The hotel porter was droning out the call for the east-bound Flyer, and Kent effaced himself while Judge MacFarlane was paying his bill and making ready for his departure. But when the judge set out to walk to the station, Kent walked with him. There were five squares to be measured, and for five squares he hung at MacFarlane's elbow and the plea he made should have won him a hearing. Yet the judge remained impa.s.sible, and at the end of the argument turned him back in a word to his starting point.

"I can not recall the order at this time, if I would, Mr. Kent; neither can I set a day for the hearing on the merits. What has been done was done in open court and in the presence of your attorney, who offered no evidence in contradiction of the allegations set forth in the plaintiff's amended pet.i.tion, although they were supported by more than a dozen affidavits; and it can not be undone in the streets. Since you have not improved your opportunities, you must abide the consequences. The law can not be hurried."

They had reached the station and the east-bound train was whistling for Gaston. Kent's patience was nearly gone, and the auburn-hued temperament was clamoring hotly for its innings.

"This vacation of yours, Judge MacFarlane: how long is it likely to last?"

he inquired, muzzling his wrath yet another moment.

"I can not say; if I could I might be able to give you a more definite answer as to the hearing on the merits. But my health is very miserable, as I have said. If I am able to return shortly, I shall give you the hearing at chambers at an early date."

"And if not?"

"If not, I am afraid it will have to go over to the next term of court."

"Six months," said Kent; and then his temper broke loose. "Judge MacFarlane, it is my opinion, speaking as man to man, that you are a scoundrel. I know what you have done, and why you have done it. Also, I know why you are running away, now that it is done. So help me G.o.d, I'll bring you to book for it if I have to make a lifetime job of it! It's all right for your political backers; they are thieves and bushwhackers, and they make no secret of it. But there is one thing worse than a trickster, and that is a trickster's tool!"

For the moment while the train was hammering in over the switches they stood facing each other fiercely, all masks flung aside, each after his kind; the younger man flushed and battle-mad; the elder white, haggard, tremulous. Kent did not guess, then or ever, how near he came to death.

Two years earlier a judge had been shot and maimed on a western circuit and since then, MacFarlane had taken a coward's precaution. Here was a man that knew, and while he lived the cup of trembling might never be put aside.

It was the conductor's cry of "All aboard!" that broke the homicidal spell. Judge MacFarlane started guiltily, shook off the angry eye-grip of his accuser, and went to take his place in the Pullman. One minute later the east-bound train was threading its way out among the switches of the lower yard, and Kent had burst into the telegraph office to wire the volcanic news to his chief.

XII

THE MAN IN POSSESSION

Appraised at its value in the current coin of street gossip, the legal seizure of the Trans-Western figured mainly as an example of the failure of modern business methods when applied to the concealment of a working corporation's true financial condition.

This unsympathetic point of view was sufficiently defined in a bit of shop-talk between Harnwicke, the cold-blooded, and his traffic manager in the office of the Overland Short Line the morning after the newspaper announcement of the receivership.

"I told you they were in deep water," said the lawyer, confidently. "They haven't been making any earnings--net earnings--since the Y.S.& F. cut into them at Rio Verde, and the dividends were only a bluff for stock-bracing purposes. I surmised that an empty treasury was what was the matter when they refused to join us in the veto affair."

"That is one way of looking at it," said the traffic manager. "But some of the papers are claiming that it was a legal hold-up, pure and simple."

"Nothing of the kind," retorted the lawyer, whose respect for the law was as great as his contempt for the makers of the laws. "Judge MacFarlane had no discretion in the matter. Hawk had a perfect right to file an amended pet.i.tion, and the judge was obliged to act upon it. I'm not saying it wasn't a devilish sharp trick of Hawk's. It was. He saw a chance to smite them under the fifth rib, and he took it."

"But how about his client: the woman who was put off the train? Is she any better off than she was before?"

"Oh, she'll get her five thousand dollars, of course, if they don't take the case out of court. It has served its turn. It's an ugly crusher for the Loring management. Hawk's allegations charge all sorts of crookedness, and neither Loring nor Kent seemed to have a word to say for themselves. I understand Kent was in court, either in person or by attorney, when the receivership order was made, and that he hadn't a word to say for himself."

This view of Harnwicke's, colored perhaps by the fact that the Trans-Western was a business compet.i.tor of the Short Line, was the generally accepted one in railroad and financial circles at the capital.

Civilization apart, there is still a deal of the primitive in human nature, and wolves are not the only creatures that are p.r.o.ne to fall upon the disabled member of the pack and devour him.

