupid countenance that suggested a chronic desire for sleep rather than any more alert characteristic. He had a dull, uninterested way of asking questions which suggested the impulse of a vacuous mind to "keep the talk going," rather than any desire to secure the information asked for. Indeed, when he asked a question and it was not promptly answered, he always hastened to say:

"Oh, it's of no consequence, and it's none of my business."

But before he quitted the presence of the man to whom the question had been put, Joe Arnold usually had his answer.

To this man, when he came by the midnight train, Duncan said:

"I must know who are the stockholders in the Quentin mine--both those of record and those whose names do not appear on the stock books. If possible I must know also what each stockholder actually paid for his shares. You must hurry. I must have this information by noon to-morrow. You'll need to use money perhaps. Here's stake for expenses. Come back on the noon train to-morrow."

And Joe Arnold came back, bringing with him quite all the information that Guilford Duncan wanted, and considerably more. For he brought with him transcripts of all the correspondence that had passed between the railroad people and the mine proprietors, including a dispatch which the General Freight Agent had sent a little after midnight that morning to Napoleon Tandy, saying:

Hallam has got that sharp young fellow Duncan at work and, as you are aware, he knows his business and his rights. I'm afraid he'll make a formal proffer of freight and a demand for cars. I wish you could come here, but of course you can't so long as you wish your stockholdings in that mine down there and your relations with us to be kept secret. Please telegraph any instructions you may wish.

That dispatch, of course, had been sent not from the mines, but from the General Freight Agent's office in another town. But there were always men in those days who were deeply interested to learn what was going on among the masters of finance, and one of these over-curious ones was a certain telegraph operator. It was his practice to take off the wires whatever dispatches there might be passing between Napper Tandy and the railroad people.

Thus it came about that Joe Arnold brought to Guilford Duncan a mass of accurate and detailed information which enabled him to take the high hand in his telegraphic controversy with the General Freight Agent, when that person, late in the evening, called him up on the wire in answer to his letter, received the night before. Thus was Duncan armed, _cap-a-pie_, for the telegraphic controversy. And thus it came about that during the next six days there were a hundred cars shunted to Redwood side-tracks, where they were rapidly loaded with the coal output of the Redwood mine.

XVII

AN OLD FRIEND

From that hour forth the Redwood mine became a paying property and, as Guilford Duncan liked to think, one which was contributing its share to the public benefit and the welfare of the people.

But Duncan's work there had only begun. Having solved the problem of shipping coal as fast as the miners could dig it, he gave his attention next to the equally pressing problem of increasing output. In the solution of that a great help unexpectedly came to him.

He was sitting late one night over the books and correspondence, when, near midnight, a miner sought speech with him.

He bade the man enter and, without looking up from the papers he was studying, asked him to take a seat. Still without taking his eyes from the papers, he presently asked of the man, who had not accepted the invitation to sit:

"Well, sir, what can I do for you?"

"Nothing," answered the man. "I came to serve you, not to ask service."

The voice seemed familiar to Duncan--almost startlingly familiar. He instantly looked up and exclaimed:

"Why, it's Dick Temple!"

"Yes," answered the other. "You and I quarreled very bitterly once. The quarrel was a very foolish one--on my side."

"And on mine, too!" responded Duncan, grasping his former enemy's hand. "Let us forget it, and be friends."

"With all my heart. It was in that spirit that I came hither to-night--I want to render you a service."

Meanwhile Duncan had almost forced the miner into a chair.

"Tell me," he said, "how is it that you----"

"That I'm a miner? You think of me as an educated engineer, eh? Well, that's a long story and not at all so sad a one as you might suppose. I'll tell you all about it at another time. But it can wait, while there are some other things that should be said now--things that vitally affect the affairs you have in charge."

"It is very good of you to come to me with suggestions, and they will be very welcome, I assure you, and very helpful, I've no doubt. For I have faith in your skill as an engineer."

"My skill still remains to be proved," answered the other with the merest touch of sadness in his utterance. "But, at any rate, I've had the very best engineering education that the schools can give. Never mind that--and never mind me. I didn't come here to talk of myself. I want to talk to you about this mine."

"Good. That is what I am here for. Go on."

"Well, everything here is wrong. With your readiness of perception you must have seen that for yourself. With the general management I have nothing to do. I'm only one of the miners. But there is a problem of ventilation here that ought to be solved, and I have come simply to offer a solution, in the interest of the company that pays my wages and still more in the interest of the miners. Two of them were killed by choke-damp a little while ago, four of them are now ill from the same cause, while all of them are earning less than they should because the best and most easily accessible headings are closed."

"Is there any very serious difficulty involved in the problem of ventilating the mine?"

"None whatever--at least no engineering difficulty."

"Just what do you mean?"

"I prefer not to say."

"Perhaps I can guess," said Duncan. "I have myself discovered a very serious difficulty in the personal equation of Mr. Davidson. He does not want to ventilate the mine--he has his own reasons, of course. That difficulty shall no longer stand in the way. I shall eliminate it at once. Go on, please, and tell me of the engineering problem."

