The Grafters

by Francis Lynde

  XIII

  THE WRECKERS

  Just why Receiver Guilford, an officer of the court who was supposed to benursing an insolvent railroad to the end that its creditors might not loseall, should begin by declaring war on the road's revenue, was a questionwhich the managers of competing lines strove vainly to answer. But when,in defiance of all precedent, he made the cut rates effective to and fromall local stations on the Trans-Western, giving the shippers atintermediate and non-competitive points the full benefit of thereductions, the railroad colony denounced him as a madman and gave him amonth in which to find the bottom of a presumably empty treasury.

  But the event proved that the major's madness was not altogether withoutmethod. It is an axiom in the carrying trade that low rates make business;create it, so to speak, out of nothing. Given an abundant crop, lowprices, and high freight rates in the great cereal belt, and, be thefarmers never so poor, much of the grain will be stored and held againstthe chance of better conditions.

  So it came about that Major Guilford's relief measure was timed to anicety, and the blanket cut in rates opened a veritable flood-gate forbusiness in Trans-Western territory. From the day of its announcement thetraffic of the road increased by leaps and bounds. Stored grain came outof its hiding places at every country cross-roads to beg for cars; stockfeeders drove their market cattle unheard-of distances, across the tracksof competing lines, over and around obstacles of every sort, to pour theminto the loading corrals of the Trans-Western.

  Nor was the traffic all outgoing. With the easing of the money burden, themerchants in the tributary towns began thriftily to take advantage of thelow rates to renew their stocks; long-deferred visits and business tripssuddenly became possible; and the saying that it was cheaper to travelthan to stay at home gained instant and grateful currency.

  In a short time the rolling stock of the road was taxed to its utmostcapacity, and the newly appointed purchasing agent was buying cars andlocomotives right and left. Also, to keep pace with the ever-increasingprocession of trains, a doubled construction force wrought night and dayinstalling new side tracks and passing points.

  Under the fructifying influence of such a golden shower of prosperity,land values began to rise again, slowly at first, as buyers distrusted thecontinuance of the golden shower; more rapidly a little later, as theGuilford policy defined itself in terms of apparent permanence.

  Towns along the line--hamlets long since fallen into the way-station rutof desuetude--awoke with a start, bestirring themselves joyfully to meetthe inspiriting conditions. At Midland City, Stephen Hawk, the newright-of-way agent, ventured to ask municipal help to construct a ten-milebranch to Lavabee: it was forthcoming promptly; and the mass meeting, atwhich the bond loan was anticipated by public subscription shouted itselfhoarse in enthusiasm.

  At Gaston, where Hawk asked for a donation of land whereon the companymight build the long-promised division repair-shops, people fought withone another to be first among the donors. And at Juniberg, where thecompany proposed to establish the first of a series of grainsubtreasuries--warehouses in which the farmers of the surrounding countrycould store their products and borrow money on them from the railroadcompany at the rate of three per cent, per annum--at Juniberg enough moneywas subscribed to erect three such depots as the heaviest tributary cropcould possibly fill.

  It was while the pendulum of prosperity was in full swing that David Kenttook a day off from sweating over his problem of ousting the receiver andran down to Gaston. Single-eyed as he was in the pursuit of justice, hewas not unmindful of the six lots standing in his name in the Gastonsuburb, and from all accounts the time was come to dispose of them.

  He made the journey in daylight, with his eyes wide open and the mentalpencil busy at work noting the changes upon which the State press had beendilating daily, but which he was now seeing for the first time. They wereincontestable--and wonderful. He admitted the fact without prejudice to asettled conviction that the sun-burst of prosperity was merely anotherbrief period of bubble-blowing. Towns whose streets had been grass-grownsince the day when each in turn had surrendered its right to be called theterminus of the westward-building railroad, were springing into new life.The song of the circular saw, the bee-boom of the planing-mill and thetapping of hammers were heard in the land, and the wayside hamlets weredotted with new roofs. And Gaston----

  But Gaston deserved a separate paragraph in the mental note-book, and Kentaccorded it, marveling still more. It was as if the strenuous onrush ofthe climaxing Year Three had never been interrupted. The material for thenew company shops was arriving by trainloads, and an army of men was atwork clearing the grounds. On a siding near the station a huge grainelevator was rising. In the streets the hustling activity of the"terminus" period was once more in full swing; and at the Mid-ContinentKent had some little difficulty in securing a room.

  He was smoking his after-dinner cigar in the lobby of the hotel and tryingas he might to orient himself when Blashfield Hunnicott drifted in. Kentgave the sometime local attorney a cigar, made room for him on theplush-covered settee, and proceeded to pump him dry of Gaston news. Summedup, the inquiries pointed themselves thus: was there any basis for theGaston revival other than the lately changed attitude of the railroad? Inother words, if the cut rates should be withdrawn and the railroadactivities cease, would there not be a second and still more disastrouscollapse of the Gaston bubble?

