Chapter 10

"He did. He said in sober earnest just what Hunnicott had said in a joke: 'If I had your case to fight, I should try to obliterate Judge MacFarlane.' I began to say that MacFarlane's removal wouldn't help us so long as Bucks has the appointing of his successor, and then he turned on me and hammered it in with a last word just as we were leaving the train: 'I didn't say remove; I said obliterate.' I caught on, after so long a time, and I've been hard at work ever since."

"You are obliterating me," said Miss Portia. "I haven't the slightest idea what it is all about."

"It's easy from this on," said Kent, consolingly. "You know how MacFarlane secured his reelection?"

"Everybody knows that."

"Well, to cut a long story short, the gerrymander deal won't stand the light. The constitution says--"

"Oh, please don't quote law books at me. Put it in English--woman-English, if you can."

"I will. The special act of the Assembly is void; therefore there was no legal election, and, by consequence, there is no judge and no receiver."

Miss Van Brock was silent for a reflective minute. Then she said:

"On second thought, perhaps you would better tell me what the constitution says, Mr. David. Possibly I could grasp it."

"It is in the section on elections. It says: 'All circuit or district judges, and all special judges, shall be elected by the qualified voters of the respective circuits or districts in which they are to hold their court.' Kiowa County was cut out of Judge Whitcomb's circuit and placed in Judge MacFarlane's for electoral purposes only. In all other respects it remains a part of Judge Whitcomb's circuit, and will so continue until Whitcomb's term expires. Without the vote of Kiowa, MacFarlane could not have been elected; with it he was illegally elected, or, to put it the other way about, he was not elected at all. Since he is not lawfully a judge, his acts are void, among them this appointment of Major Guilford as receiver for the Trans-Western."

She was not as enthusiastic as he thought she ought to be. In the soil prepared for it by the political confidences of the winter there had grown up a many-branching tree of intimacy between these two; a frank, sexless friendship, as Kent would have described it, in which a man who was not very much given to free speech with any one unburdened himself, and the woman made him believe that her quick, apprehending sympathy was the one thing needful--as women have done since the world began.

Since the looting of the railroad which had taken him out of the steadying grind of regular work, Kent had been the prey of mixed motives. From the first he had thrown himself heartily into the problem of retrieval, but the pugnacious professional ambition to break the power of the machine had divided time pretty equally with sentiment. Elinor had said little about the vise-nip of hardship which the stock-smashing would impose upon three unguardianed women; but Penelope had been less reticent. Wanting bare justice at the hands of the wreckers, Elinor would go to her wedding with Ormsby as the beggar maid went to King Cophetua; and all the loyalty of an unselfish love rose up in Kent to make the fight with the grafters a personal duel.

At every step in the hitherto discouraging struggle Portia Van Brock had been his keen-sighted adviser, prompter, ally of proof. He told himself now and again in a flush of gratitude that he was coming to owe her more than he had ever owed any woman; that where other men, more--or less--fortunate, were not denied the joy of possession, he, the disappointed one, was finding a true and loyal comradeship next best, if not quite equal to the beatitudes of passion.

In all of which David Kent was not entirely just to himself. However much he owed to Portia--and the debt was large--she was not his only creditor. Something he owed to the unsatisfied love; more, perhaps, to the good blood in his veins; but most of all to the battle itself. For out of the soul-harrowings of endeavor was emerging a better man, a stronger man, than any his friends had known. Brutal as their blind gropings were, the Flagellants of the Dark Ages plied their whips to some dim purpose. Natures there be that rise only to the occasion; and if there be no occasion, no floggings of adversity or bone-wrenchings upon the rack of things denied, there will be no awakening--no victory.

David Kent was suffering in both kinds, and was the better man for it. From looking forward to success in the narrow field of professional advancement, or in the scarcely broader one of the righting of one woman's financial wrongs, he was coming now to crave it in the name of manhood; to burn with an eager desire to see justice done for its own sake.

So, when he had come to Portia with the scheme of effacing Judge MacFarlane and his receiver at one shrewd blow, the first of the many plans which held out a fair promise of success as a reward for daring, he was disappointed at her lack of enthusiasm.

"What is the matter with it?" he demanded, when he had given her five full minutes for reflection.

"I don't know, David," she said gravely. "Have I ever thrown cold water on any of your schemes thus far?"

"No, indeed. You have been the loyalest partizan a man ever had, I think; the only one I have to whom I can talk freely. And I have told you more than I have all the others put together."