"It scarcely amounts to a problem. The mine lies only about seventy-five feet below the surface. At its extreme extension the depth is considerably less, because of a surface depression there. What I suggest is this: Dig a shaft at the extreme end, thus making a second opening, and pass air freely through the mine from the one opening to the other. The cost will be a mere trifle."

"But will the air pass through in that way?"

"Not without help. But we can easily give it help."

"How? Go on. Explain your plan fully."

"Well, we have here three or four of those big fans that the government had made for the purpose of ventilating the engine rooms and stoke holes of its ironclads. They utterly failed and were sold as junk. Captain Hallam bought a lot of them at the price of scrap iron, and sent them out here. Davidson tried one of them and reported utter failure as a result. The failure was natural enough, both in the case of the ironclads and in that of the mine."

"How so?"

"Why, in both cases an attempt was made to force air down into spaces already filled with an atmosphere denser than that above. That was absurdly impossible, as any engineer not an idiot should have known."

"And yet you think you can use these fans successfully in ventilating the mine?"

"I do not think--I know. If Mr. Davidson will permit me to explain----"

"Never mind Davidson. If this experiment is to be tried you shall yourself be the man to try it. Go on, please."

"But, Duncan, I simply mustn't be known in the matter at all."

"Why not?"

"I have a wife to care for. I can't afford to be discharged. Besides, the miners like me and they think they have grievances against Davidson. If he were to discharge me--as he certainly would if I were to appear in this matter--the whole force would go on strike, no matter how earnestly I might plead with them not to do so. I don't want that to happen. It would be an ill return to the company that gave me wages when it was a question of wages or starvation with me. Worse still, it would mean poverty and suffering to all the miners and all their helpless wives and children. No, Duncan, I must not be known in this matter, or have anything to do with the execution of the plans I suggest. I want you to treat them as your own; suggest them to Davidson, and persuade him to carry them out. In that way all of good and nothing of harm will be done."

"Why, then, haven't you suggested your plans to Davidson?"

"I have, and he has scornfully rejected them. Coming from you he may treat them with a greater respect."

"Now, before we go any further, Dick--for I like to call you by the old nickname that alone I knew before our foolish quarrel came to separate us--before we go any further, let me explain to you that I am absolute master here. My word is law, to Mr. Davidson as completely and as absolutely as to the old fellow who scrubs out this office--or doesn't scrub it, for it's inexcusably dirty. Davidson can no more discharge you than he can discharge me. I don't know yet what I shall do with Davidson. But at any rate he has no longer the power to discharge you, so you need have no fear in that direction. Go on, now, and tell me how you purpose to ventilate the mine. I'm mightily interested."

"Thank you," said Temple. "My plan is perfectly simple. You can't force air down into a mine with any pump that was ever invented, or any pump that ever will be devised by human ingenuity. But you can easily and certainly draw air out of a mine. And when there are two openings to the mine--one at either end--if you draw air out at one end fresh air will of itself rush in at the other end to take its place. My plan is to sink a shaft at the farther end of the mine, and to build an air-tight box at the surface opening, completely closing it, except for an outflow pipe. Then I shall put one of the big ironclad fans into that box _upside down_. When it is set spinning it will suck air out of the mine, and fresh air will rush in at the main shaft to take the place of the air removed."

Duncan was intensely interested. Very eagerly he bent forward as he asked:

"You are confident of success in this?"

"More than confident. I'm sure."

"Quite sure?"

"More than quite sure; I'm absolutely certain. I've tried it."

"Tried it? How?"

"I've reconstructed the mine in miniature. I've made a little fan whose suction capacity is in exact proportion to that of the big fan which I propose to use in the mine. I have fully experimented, and I tell you now, Guilford Duncan, that if you permit me to carry out the plan, I'll create a breeze in that mine which will compel you to hold on to your hat whenever you go into the galleries."

Duncan rarely showed excitement. When he did so, it was in ways peculiar to himself. At this point he rose to his feet, and with an unusually slow and careful enunciation, said:

"Go to work at this job early to-morrow morning, Dick--or this morning, rather, for it is now one o'clock. Your wife is Mary, of course?"

There was a choking sound in Duncan's voice as he uttered the words.

"Yes, of course," answered the other, instinctively grasping Duncan's hand and pressing it in warm sympathy.

"Will you bear her a message from me?"

"Yes, any message you are moved to send."

"Tell her that Guilford Duncan has appointed you sole engineer of these mines, with full salary, and that if you succeed in the task you have undertaken, a far better salary awaits you."

Temple hesitated a moment and at last resumed his seat before answering. Then he said:

"This is very generous of you. I will go to her now, and deliver your message. She will be very glad. She was in doubt as to how you would receive me. But may I come back? Late as it is, I have a good deal more to say to you--about the mine, of course. You and I used often to talk all night, in the old days, long ago, before--well before we quarreled."

"Go!" answered Duncan with emotion. "Go! Tell Mary what I have said. Then come back. One night's sleep, more or less, doesn't matter much to healthy men like you and me."

XVIII

DICK TEMPLE'S PLANS

When Richard Temple returned to the office of the mining company, his always cheerful face was rippling with a certain look of gladness that told its own story of love and devotion. Had he not borne good tidings to Mary? Had he not, for the first time in months, been able to stand before her in another character than that of a working miner, and to offer her some better promise of the future than she had known before?