  Pressed hardly, Hunnicott admitted the probability; given another turn,the screw of inquiry squeezed out an admission of the fact, slurred overby the revivalist, that the railway company's treasury was really thealms-box into which all hands were dipping.

  "One more question and I'll let up on you," said Kent. "It used to be saidof you in the flush times that you kept tab on the real estate transferswhen everybody else was too busy to read the record. Do you still do it?"

  Hunnicott laughed uneasily.

  "Rather more than ever just now, as you'd imagine."

  "It is well. Now you know the members of the old gang, from his Excellencydown. Tell me one thing: are they buying or selling?"

  Hunnicott sprang up and slapped his leg.

  "By Jupiter, Kent! They are selling--every last man of them!"

  "Precisely. And when they have sold all they have to sell?"

  "They'll turn us loose--drop us--quit booming the town, if your theory isthe right one. But say, Kent, I can't believe it, you know. It's too big athing to be credited to Jim Guilford and his handful of subs in therailroad office. Why, it's all along the line, everywhere."

  "I'm telling you that Guilford isn't the man. He is only a cog in thewheel. There is a bigger mind than his behind it."

  "I can't help it," Hunnicott protested. "I don't believe that any man orclique could bring this thing about unless we were really on the upturn."

  "Very good; believe what you please, but do as I tell you. Sell every footof Gaston dirt that stands in your name; and while you are about it, sellthose six lots for me in Subdivision Five. More than that, do it prettysoon."

  Hunnicott promised, in the brokerage affair, at least. Then he switchedthe talk to the receivership.

  "Still up in the air, are you, in the railroad grab case?"

  Kent nodded.

  "No news of MacFarlane?"

  "Plenty of it. His health is still precarious, and will likely remain sountil the spoilsmen have picked the skeleton clean."

  Hunnicott was silent for a full minute. Then he said:

  "Say, Kent, hasn't it occurred to you that they are rather putting meat onthe bones instead of taking it off? Their bills for betterments must beout of sight."

  It had occurred to Kent, but he gave his own explanation of MajorGuilford's policy in a terse sentence.

  "It is a part of the bluff; fattening the thing a little before theybarbecue it."

  "I suppose so. It's a pity we don't live a little farther back in thehistory of the world: say at a time when we could hire MacFarlane's doctorto obliterate the ju
dge, and no questions asked."

  Who can explain how it is that some jesting word, trivial and purposelessit may be, will fire a hidden train of thought which was waiting only forsome chance spark? "Obliterate the judge," said Hunnicott in grim jest;and straightway Kent saw possibilities; saw a thing to be done, though notyet the manner of its doing.

  "If you'll excuse me," he said abruptly to his companion, "I believe I'lltry to catch the Flyer back to the capital. I came down to see aboutselling those lots of mine, but if you will undertake it for me----"

  "Of course," said Hunnicott; "I'll be only too glad. You've ten minutes:can you make it?"

  Kent guessed so, and made the guess a certainty with two minutes to spare.The through sleeper was lightly loaded, and he picked out the mostunneighbored section, of the twelve, being wishful only for undisturbedthinking ground. But before the train had swung past the suburb lights ofGaston, the smoker's unrest seized him and the thought-wheels demandedtobacco. Kent fought it as long as he could, making sure that thesmoking-compartment liars' club would be in session; but when the demandbecame a nagging insistence, he found his pipe and tobacco and went to themen's room.

  The little den behind the drawing-room had but one occupant besides therear-end brakeman---a tall, saturnine man in a gray grass-cloth duster whowas smoking a Porto Rican stogie. Kent took a second look and held out hishand.

  "This is an unexpected pleasure, Judge Marston. I was counting on threehours of solitary confinement."

  The lieutenant-governor acknowledged the hand-clasp, nodded, and made roomon the leather-covered divan for the new-comer. Hildreth, the editor ofthe _Argus_, put it aptly when he said that the grim-faced old cattle kinghad "blown" into politics. He was a compromise on the People's Partyticket; was no part of the Bucks programme, and had been made to feel it.Tradition had it that he had been a terror to the armed and organizedcattle thieves of the early days; hence the brevet title of "Judge." Butthose that knew him best did not know that he had once been the brightestman upon the Supreme Bench of his native state: this before failing healthhad driven him into exile.

  As a mixer, the capital had long since voted Oliver Marston a conspicuousfailure. A reticent, reserved man by temperament and habit, and with bothtemperament and habit confirmed by his long exile on the cattle ranges, hehad grown rather less than more talkative after his latest plunge intopublic life; and even Miss Van Brock confessed that she found himimpossible on the social side. None the less, Kent had felt drawn towardhim from the first; partly because Marston was a good man in bad company,and partly because there was something remindful of the elder Kent in thestrong face, the slow smile and the introspective eye of the old man fromthe hill country.

