The Grafters

XV

THE JUNKETERS

When Receiver Guilford took possession of the properties, appurtenances and appendages of the sequestered Trans-Western Railway, one of the luxuries to which he fell heir was private car "Naught-seven," a commodious hotel on wheels originally used as the directors' car of the Western Pacific, and later taken over by Loring to be put in commission as the general manager's special.

In the hands of a friendly receiver this car became a boon to the capitol contingent; its observation platform served as a shifting rostrum from which a deep-chested executive or a mellifluous Hawk often addressed admiring crowds at way stations, and its dining saloon was the moving scene of many little relaxative feasts, at which Veuve Cliquot flowed freely, priceless cigars were burned, and the members of the organization unbent, each after his kind.

But to the men of the throttle and oil-can, car Naught-seven, in the gift of a hospitable receiver, shortly became a nightmare. Like most private cars, it was heavier than the heaviest Pullman; and the engineer who was constrained to haul it like a dragging anchor at the tail end of a fast train was prone to say words not to be found in any vocabulary known to respectable philologists.

It was in the evening of a wind-blown day, a week after Kent's visit to Gaston, that Engineer "Red" Callahan, oiling around for the all-night run with the Flyer on the Western Division, heard above the din and clamor of Union Station noises the sullen thump betokening the addition of another car to his train.

"Now fwhat the divvle will that be?" he rasped, pausing, torch in hand, to apostrophize his fireman.

The answer came up out of the shadows to the rear on the lips of M'Tosh, the train-master.

"You have the Naught-seven to-night, Callahan, and a pretty severe head wind. Can you make your time?"

"Haven't thim bloody fools in the up-town office anything betther to do than to tie that sivinty-ton ball-an'-chain to my leg such a night as this?" This is not what Callahan said: it is merely a printable paraphrase of his rejoinder.

M'Tosh shook his head. He was a hold-over from the Loring administration, not because his place was not worth taking, but because as yet no political heeler had turned up with the requisite technical ability to hold it.

"I don't blame you for cussing it out," he said; and the saying of it was a mark of the relaxed discipline which was creeping into all branches of the service. "Mr. Loring's car is anybody's private wagon these days. Can you make your time with her?"

"Not on yer life," Callahan growled. "Is it the owld potgutted thafe iv a rayceiver that's in her?"

"Yes; with Governor Bucks and a party of his friends. I take it you ought to feel honored."

"Do I?" snapped Callahan. "If I don't make thim junketers think they're in the scuff iv a cyclone whin I get thim on the crooks beyant Dolores ye can gimme time, Misther M'Tosh. Where do I get shut iv thim?"

"At Agua Caliente. They are going to the hotel at Breezeland, I suppose. There is your signal to pull out."

"I'll go whin I'm dommed good an' ready," said Callahan, jabbing the snout of his oiler into the link machinery. And again M'Tosh let the breach of discipline go without reproof.

Breezeland Inn, the hotel at Agua Caliente, is a year-round resort for asthmatics and other health seekers, with a sanatorium annex which utilizes the waters of the warm springs for therapeutic purposes. But during the hot months the capital and the plains cities to the eastward send their quota of summer idlers and the house fills to its capacity.

It was for this reason that Mr. Brookes Ormsby, looking for a comfortable resort to which he might take Mrs. Brentwood and her daughters for an outing, hit upon the expedient of going first in person to Breezeland, partly to make sure of accommodations, and partly to check up the attractions of the place against picturesque descriptions in the advertisements.

When he turned out of his sleeper in the early morning at Agua Caliente station, car Naught-seven had been thrown in on a siding a little farther up the line, and Ormsby recognized the burly person of the governor and the florid face and pursy figure of the receiver, in the group of men crossing from the private car to the waiting Inn tally-ho. Being a seasoned traveler, the club-man lost no time in finding the station agent.

"Isn't there some way you can get me up to the hotel before that crowd reaches?" he asked; adding: "I'll make it worth your while."

The reply effaced the necessity for haste.

"The Inn auto will be down in a few minutes, and you can go up in that. Naught-seven brought Governor Bucks and the receiver and their party, and they're going down to Megilp, the mining camp on the other side of the State line. They've chartered the tally-ho for the day."

