The youngest member of the flouted board laughed again.
"You mustn"t say in your wrath that all men are liars--or cowards. There is plenty of fight in our crowd; and plenty of money, too, if you could only get it sufficiently scared."
"I"ve done my best," said Ford, slamming the lid of the trunk and buckling the straps vigorously. "The next time I"ll find my market first and build my scheme afterward."
"Well, if I can say it without offense, I"m honestly sorry for you, Mr.
Ford; you"ve been butchered to make a Broad Street holiday," said Adair, lounging toward the door. "You are going back to the West, I suppose?"
"Yes."
"What line?"
"Pennsylvania; five-ten this afternoon."
"That is a long time between drinks. Suppose you come up to the club and have luncheon with me?"
Ford hesitated, watch in hand.
"I was about to lie to you, Mr. Adair, and plead business; but I shan"t.
I"ll tell you the plain truth. I"m too sore just now to be any good fellow"s good company."
"Which is precisely the reason why I asked you," laughed the golden youth. "Come on; let"s go now. You can take it out on me as much as you like, you know. I shan"t mind."
But the club luncheon ignored the business affair completely, as Adair intended it should. Ford came out of the sh.e.l.l of disappointment with the salad course, and by way of reparation for his former att.i.tude talked rather more freely of himself than he was wont to do on such short acquaintance with any one. The young millionaire met him quite half-way on this road to a better understanding, contrasting with mild envy Ford"s well-filled, busy life with his own erratic efforts at time-killing.
"You make me half sorry for myself," he said, when they went to the smoking-room to light their cigars. "It"s no less than a piteous misfortune when a fellow"s father has beaten all the covers of accomplishment for him."
Ford could laugh now without being bitter.
"The game isn"t all corralled, even for you, Mr. Adair. There was excellent good shooting for you in that directors" meeting this morning, but you wouldn"t take the trouble."
"That"s the fact," was the easy-going rejoinder. "That is just what my sister is always telling me--that I won"t take the trouble. And yet I do take the trouble to begin a lot of things; only they never seem worth while after a few days" dip into them."
"Pick out bigger ones," suggested Ford. "My trouble is just the other way about; I am always tackling things that are worlds too big for me--just as I have this time."
"It isn"t too big for you, Mr. Ford. It was too big for Colbrith, Magnus, _et al_. And, besides, you"re not going to give it up. You"ll drop off in Chicago, hunt up some meat-packer or other Croesus, and land your new railroad independently of the P. S-W."
It was a measure of the sincerity of Ford"s liking for his host when he said: "That little shot of mine at your colleagues was merely a long bluff. If my scheme can"t be worked with the P. S-W., it can"t well be worked without it. We are lacking the two end-links in the chain--which I could forge. But my two end-links without the middle one wouldn"t attract anybody."
It was quite late in the afternoon when they left the club, and Ford had no more than time to check his luggage and get to his train. He wondered a little when Adair went with him to the ferry, and was not ungrateful for the hospitality which seemed to be directed toward a lightening of the burden of failure. But Adair"s word of leave-taking, flung across the barrier when the chains of the landing-stage were rattling to their rise, was singularly irrelevant.
"By the way, Mr. Ford; what time did you say your train would reach Chicago?"
"At eight forty-five to-morrow evening," replied the beaten one; and then the boat swung out of its slip and the retreat without honor was begun.
VII
HAMMER AND TONGS
It was raining dismally the evening of the following day when Ford saw from his Pullman window the dull sky-glow of the metropolis of the Middle West. It had been a dispiriting day throughout. When a man has flung himself at his best into a long battle which ends finally in unqualified loss, the heavens are as bra.s.s, and the future is apt to reflect only the pale light of the past failure.
It was after the train had entered the suburbs of Chicago that a blue-coated messenger boy came through the Pullman, with the car conductor for his guide. Ford saw himself pointed out, and a moment later was reading a telegram, with a tumult, not of the drumming car wheels, roaring in his ears.
Had a talk with my sister and made up my mind to see you through--if I don"t get tired and quit, as usual. Secure options on that short-road stock quick, and wire me care McV. & M.
Funds to your credit in Algonquin National, Chicago. Another directors" meeting to-day, and things look a little less chaotic.
Answer. ADAIR.
For some time Ford could only read and re-read the exciting telegram, scarcely trusting the evidence of his senses. That the coldly indifferent members of the P. S-W. board, with a man like President Colbrith at their head, could be swung into line in the short s.p.a.ce of a single day by a young fellow who seemed to be little more than a spoiled son of fortune, was blankly incredible.