  For a time the talk was a desultory monologue, with Kent doing his best tokeep it from dying outright. Later, when he was fairly driven in upon hisreserves, he began to speak of himself, and of the hopeless fight forenlargement in the Trans-Western struggle. Marston lighted thematch-devouring stogie for the twentieth time, squared himself on the endof the divan and listened attentively. At the end of the recounting hesaid:

  "It seems to be a failure of justice, Mr. Kent. Can you prove yourpostulate?"

  "I can. With fifteen minutes more on the day of the preliminary hearing Ishould have shown it to any one's satisfaction."

  Marston went into a brown study with his eyes fixed upon thestamped-leather devil in the panel at the opposite end of the compartment.When he spoke again, Kent wondered at the legal verbiage, and still moreat the clear-cut, judicial opinion.

  "The facts in the case, as you state them, point to judicial connivance,and we should always be slow to charge that, Mr. Kent. Technically, thecourt was not at fault. Due notice was served on the company's attorney ofrecord, and you admit, yourself, that the delay, short as it was, wouldhave been sufficient if you had not been accidentally detained. And, sincethere were no contravening affidavits submitted, Judge MacFarlane wastechnically warranted in granting the prayer for a temporary receiver."

  "I'm not trying to refute that," said Kent. "But afterward, when I calledupon the judge with the evidence in hand----"

  "He was under no absolute obligation to retry the case out of court, asyou know, Mr. Kent. Neither was he obliged to give you an unofficialnotice of the day upon which he would hear your motion for the dischargeof the receiver and the vacation of his order appointing him."

  "Under no absolute legal obligation, perhaps," retorted Kent. "But themoral obligation--"

  "We are coming to that. I have been giving you what would probably be aminority opinion of an appellate court, if you could take an appeal. Themajority opinion might take higher ground, pointing to the manifestinjustice done to the defendant company by the shortness of the delaygranted; by Judge MacFarlane's refusal to continue the hearing for onehour, though your attorney was present and pleading for the same; andlastly for the indefinite postponement of the hearing on the merits oninsufficient grounds, since the judge was not at the time, and has notsince been, too ill to attend to the routine duties of his office."

  Kent looked up quickly.

  "Judge Marston, do you know that last assertion to be true?" he demanded.

  The slow smile came and went in the introspective eyes of the older man.

  "I have been giving you the opinion of the higher court," he said, withhis nearest approach to jocoseness. "It is based upon the supposition thatyour allegations would be supported by evidence."

  Kent smoked on in silence while the train measured the rail-lengthsbetween two of the isolated prairie stations. When he spoke again therewas honest deference in his manner.

  "Mr. Marston, you have a far better right to your courtesy title of'Judge' than that given by the Great American Title Company, Unlimited,"he said. "Will you advise me?"

  "As plain Oliver Marston, and a man old enough to be your father, yes.What have you been doing? Trying to oust the receiver, I suppose."

  "Yes; trying to find some technical flaw by which he could be ousted."

  "It can't be done. You must strike higher. Are you fully convinced ofJudge MacFarlane's venality?"

  "As fully as I can be without having seen with my own eyes and heard withmy own ears."

  Marston opened his watch and looked at it. Then he lighted another of thevillainous little cigars.

  "We have an hour yet," he said. "You have been giving me the legal pointsin the case: now give me the inferences--all of them."

  Kent laughed.

  "I'm afraid I sha'n't be able to forget the lieutenant-governor. I shallhave to call some pretty hard names."

  "Call them," said his companion, briefly; and Kent went deep into thedetails, beginning with the formation of the political gang in Gaston thedismantled.

  The listener in the gray dust-coat heard him through without comment. WhenKent reached the end of the inferences, telling the truth without scrupleand letting the charge of political and judicial corruption lie where itwould, the engineer was whistling for the capital.

  "You have told me some things I knew, and some others that I onlysuspected," was all the answer he got until the train was slowing into theUnion Station. Then as he flung away the stump of the little cigar thesilent one added: "If I were in your place, Mr. Kent, I believe I shouldtake a supplementary course of reading in the State law."

  "In what particular part of it?" said Kent, keen anxiety in every word.

  "In that part of the fundamental law which relates to the election ofcircuit judges, let us say. If I had your case to fight, I should try toobliterate Judge MacFarlane."

  Kent had but a moment in which to remark the curious coincidence in theuse of precisely the same word by both Hunnicott and his present adviser.

  "But, my dear sir! we should gain nothing by MacFarlane's removal when hissuccessor would be appointed by the executive!"

  Marston turned in the doorway of the smoking-compartment and laid afatherly hand on the younger man's shoulder.

  "My boy, I didn't say 're
move'; I said 'obliterate'. Good night."