Ormsby waited, and a little later was whisked away to the hotel in the tonneau of the guests' automobile. Afterward came a day which was rather hard to get through. Breakfast, a leisurely weighing and measuring of the climatic, picturesque and health-mending conditions, and the writing of a letter or two helped him wear out the forenoon; but after luncheon the time dragged dispiteously, and he was glad enough when the auto-car came to take him to the station for the evening train.

As it happened, there were no other passengers for the east-bound Flyer; and finding he still had some minutes to wait, Ormsby lounged into the telegraph office. Here the bonds of ennui were loosened by the gradual development of a little mystery. First the telephone bell rang smartly, and when the telegraph operator took down the ear-piece and said "Well?" in the imperious tone common to his kind, he evidently received a communication that shocked him.

Ormsby overheard but a meager half of the wire conversation; and the excitement, whatever its nature, was at the other end of the line. None the less, the station agent's broken ejaculations were provocative of keen interest in a man who had been boring himself desperately for the better part of a day.

"Caught him doing it, you say?... Great Scott!... Oh, I don't believe that, you know ... yes—uh-huh—I hear ... But who did the shooting?" Whether the information came or not, Ormsby did not know, for at this conjuncture the telegraph instruments on the table set up a furious chattering, and the railway man dropped the receiver and sprang to his key.

This left the listener out of it completely, and Ormsby strolled out to the platform, wondering what had happened and where it had happened. He glanced up at the telephone wires: two of them ran up the graveled driveway toward Breezeland Inn; the poles of the other two sentineled the road to the west down which the tally-ho had driven in the early morning.

In the reflective instant the telegraph operator dashed out of his bay-windowed retreat and ran up the track to the private car. In a few minutes he was back again, holding an excited conference with the chauffeur of the Inn automobile, who was waiting to see if the Flyer should bring him any fares for the hotel.

Curiosity is said to be peculiarly a foible feminine. It is not, as every one knows. But of the major masculine allotment, Ormsby the masterful had rather less than his due share. He saw the chauffeur turn his car in the length of it and send it spinning down the road and across the line into the adjoining State; heard the mellow whistle of the incoming train, and saw the station man nervously setting his stop signal; all with no more than a mild desire to know the reason for so much excitement and haste—a desire which was content to wait on the explanation of events.

The explanation, such as it was, did not linger. The heavy train thundered in from the west; stopped barely long enough to allow the single passenger to swing up the steps of the Pullman; and went on again to stop a second time with a jerk when it had passed the side-track switch.

Ormsby put his head out of the window and saw that the private car was to be taken on; remarked also that the thing was done with the utmost celerity. Once out on the main line with car Naught-seven coupled in, the train was backed swiftly down to the station and the small mystery of hurryings was sufficiently solved. The governor and his party were returning, and they did not wish to miss connections.

Ormsby had settled back into the corner of his section when he heard the spitting explosions of the automobile and the crash of hoofs and iron-tired wheels on the sharp gravel. He looked out again and was in time to see the finish of the race. Up the road from the westward came the six-horse tally-ho, the horses galloping in the traces and the automobile straining in the lead at the end of an improvised tow-line. In a twinkling the coach was abreast of the private car, the transfer of passengers was effected, and Ormsby was near enough at his onlooking window to remark several things: that there was pell-mell haste and suppressed excitement; that the governor was the coolest man in the group; and that the receiver had to be helped across from the coach to the car. Then the train moved out, gathering speed with each added wheel-turn.

The onlooker leaned from his window to see what became of the tangle of horses and auto-car precipitated by the sudden stop of the tally-ho. Mirage effects are common on the western plains, and if Ormsby had not been familiar with them he might have marveled at the striking example afforded by the backward look. In the rapidly increasing perspective the six horses of the tally-ho were suddenly multiplied into a troop; and where the station agent had stood on the platform there seemed to be a dozen gesticulating figures fading into indistinctness, as the fast train swept on its way eastward.

