The Short Line War Part 12

Harvey looked at his watch. "Train goes at eleven. I've got thirteen minutes."

"Turn around. It's only three miles. We can do it."

Harvey pulled up and turned. Then he hesitated.

"How about the team?" he said; "I can't take you home."

"Never mind that. Quick; you can't lose any time. I'll get the team back."

Harvey nodded and gripped the reins, and in a moment the bays were in their stride. Harvey's hands were full, and he made no effort to talk.

Miss Porter alternately watched him and the horses.

"They can do better than that. You'll have to slow up in town, you know."

And Harvey urged them on.

As they neared the town, Harvey spoke.

"Will you look at my watch?"

She threw back his coat and tugged at the fob until the watch appeared.

"Three minutes yet. We're all right."

But a blocked electric car delayed them, and they swung up to the platform just at train-time. Harvey gripped her hand:--

"Good-by. I shan't forget this."

But though her eyes danced, she only answered, "Please hurry!"

As Harvey dropped into a seat and looked out the car window, he saw her sitting erect, holding the nervous team with firm control. And he settled back with a glow in his heart.

CHAPTER VIII

JUDGE GREY

On Friday, after Jim Weeks had told Harvey that he was free to go to Truesdale, he followed the young man almost fondly with his eyes and he did not at once resume the work which awaited him. For Harvey's request had set him thinking. During years that pa.s.sed after the day when he took his last drive with Ethel Harvey, he had not dared to think of her. Later when he heard of her death, he did not try to a.n.a.lyze the impulse which led him to offer a position to Harvey. As he grew to know the young fellow he gradually admitted to himself his fondness for him, and now that he believed that Harvey was in love, he allowed himself for the first time the luxury of reminiscence.

The old Louisville days came back to him when he and Ethel rode together through country lanes and he loved her. The wound was healed; it had lost its sting a score of years ago, but his mood was still tender, and as he stared at the pile of papers on his desk, thoughts of C. & S.C. were far away. At last, however, the consciousness of this came upon him and he thought, "I reckon I need exercise," and then a moment later, "It'll be quite a trick, though, to find a horse that's up to my weight."

He had hardly taken up his work when Pease appeared and told him that a man wanted to see him. The man was a deputy sheriff, and he came to serve on James Weeks the injunction which Judge Black had signed in Porter's office two hours before.

It may be that his earlier mood had something to do with it; for as Jim laid the paper on his desk, his thoughts went back half a century to one of his boyhood days. It was a summer afternoon, and Jim and some of his friends had been in swimming; somehow it became necessary for him to fight Thomas Ransome. Jim had never been in a fight before, and he had no theories whatever, but he found that he could hit hard, and it never occurred to him to try to parry. Thomas was forced to give back steadily until his farther retreat was cut off by the river and he saw that more vigorous tactics were required. With utter disregard of the laws of war he drove a vicious kick at Jim's stomach. Had it landed, its effect would probably have been serious, but Jim, for the first time since the fight began, stepped back, and with both hands gave additional impetus to the foot, so that Thomas kicked much higher than he had intended, and losing his balance, he toppled into the river with a very satisfactory splash.

Jim smiled at the recollection and then read the injunction again to see if it were possible to catch Porter's foot. His eye rested long on the sputtery signature at the bottom, and he thought, "I might have known that Porter wouldn't go into this business without owning a Judge."

He put the paper in his pocket, then locked his desk, and with a word to Pease he left the office. Jim dined down town, and not until after dinner did he think of Harvey and his leave of absence. He would need his secretary to-morrow, and it would not do to have him out of reach. But the moments of reminiscence that afternoon came to Harvey's rescue, and Jim in the most unbusinesslike way decided to get on without his secretary. "He can't go through that but once," thought Jim.

He left the restaurant and walked rapidly to the Northern Station, and for the second time that week the Northern Limited took Jim to Manchester.

Jim was going to see Judge Grey. He had already decided what he wanted the Judge to do; whether he could get him to do it was another question, which Jim was going to put to the test as soon as possible.

The trains on the Northern in coming into Manchester run down the middle of one of the main business streets, and engineers are compelled by city statutes to run slowly. As the Limited slowed down, Jim walked out on the rear platform and stood gazing at the brightly lighted shop windows. At an intersecting street he saw a trolley car waiting for the train to pa.s.s; the blue light it showed told Jim it was the car he wanted, so he swung quickly off the train and stepped aboard the car as it came b.u.mping over the crossing. It was evidently behind its schedule, for once on clear track again it sped along rapidly. A man was running to catch the car, and Jim watched him with amused interest. At first he gained, but as the speed of the car increased he gave up the race; but he had come near enough for Jim to recognize him as the man who had dined only a few tables from him that evening in Chicago and who had sat a few seats behind him on the Limited. Jim smiled. "They're mighty anxious to know what I'm doing," he thought.

