The Short Line War Part 9

"Wouldn't tell you, eh?" said Porter. "Just get Truesdale again; I'll talk with that young man myself."

When he began talking his voice was mild and persuasive, and s.h.i.+elds and McNally listened expectantly. As the minutes went by and he did not get the information he wanted, it became evident that the c.o.c.ksure young man at the other end of the line was rasping through what was left of Porter's patience as an emery wheel does through soft iron. As might be expected, the process was accompanied with a shower of sparks. Porter's voice rose and swelled in volume until at last he shouted, "You don't care who I am?

Why, you d.a.m.ned little fool--" and then he stopped, for a sharp click told him that he was cut off, even from the central office, and he was not angry enough to go on swearing at an unresponsive telephone.

For a moment he stood biting his lip in a nervous effort to control himself, then he joined feebly in the laughter the other two men had raised against him. A moment later he pulled out his watch, and turning to McNally said:--

"Keep your eye on Weeks, will you? I'm going to Truesdale on the eleven-thirty to find Black. Good-by."

Katherine was not surprised when twenty minutes later her father appeared and told her his plans. That was the train she had expected they would take.

"I'm going along too," she said. "You're going to play golf this afternoon, aren't you?"

"No," replied her father, shortly, "I'm not going to play golf. I'm going to play something else."

The five-hour ride to Truesdale was for the most part a silent one.

Katherine knew that her father was worried about something, and when he was worried he never liked to talk, so she asked no questions and made no attempt to draw him away from what troubled him. Only when they reached Truesdale and her father was about to help her into the cart that stood waiting she stopped long enough to kiss him and say:--

"Don't bother too much about it, dad. And don't plan any business for this evening; I want you to take me out on the river." As she turned the cart around and started up the broad smooth street toward home she frowned, and thought, "I wish he would tell me more about things. I believe I could help."

Porter went straight to Judge Black's to continue his conversation with the stenographer, but it needed no more than a glance to convince him of the futility of trying to get any information from that source.

The new stenographer was a boyish-looking person who tried to convince one that he was much older than his appearance would indicate. He had big feet and a high voice; he used only the bottom notes for conversational purposes save when in unwary moments Nature would a.s.sert herself in a hoa.r.s.e falsetto. He patronized Mr. Porter. He said that the Judge had left town the week before, and that he would probably be back in about ten days. He would send him no messages whatever, from anybody: those were Judge Black's orders.

The young man seemed willing to go on talking at great length, and he doubtless would have done so had not Porter suddenly left the room. The Vice-President had thought of a possible clew. He walked rapidly to the railroad ticket office and spoke to the agent.

"Did Judge Black leave town a few days ago?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," answered the agent. "I don't remember just what day, but he went up on twenty-two."

"Oh, he went east then. Do you remember where?"

"His ticket read to Chicago."

Porter walked away thoroughly disappointed. The chance had looked like a good one and there seemed to be no other. But he must in some way find the Judge; he could not wait for him. The first thing he did was to call up McNally by telephone and repeat to him what the agent had said. He told McNally to find out at what hotel the Judge had stayed, if at any, and to look for anything which might prove a clew to his whereabouts. "It's a wild-goose chase, I know," he concluded; "but then you may manage to turn up something." He knew that McNally would do everything that could be done in Chicago toward finding the missing Judge, so he went to work along other lines.

Judge Black was a member of two fis.h.i.+ng clubs, one at Les Chenaux Islands, near Mackinac, and the other about forty miles north of Minneapolis, so Porter sent long and urgent telegrams to both these places. Then he began making long shots, working through a list of more or less likely places, which his knowledge of Black's tastes and habits enabled him to get together. Just before dinner a message came from McNally:--

Black at Sherman House Friday. Clerk says he took three-thirty train on Northwestern for Lake Geneva. Can run him down in morning.

Thursday morning the two little telegraph boys at Lake Geneva and the one at William's Bay had a busy time of it, for Porter and McNally between them kept the wires hot; but neither hide nor hair of Judge Alonzo Black could they discover. From ten o'clock on through an interminable day the messages kept coming back, 'not delivered.' At half-past four Porter telephoned his lieutenant to go to the lake and continue the search in person.

At seven Katherine and her father sat down to dinner. She had known all day that something was going wrong with her father's affairs, and she could read in his silent preoccupied manner that he had not yet been able to see a way out of the difficulty. She knew that she could not make him forget his troubles. Many vain attempts had taught her that, so she waited. The long dinner wore on Porter's nerves; once he rose suddenly and walked toward his library, but stopped short when he reached the door and came back to the table. Then he drummed on the arm of his chair.

"Two days more of this," he said, with a nervous laugh, "and that man Black will have my life to answer for."