"I know you have. And it hurts me to pull back now when you want me to push. But I can't help it. Do you believe in a woman's intuition?"

"I suppose I do: all men do, don't they?"

She was tying little knots in the fringe of the table scarf, but the prophetess-eyes, as Penelope called them, were not following the deft intertwinings of the slender fingers.

"You mean to set about 'obliterating' Judge MacFarlane forthwith?" she asked.

"Assuredly. I have been whipping the thing into shape all afternoon: that is what kept me from dining with you."

"It involves some kind of legal procedure?"

"Yes; a rather complicated one."

"Could you explain it so that I could understand it?"

"I think so. In the first place the question is raised by means of an information or inquiry called a _quo warranto_. This is directed to the receiver, and is a demand to know by what authority he holds. Is it clear thus far?"

"Pellucidly," she said.

"In reply the receiver cites his authority, which is the order from Judge MacFarlane; and in our turn we proceed to show that the authority does not exist--that the judge's election was illegal and that therefore his acts are void. Do I make it plain?"

"You make it seem as though it were impossible to fail. And yet I know you will fail."

"How do you know it?"

"Don't ask me; I couldn't begin to tell you that. But in some spiritual or mental looking-glass I can see you coming to me with the story of that failure--coming to ask my help."

He smiled.

"You don't need to be the prophetess Penelope says you are to foresee part of that. I always come to you with my woes."

"Do you?--oftener than you go to Miss Brentwood?"

This time his smile was a mere tightening of the lips.

"You do love to grind me on that side, don't you?" he said. "I and my affairs are less than nothing to Miss Brentwood, and no one knows it any better than you do."

"But you want to go to her," she persisted. "I am only the alternative."

He looked her full in the eyes.

"Miss Van Brock, what is it you want me to say? What can I say more than I said a moment ago--that you are the truest friend a man ever had?"

The answering look out of the brown eyes was age-old in its infinite wisdom.

"How little you men know when you think you know the most," she said half-musingly; then she broke off abruptly. "Let us talk about something else. If Major Guilford is wrecking the railroad, why is he spending so much money on improvements? Have you thought to ask yourself that question?"

"A good many times," he admitted, following her promptly back to first principles.

"And you have not found the answer?"

"Not one that fully satisfies me--no."

"I've found one."

"Intuitively?" he smiled.

"No; it's pure logic, this time. Do you remember showing me a letter that Mr. Hunnicott wrote you just before the explosion--a letter in which he repeated a bit of gossip about Mr. Semple Falkland and his mysterious visit to Gaston?"

"Yes, I remember it."

"Do you know who Mr. Falkland is?"

"Who doesn't?" he queried. "He has half of Wall Street in his clientele."

"Yes; but particularly he is the advisory counsel of the Plantagould System. Ever since you showed me that letter I have been trying to account for his presence in Gaston on the day before Judge MacFarlane's spring term of court. I should never have found out but for Mrs. Brentwood."

"Mrs. Brentwood!"

Miss Van Brock nodded.

"Yes; the mother of my--of the young person for whom I am the alternative, is in a peck of trouble; I quote her _verbatim_. She and her two daughters hold some three thousand shares of Western Pacific stock. It was purchased at fifty-seven, and it is now down to twenty-one."

"Twenty and a quarter to-day," Kent corrected.

"Never mind the fractions. The mother of the incomparable--Penelope, has heard that I am a famous business woman; a worthy understudy for Mrs. Hetty Green; so she came to me for advice. She had a letter from a New York broker offering her a fraction more than the market price for her three thousand shares of Western Pacific."

"Well?" said Kent.

"Meaning what did I do? I did what you did not do--what you are not doing even now; I put two and two together in the twinkling of a bedstaff. Why should a New York broker be picking up outlying Western Pacific at a fraction more than the market when the stock is sinking every day? I was curious enough to pass the 'why' along to a friend of mine in Wall Street."

"Of course he told you all about it," said Kent, incredulously.

"He told me what I needed to know. The broker in question is a Plantagould man."

"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 partnership 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 receivership 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 régime: '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 nobody 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 petition 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 compassionate 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 shifting 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 prone 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 bloody 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.

"I don't blame you for cussing it out," he said; and the saying of it was a mark of the relaxed discipline which was creeping into all branches of the service. "Mr. Loring's car is anybody's private wagon these days. Can you make your time with her?"

"Not on yer life," Callahan growled. "Is it the owld potgutted thafe iv a rayceiver that's in her?"