But he was not long in realizing that the cherished scheme for which he had studied and struggled was actually beginning to stagger to its feet; or in reaching the equally stirring conclusion that his part in the suddenly reopened game called instantly for shrewd blows and the swiftest possible action.
The stock-holders in the three local roads which were to be united to bridge the Chicago-Missouri River gap were scattered all over the Middle West. To secure the necessary options on working majorities of the stock would be a task for a financial diplomat, and one who could break the haste-making record by being in a dozen different places at one and the same moment. Moreover, secrecy became a prime factor in the problem. If the opposition, and particularly the Transcontinental people, should get wind of the move, it would take fifteen millions to do the work of five, as Banker Magnus had intimated.
Notwithstanding the thickly marshaled obstacles, Ford had his plan of campaign pretty well thought out by the time his train was slowing into the Union Station. Before going to New York he had painstakingly "located" the required holdings of the three stocks. Some of them were in Chicago, but the greater number of the men to be bargained with were local capitalists living in the smaller cities along the lines of the three short railroads.
In his bag was a carefully compiled list of these stock-holders, with their addresses and the amounts of their respective holdings. At the worst, he concluded, it should mean nothing more formidable than a deal of quick traveling, some anxious bargaining, perhaps, and a little finesse to keep his object in securing the options safely in the background.
This was how it appeared in the prospect; and the young engineer had yet to learn that the securing of options is a trade by itself--a trade by no means to be caught up in pa.s.sing, even by the most gifted of tyros.
Hence, it was extremely fortunate for this particular tyro--more fortunate than he could possibly know at the moment--that his telephone message sent from the first telephone he could reach after his train stopped in the Union Station, caught Kenneth at the Green Bag Club. It was a mere chance that he knew that Kenneth, the senior member of the firm of attorneys having general oversight of the Pacific Southwestern"s legal department, was at the moment in Chicago; a chance hanging upon the fact that he had met Kenneth as he was pa.s.sing through on his way eastward. But it was not by chance that the first familiar face he saw on entering the rotunda of the Grand Pacific Hotel was that of Kenneth.
The sight was merely the logical result of Ford"s urgent request telephoned to the lawyer"s club.
"By Jove, Kenneth; this comes within two inches of being a miracle!--my catching you here before you had started West," Ford e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed. And then: "When are you going back?"
"I am supposed to be on the way now," was the lawyer"s reply. "I had made all my arrangements to start back to-night on the slow train, but I dined with some friends on the North Side and made a miss. Where have you been?"
"I"m just in from New York. Let me register and get a room; and you put away any lingering notion you may have of heading westward to-night.
I"ve got to have your ear for a few hours to begin with, and the whole of you for the next few days. No; don"t probe me here. Wait, and I"ll unload on you gradually. You won"t be sorry you missed your train."
Fifteen minutes later Ford had his adviser safely behind a closed door, and had put him succinctly in possession of the world-subverting facts, as far as they went. When he concluded, the lawyer was shaking his head dubiously, just as Auditor Evans had done.
"Ford, have you any adequate idea of what a tremendous proposition you are up against?" he asked quietly, helping himself to a cigar out of the engineer"s freshly opened box.
"I don"t believe I have underrated the difficulties, any of them," said Ford, matching the attorney"s gravity. "There are bones all the way along, but I think I have struck the biggest of them just here. I ought to be in a dozen places at once, and not later than to-morrow noon.
That"s something I can"t quite compa.s.s."
"Getting these options, you mean? That is very true; but it isn"t all of it, by long odds. There are the thousand and one mechanical details to be worked out: the coupling up of these three local lines at their connecting points, the securing of proper trackage or trackage rights at these junctions, the general ordering of things so that a through line may be opened immediately when the stock is secured. If there were ten of you, you couldn"t get things licked into shape in time to get in on the grain carrying this season."
Ford had relighted his cigar, which had gone out in the explanatory interval, and was blowing smoke-rings toward the ceiling.
"I may be the biggest a.s.s this side of the jack trails, and the most conceited, Kenneth; but you"re over on my side of the ring when you talk about the mechanical obstacles. What I"m worrying about now is the fact that I can"t do two things at once. The options must be secured before we can make the fifth part of a move in the other field; and the Lord only knows how long that will take. To hurry is to lose out."
The lawyer nodded. "And not to hurry is to lose out, too," he qualified.
Then he smoked in thoughtful silence for five full minutes before he said, abruptly: "Give me your list of stock-holders and turn the option business over to the legal department, where it properly belongs. That will leave you foot-loose to go after the mechanical matter. How does that suit you?"