Chapter IX: Part 9

“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 Southwestern 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 upstairs 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 last 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 Copah, 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 kidnapping 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 intrastate 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 train-load 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 multi-millionaire 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----”