The club-man saw no more of the junketing party that night. Once when the train stopped to cut out the dining-car, and he had stepped down for a breath of fresh air on the station platform, he noticed that the private car was brilliantly lighted, and that the curtains and window shades were closely drawn. Also, he heard the popping of bottle corks and the clink of glass, betokening that the governor's party was still celebrating its successful race for the train. Singularly enough, Ormsby's reflections concerned themselves chiefly with the small dishonesty.

"I suppose it all goes into the receiver's expense account and the railroad pays for it," he said to himself. "So and so much for an inspection trip to Megilp and return. I must tell Kent about it. It will put another shovelful of coal into his furnace—not that he is especially needing it."

At the moment of this saying—it was between ten and eleven o'clock at night—David Kent's wrath-fire was far from needing an additional stoking. Once more Miss Van Brock had given proof of her prophetic gift, and Kent had been moodily filling in the details of the picture drawn by her woman's intuition. He had gone late to the house in Alameda Square, knowing that Portia had dinner guests. And it was imperative that he should have her to himself.

"You needn't tell me anything but the manner of its doing," she was saying. "I knew they would find a way to stop you—or make one. And you needn't be spiteful at me," she added, when Kent gripped the arms of his chair.

"I don't mind your saying 'I told you so'," he fumed. "It's the fact that I didn't have sense enough to see what an easy game I was dealing them. It didn't take Meigs five minutes to shut me off."

"Tell me about it," she said; and he did it crisply.

"The quo warranto inquiry is instituted in the name of the State; or rather the proceedings are brought by some person with the approval of the governor or the attorney-general, one or both. I took to-day for obtaining this approval because I knew Bucks was out of town and I thought I could bully Meigs."

"And you couldn't?" she said.

"Not in a thousand years. At first he said he would take the matter under advisement: I knew that meant a consultation with Bucks. Then I put the whip on; told him a few of the things I know, and let him imagine a lot more; but it was no good. He was as smooth as oil, admitting nothing, denying nothing. And what grinds me worst is that I let him put me in fault; gave him a chance to show conclusively how absurd it was for me to expect him to take up a question of such magnitude on the spur of the moment."

"Of course," she said sympathetically. "I knew they would find a way. What are you doing?"

Kent laughed in spite of his sore amour-propre.

"At this present moment I am doing precisely what you said I should: unloading my woes upon you."

"Oh, but I didn't say that. I said you would come to me for help. Have you?"

"I'd say yes, if I didn't know so well just what I am up against."

Miss Van Brock laughed unfeelingly.

"Is it a man's weakness to fight better in the dark?"

"It is a man's common sense to know when he is knocked out," he retorted.

She held him with her eyes while she said:

"Tell me what you want to accomplish, David; at the end of the ends, I mean. Is it only that you wish to save Miss Brentwood's little marriage portion?"

He told the simple truth, as who could help, with Portia's eyes demanding it.

"It was that at first; I'll admit it. But latterly—"

"Latterly you have begun to think larger things?" She looked away from him, and her next word seemed to be part of an unspoken thought. "I have been wondering if you are great enough, David."

He shook his head despondently.

"Haven't I just been showing you that I am not?"

"You have been showing me that you can not always out-plan, the other person. That is a lack, but it is not fatal. Are you great enough to run fast and far when it is a straight-away race depending only upon mere man-strength and indomitable determination?"

Her words fired him curiously. He recalled the little thrill of inspiration which a somewhat similar appeal from Elinor had once given him, and tried to compare the two sensations. There was no comparison. The one was a call to moral victory; the other to material success. None the less, he decided that the present was the more potent spell, perhaps only because it was the present.

"Try me," he said impulsively.

"If I do ... David, no man can serve two masters—or two mistresses. If I do, will you agree to put the sentimental affair resolutely in the background?"

He took his head in his hands and was a long minute making up his mind. But his refusal was blunt enough when it came.

"No; at least, not until they are married."

It would have taken a keener discernment than Kent's or any man's to have fathomed the prompting of her laugh.

"I was only trying you," she said. "Perhaps, if you had said yes I should have deserted you and gone over to the other side."

He got up and went to sit beside her on the pillowed divan.

"Don't try me again, please—not that way. I am only a man."

"I make no promises—not even good ones," she retorted. And then: "Would you like to have your quo warranto blind alley turned into a thoroughfare?"