Judge Grey did not go away on vacations. He was a homely man, with a large family, and he took serious views of life. He was country bred, and he had never outgrown a certain rusticity of appearance. It was said that his wife always cut his hair, and the concentric circles made by the neatly trimmed ends lent verisimilitude to the tale that she began at the crown with a b.u.t.ter dish to guide her scissors, then extended the diameter of her circle by using next a saucer, and last a soup bowl.

The Judge greeted Jim warmly, invited him into the library, and sat down to hear what he had to say. Jim told him almost without reservation the story of the fight for the possession of M. & T., beginning with his large investment in the road and his election to the presidency of it. He did not try to make a good story; he told what had happened as simply and briefly as possible, and he interested Judge Grey. Part of it was already known to him, and part filled in gaps in his knowledge. To him it was the story of an honest struggle for something worth struggling for. When it came to the latest move, and Jim without comment handed him Black's injunction, the Judge's wrath flamed out.

"That's an outrage!" he exclaimed. "It's just a legal hold-up."

"Possibly," said Jim. "It was the best move they could make, though. But,"

he went on after a short pause, "I've got the right in this business, and I want you to help me."

"You want me to dissolve the injunction, I suppose," said the Judge, cautiously.

"No," said Jim. "I don't. Just the other way. I'd like you to issue an injunction that will go a little farther."

There was another short pause, and then Jim began explaining his plan. As he explained and argued, the fire, which had been crackling cheerfully when he came in, flickered more and more faintly, and it was but a fading glow when that most informal session of the Circuit Court in chancery sitting came to its conclusion.

"That's all right, then," said Jim at length, rising as he spoke.

"Yes," said the other. "We'll do it that way. Are you going right back to Chicago, Mr. Weeks?"

"No," said Jim. "I shall be here for some time. From now on this fight will be along the line of the road."

Mr. Wing was oppressed by a sense of his office boy's superiority. He read disapprobation in the round-eyed stare, and even the cut-steel b.u.t.tons, though of Wing's own purveying, seemed arguslike in their critical surveillance. He would have abolished them had he not felt that the boy would understand the change. If the boy had only forgotten to copy letters or had manifested an unruly desire to attend his relatives' funerals, his employer would have been a happier man. As it was, he felt apologetic every time he came in late or went out early.

The directors' meeting which Porter and Thompson had decided upon on Friday was to take place the next afternoon in Wing's office; so, contrary to the little man's custom on Sat.u.r.day afternoons, he returned thither after lunch.

Porter and Thompson were already there, and the former was giving the Vice-President his last instructions, with the evident purpose of stiffening him up a bit. For Thompson seemed to need stiffening badly. One by one, and two by two, the directors came straggling in, and presently Porter, with a parting injunction to Thompson, left the room and crossed over to McNally's office, where his lieutenant was waiting for him. There they plotted and planned and awaited the result of the directors' meeting across the hall.

In Wing's office the meeting was about to begin. It was easy to distinguish between Jim's friends and the C. & S.C. people; for the former, a doleful minority, were crowded in one corner doing nothing because there was nothing they could do, while on the other side of the room were the gang, with Thompson in the centre, talking in low tones over the programme of the meeting. There seemed to be no hope whatever that the President would be able to save himself, for his opponents had a clear majority of two, and they were met to-day to press this advantage to the utmost. Had Jim been there at hand, his cause would not have seemed to his friends so desperate, for it was hard, looking at him, to imagine him defeated; his very bulk seemed prophetic of ultimate victory. But Jim was not there; he was not even in Chicago.

There was one man in the minority group who seemed somewhat less cheerless than his companions. When they asked him what hope there was, what way of escape he saw, he could not answer, but he still professed to believe that the President's downfall was not so imminent as it seemed. And the thought that perhaps this one man knew more than he could tell kept the minority from becoming utterly discouraged. The foundation for his hopes lay in a telegram he had received that morning from Jim, which read, "_Don't get scared, everything all right._" Evidently Jim was not submitting tamely, but whatever was going to happen must happen soon if it was not to be too late, for Thompson was already calling the meeting to order. As the directors seated themselves about the long table and listened to Thompson's opening remarks,--Thompson liked to make remarks,--it seemed that for once in his life Jim was beaten.

At that moment, in the arched entrance to the Dartmouth, a man whose damp forehead and limp collar bore witness that he was in a hurry, turned away from the wall directory he had been scrutinizing and entered the nearest elevator.

"Six," he said. Once on the sixth floor he looked about for a minute or two and walked into the outer office where b.u.t.tons was on guard, demanding audience with Mr. Wing.

"Mr. Wing is in," said the boy, "but he is engaged and can't be disturbed."

"They're here, are they?" said the man. "Well, I want to see Mr. Wing and Mr. Thompson and Mr. Powers."

"But you can't see them," was the answer. "There's a directors' meeting in there."