"Yes; with Governor Bucks and a party of his friends. I take it you ought to feel honored."

"Do I?" snapped Callahan. "If I don't make thim junketers think they're in the scuff iv a cyclone whin I get thim on the crooks beyant Dolores ye can gimme time, Misther M'Tosh. Where do I get shut iv thim?"

"At Agua Caliente. They are going to the hotel at Breezeland, I suppose. There is your signal to pull out."

"I'll go whin I'm dommed good an' ready," said Callahan, jabbing the snout of his oiler into the link machinery. And again M'Tosh let the breach of discipline go without reproof.

Breezeland Inn, the hotel at Agua Caliente, is a year-round resort for asthmatics and other health seekers, with a sanatorium annex which utilizes the waters of the warm springs for therapeutic purposes. But during the hot months the capital and the plains cities to the eastward send their quota of summer idlers and the house fills to its capacity.

It was for this reason that Mr. Brookes Ormsby, looking for a comfortable resort to which he might take Mrs. Brentwood and her daughters for an outing, hit upon the expedient of going first in person to Breezeland, partly to make sure of accommodations, and partly to check up the attractions of the place against picturesque descriptions in the advertisements.

When he turned out of his sleeper in the early morning at Agua Caliente station, car Naught-seven had been thrown in on a siding a little farther up the line, and Ormsby recognized the burly person of the governor and the florid face and pursy figure of the receiver, in the group of men crossing from the private car to the waiting Inn tally-ho. Being a seasoned traveler, the club-man lost no time in finding the station agent.

"Isn't there some way you can get me up to the hotel before that crowd reaches?" he asked; adding: "I'll make it worth your while."

The reply effaced the necessity for haste.

"The Inn auto will be down in a few minutes, and you can go up in that. Naught-seven brought Governor Bucks and the receiver and their party, and they're going down to Megilp, the mining camp on the other side of the State line. They've chartered the tally-ho for the day."

Ormsby waited, and a little later was whisked away to the hotel in the tonneau of the guests' automobile. Afterward came a day which was rather hard to get through. Breakfast, a leisurely weighing and measuring of the climatic, picturesque and health-mending conditions, and the writing of a letter or two helped him wear out the forenoon; but after luncheon the time dragged dispiteously, and he was glad enough when the auto-car came to take him to the station for the evening train.

As it happened, there were no other passengers for the east-bound Flyer; and finding he still had some minutes to wait, Ormsby lounged into the telegraph office. Here the bonds of ennui were loosened by the gradual development of a little mystery. First the telephone bell rang smartly, and when the telegraph operator took down the ear-piece and said "Well?" in the imperious tone common to his kind, he evidently received a communication that shocked him.

Ormsby overheard but a meager half of the wire conversation; and the excitement, whatever its nature, was at the other end of the line. None the less, the station agent's broken ejaculations were provocative of keen interest in a man who had been boring himself desperately for the better part of a day.

"Caught him doing it, you say?... Great Scott!... Oh, I don't believe that, you know ... yes--uh-huh--I hear ... But who did the shooting?" Whether the information came or not, Ormsby did not know, for at this conjuncture the telegraph instruments on the table set up a furious chattering, and the railway man dropped the receiver and sprang to his key.

This left the listener out of it completely, and Ormsby strolled out to the platform, wondering what had happened and where it had happened. He glanced up at the telephone wires: two of them ran up the graveled driveway toward Breezeland Inn; the poles of the other two sentineled the road to the west down which the tally-ho had driven in the early morning.

In the reflective instant the telegraph operator dashed out of his bay-windowed retreat and ran up the track to the private car. In a few minutes he was back again, holding an excited conference with the chauffeur of the Inn automobile, who was waiting to see if the Flyer should bring him any fares for the hotel.

Curiosity is said to be peculiarly a foible feminine. It is not, as every one knows. But of the major masculine allotment, Ormsby the masterful had rather less than his due share. He saw the chauffeur turn his car in the length of it and send it spinning down the road and across the line into the adjoining State; heard the mellow whistle of the incoming train, and saw the station man nervously setting his stop signal; all with no more than a mild desire to know the reason for so much excitement and haste--a desire which was content to wait on the explanation of events.

The explanation, such as it was, did not linger. The heavy train thundered in from the west; stopped barely long enough to allow the single passenger to swing up the steps of the Pullman; and went on again to stop a second time with a jerk when it had passed the side-track switch.