"I believe you can do it if you try," he admitted, brightening a little.

"Maybe I can; or rather maybe I can put you in the way of doing it. You say Mr. Meigs is obstinate, and the governor is likely to prove still more obstinate. Have you thought of any way of softening them?"

"You know I haven't. It's a stark impossibility from my point of view."

"Nothing is impossible; it is always a question of ways and means." Then, suddenly: "Have you been paying any attention to the development of the Belmount oil field?"

"Enough to know that it is a big thing; the biggest since the Pennsylvania discoveries, according to all accounts."

"And the people of the State are enthusiastic about it, thinking that now the long tyranny of the oil monopoly will be broken?"

"That is the way most of the newspapers talk, and there seems to be some little ground for it, granting the powers of the new law."

She laid the tips of her fingers on his arm and knotted the thread of suggestion in a single sentence.

"In the present state of affairs—with the People's Party as yet on trial, and the public mind ready to take fire at the merest hint of a foreign capitalistic monopoly in the State—tell me what would happen to the man who would let the Universal Oil Company into the Belmount field in defiance of the new trust and corporation law?"

"By Jove!" Kent exclaimed, sitting up as if the shapely hand had given him a buffet. "It would ruin him politically, world without end! Tell me; is Bucks going to do that?"

She laughed softly.

"That is for you to find out, Mr. David Kent; not by hearsay, but in good, solid terms of fact that will appeal to a level-headed, conservative newspaper editor like—well, like Mr. Hildreth, of the Argus, let us say. Are you big enough to do it?"

"I am desperate enough to try," was the slow-spoken answer.

"And when you have the weapon in your hands; when you have found the sword and sharpened it?"

"Then I can go to his Excellency and tell him what will happen if he doesn't instruct his attorney-general in the quo warranto affair."

"That will probably suffice to save your railroad—and Miss Brentwood's marriage portion. But after, David; what will you do afterward?"

"I'll go on fighting the devil with fire until I have burned him out. If this is to be a government of dictators, I can be one of them, too."

She clapped her hands enthusiastically.

"There spoke the man David Kent; the man I have been trying to discover deep down under the rubbish of ill-temper and hesitancy and—yes, I will say it—of sentiment. Have you learned your lesson, David mine?"

It was a mark of another change in him that he rose and stood over her, and that his voice was cool and dispassionate when he said:

"If I have, it is because I have you for an inspired text-book, Portia dear."

And with that he took his leave.

XVI

SHARPENING THE SWORD

In the beginning of the new campaign of investigation David Kent wisely discounted the help of paid professional spies—or rather he deferred, it to a later stage—by taking counsel with Jeffrey Hildreth, night editor of the Argus. Here, if anywhere, practical help was to be had; and the tender of it was cheerfully hearty and enthusiastic.

"Most assuredly you may depend on the Argus, horse, foot and artillery," said the editor, when Kent had guardedly outlined some portion of his plan. "We are on your side of the fence, and have been ever since Bucks was sprung as a candidate on the convention. But you've no case. Of course, it's an open secret that the Universal people are trying to break through the fence of the new law and establish themselves in the Belmount field without losing their identity or any of their monopolistic privileges. And it is equally a matter of course to some of us that the Bucks ring will sell the State out if the price is right. But to implicate Bucks and the capitol gang in printable shape is quite another matter."

"I know," Kent admitted. "But it isn't impossible; it has got to be possible."

The night editor sat back in his chair and chewed his cigar reflectively. Suddenly he asked:

"What's your object, Kent? It isn't purely pro lono pullico, I take it?"

Kent could no longer say truthfully that it was, and he did not lie about it.

"No, it's purely personal, I guess. I need to get a grip on Bucks and I mean to do it."

Hildreth laughed.

"And, having got it, you'll telephone me to let up—as you did in the House Bill Twenty-nine fiasco. Where do we come in?"

"No; you shall come in on the ground floor this time; though I may ask you to hold your hand until I have used my leverage. And if you'll go into it to stay, you sha'n't be alone. Giving the Argus precedence in any item of news, I'll engage to have every other opposition editor in the State ready to back you."