But in the State at large the press was discussing the event from a political point of view; one section, small but vehement, raising the cry of trickery and judicial corruption, and prophesying the withdrawal of all foreign capital from the State, while the other, large and complacent, pointed eloquently to the beneficent working of the law under which the cause of a poor woman, suing for her undoubted right, might be made the whip to flog corporate tyranny into instant subjection.

As for the dispossessed stock-holders in the far-away East, they were slow to take the alarm, and still slower to get concerted action. Like many of the western roads, the Western Pacific had been capitalized largely by popular subscription; hence there was no single holder, or group of holders, of sufficient financial weight to enter the field against the spoilers.

But when Loring and his a.s.sociates had fairly got the wires hot with the tale of what had been done, and the much more alarming tale of what was likely to be done, the Boston inertness vanished. A pool of the stock was formed, with the members of the Advisory Board as a nucleus; money was subscribed, and no less a legal light than an ex-attorney-general of the state of Ma.s.sachusetts was despatched to the seat of war to advise with the men on the ground. None the less, disaster out-travels the swiftest of "limited" trains. Before the heavily-feed consulting attorney had crossed the Hudson in his westward journey, Wall Street had taken notice, and there was a momentary splash in the troubled pool of the Stock Exchange and a vanishing circle of ripples to show where Western Pacific had gone down.

In the meantime Major James Guilford, somewhile president of the Apache National Bank of Gaston, and antecedent to that the frowning autocrat of a twenty-five-mile logging road in the North Carolina mountains, had given bond in some sort and had taken possession of the company's property and of the offices in the Quintard Building.

His first official act as receiver was to ask for the resignations of a dozen heads of departments, beginning with the general manager and pausing for the moment with the supervisor of track. That done, he filled the vacancies with political troughsmen; and with these as a.s.sistant decapitators the major pa.s.sed rapidly down the line, striking off heads in daily batches until the over-flow of the Bucks political following was provided for on the railroad's pay-rolls to the wife's cousin's nephew.

This was the work of the first few administrative days or weeks, and while it was going on, the business att.i.tude of the road remained unchanged. But once seated firmly in the saddle, with his awkward squad well in hand, the major proceeded to throw a bomb of consternation into the camp of his compet.i.tors.

Kent was dining with Ormsby in the grill-room of the Camelot Club when the waiter brought in the evening edition of the _Argus_, whose railroad reporter had heard the preliminary fizzing of the bomb fuse. The story was set out on the first page, first column, with appropriate headlines.

WAR TO THE KNIFE AND THE KNIFE TO THE HILT!

TRANS-WESTERN CUTS COMMODITY RATE.

Great Excitement in Railroad Circles.

Receiver Guilford's Hold-up.

Kent ran his eye rapidly down the column and pa.s.sed the paper across to Ormsby.

"I told you so," he said. "They didn't find the road insolvent, but they are going to make it so in the shortest possible order. A rate war will do it quicker than anything else on earth."

Ormsby thrust out his jaw.

"Have we got to stand by and see 'em do it?"

"The man from Ma.s.sachusetts says yes, and he knows, or thinks he does. He has been here two weeks now, and he has nosed out for himself all the dead-walls. We can't appeal, because there is no decision to appeal from.

We can't take it out of the lower court until it is finished in the lower court. We can't enjoin an officer of the court; and there is no authority in the State that will set aside Judge MacFarlane's order when that order was made under technically legal conditions."

"You could have told him all that in the first five minutes," said Ormsby.

"I did tell him, and was mildly sat upon. To-day he came around and gave me back my opinion, clause for clause, as his own. But I have no kick coming. Somebody will have to be here to fight the battle to a finish when the judge returns, and our expert will advise the Bostonians to retain me."

"Does he stay?" Ormsby asked.

"Oh, no; he is going back with Loring to-night. Loring has an idea of his own which may or may not be worth the powder it will take to explode it.

He is going to beseech the Boston people to enlarge the pool until it controls a safe majority of the stock."

"What good will that do?"

"None, directly. It's merely a safe preliminary to anything that may happen. I tell Loring he is like all the others: he knows when he has enough and is willing to stand from under. I'm the only fool in the lot."

Ormsby's smile was heartening and good for sore nerves.

"I like your pluck, Kent; I'll be hanged if I don't. And I'll back you to win, yet."

Kent shook his head unhopefully.

"Don't mistake me," he said. "I am fighting for the pure love of it, and not with any great hope of saving the stock-holders. These grafters have us by the nape of the neck. We can't make a move till MacFarlane comes back and gives us a hearing on the merits. That may not be till the next term of court. Meanwhile, the temporary receiver is to all intents and purposes a permanent receiver; and the interval would suffice to wreck a dozen railroads."