"Judge Black?" asked Katherine. "What has he done?"

"Done? He's disappeared off the face of the earth just at this particular moment when I've got to have him here."

"Why," cried Katherine, "I know where he is. He's at the Grand View Hotel--"she paused and leaned forward, her elbows on the table and her hands clasped before her. "It's some place up in Wisconsin that sounds like alpaca. Waupaca--that's it. Grand View Hotel, Waupaca, Wisconsin."

"Are you sure that's right?" he asked. "How do you know?"

"Mr. West told me," she answered. "There was such a good joke on him in the paper. I meant to tell you about it."

But Porter was smiling over something else. After a moment he said:--

"We'd have been swamped long ago in this M. & T. business if it hadn't been for the kind services of that wise and valuable young man, West. I think I'll pay him a regular salary after this to keep him on the other side in all the fights I get into. Lord, what a fool he is!"

He left the room so abruptly that he did not see how Katherine's cheeks reddened, nor how her lips pressed together in vexation. If he had he would not have known the reason for it any more than Katherine did.

Rainbow Lake is pretty in the daytime, but it is beautiful under the moonlight when you can stretch out distances and imagine that the lights at Bagley's Landing are those of a city twenty miles away, and when the solid pine groves on Maple and Government islands loom up big and black.

The Judge was enjoying his vacation the better for its lateness. He had bolted his supper early enough to secure his favorite chair in the best part of the piazza: a mandolin orchestra was playing a waltz from "The Serenade," and playing it well, the Judge thought. He threw away the match with which he had lighted his third cigar--to keep off the mosquitoes, he blandly told his conscience--and leaned back in the Morris chair, thinking how congruously comfortable it all was, now that he had his own clothes and the 'bus man could work without soiling his other suit.

A clerk came out of the office, peered about in the half light for a moment, and approached the Judge, touching him on the shoulder.

"Judge Black," he said, "Truesdale wants to talk to you on the 'phone."

Five minutes later the legal luminary came out of the telephone box. He was swearing earnestly, but softly, out of deference to the candy-and-cigar girl. He walked slowly across the office.

"There's a train for Chicago at 8.30, isn't there?" he asked.

"Yes," said the clerk. "Do you want to take it?"

There was another pianissimo interlude, at the end of which the clerk was given to understand that he should order the 'bus for that train. Then the Judge went back for his chair, but it was occupied by a little girl who was just too old to be asked to sit somewhere else.

As Jim Weeks had said, Thompson wouldn't fight, and Porter realized this quite as well as Jim. The recalcitrant Vice-President played no part in Porter's calculations except as a somewhat blundering and obstinate tool.

But on Friday morning Thompson's office boy announced Mr. Porter. Porter stated his case clearly. It was his plan to remove Weeks and Myers by judicial order from the Board of Directors. That would leave the opposition a majority of the board. Then Thompson was to call a meeting and a.s.sume control of the books. That done, the battle would be decided, and the election a mere formality. Thompson was badly rattled, for he hadn't a grain of sand in his composition, but in the end he conquered his fears and agreed to play the part Porter a.s.signed to him.

At half-past two a disjointed-looking train panted into the Harrison Street Station, and Judge Black climbed disconsolately out of the smoker.

There was a coating of cinders on the top of his derby hat; there were drifts of cinders in the curl of the brim; there were streaks of cinders along the lines where his coat wrinkled; and there was one cinder in his left eye which gave him so leery and bibulous an aspect that an old lady who narrowly escaped colliding with him turned and looked after him in indignation, being half minded to go back and plead with him to lead a better life.

It was fifteen minutes later when the Judge reached Porter's office, but before three o'clock he had signed an order enjoining James Weeks and Johnson Myers from acting as directors of, or from interfering in any way with, the affairs of the corporation known as the Manchester & Truesdale Railroad Company, and from voting the nine thousand shares of stock in that company which had been issued September 25th.

CHAPTER VII

BETWEEN THE LINES

On Friday afternoon Harvey closed his desk with a feeling of relief. There had been plenty of work for the past few days, and Harvey's thoughts had acquired such wandering habits that his work seemed harder than usual. He had not seen Katherine since Tuesday evening, but another note, dated Thursday evening, was in his coat pocket. He read it again:--

MY DEAR MR. WEST: As you have inferred from the postmark I am back at Truesdale; we returned Wednesday. I have about despaired of seeing you here, at least of your own free will, so I have decided to kidnap you. Will you come to a coaching party Sat.u.r.day afternoon--or rather a brake party? We shall start from our house, weather permitting, at four o'clock, and drive out to Oakwood, returning by moonlight.

Please don't let any stupid business interfere with your coming down and having a jolly time.