"Gad! you're growing, Kent. Do you mean to down the Bucks crowd ded-definitely?" demanded the editor, who stammered a little under excitable provocation. "Bigger men than you have tried it—and failed."

"But no one of them with half my obstinacy, Hildreth. It can be done, and I am going to do it."

The night editor laughed again.

"If you can show that gang up, Kent, nothing in this State will be too good for you."

"I've got it to do," said Kent. "Afterward, perhaps I'll come around for some of the good things. I am not in this for health or pleasure. Can I count on you after the mud-slinging begins?"

Hildreth reflected further, disregarding the foreman's reproachful calls for copy.

"I'll go you," he said at last; "and I'll undertake to swing the chief into line. But I am going to disagree with you flat on the project of a sudden exposé. Right or wrong, Bucks has pup-popular sentiment on his side. Take the Trans-Western territory, for example: at the present speaking these grafters—or their man Guilford; it's all the same—own those people down there body and soul. You couldn't pry Bucks out of their affections with a crowbar—suddenly, I mean. We'll have to work up to it gradually; educate the people as we go along."

"I concede that much," said Kent. "And you may as well begin on this same Trans-Western deal,"—wherewith he pieced together the inferences which pointed to the stock-smashing project behind the receivership.

"Don't use too much of it," he added, in conclusion.

"It is all inference and deduction as yet, as I say. But you will admit it's plausible."

The editor was sitting far back in his chair again, chewing absently on the extinct cigar.

"Kent, did you fuf-figure all that out by yourself?"

"No," said Kent, briefly. "There is a keener mind than mine behind it—and behind this oil field business, as well."

"I'd like to give that mind a stunt on the Argus," said the editor. "But about the Belmount mix-up: you will give us a stickful now and then as we go along, if you unearth anything that the public would like to read?"

"Certainly; any and everything that won't tend to interfere with my little intermediate scheme. As I have intimated, I must bring Bucks to terms on my own account before I turn him over to you and the people of the State. But I mean to be in on that, too."

Hildreth wagged his head dubiously.

"I may be overcautious; and I don't want to seem to scare you out, Kent. You ought to know your man better than I do—better than any of us; but if I had your job, I believe I should want to travel with a body-guard. I do, for a fact."

David Kent's laugh came easily. Fear, the fear of man, was not among his weaknesses.

"I am taking all the chances," he said; and so the conference ended.

Two days later the "educational" campaign was opened by an editorial in the Argus setting forth some hitherto unpublished matter concerning the manner in which the Trans-Western had been placed in the hands of a receiver. In its next issue the paper named the receivership after its true author, showing by a list of the officials that the road under Major Guilford had been made a hospital for Bucks politicians, and hinting pointedly that it was to be wrecked for the benefit of a stock-jobbing syndicate of eastern capitalists.

Having thus reawakened public interest in the Trans-Western affair, Hildreth sounded a new note of alarm pitched upon the efforts of the Universal Oil Company to establish itself in the Belmount oil region; a cry which was promptly taken up by other State editors. This editorial was followed closely by others in the same strain, and at the end of a fortnight Kent was fain to call a halt.

"Not too fast, Hildreth," he cautioned, dropping into the editor's den late one night. "You are doing mighty good work, but you are making it infinitely harder for me—driving the game to deeper cover. One of my men had a clue: Bucks and Meigs were holding conferences with a man from the Belmount field whose record runs back to New York. But they have taken the alarm and thrown us off the track."

"The secretary of State's office is the place you want to watch," said Hildreth. "New oil companies are incorporating every day. Pretty soon one of these will swallow up all the others: that one will be the Universal under another name, and in its application for a charter you'll find askings big enough to cover all the rights and privileges of the original monopoly."

"That is a good idea," said Kent, who already had a clerk in the secretary of State's office in his pay. "But how are we coming on in the political field?"

"We are doing business there, and you have the Argus to thank for it. You—or your idea, I should say—has a respectable following all over the State now; as it didn't have until we began to leg for it."

Again Kent acquiesced, making no mention of sundry journeys he had made for the sole purpose of enlisting other editors, or of the open house Miss Van Brock was keeping for out-of-town newspaper men visiting the capital.

"Moreover, we've served your turn in the Trans-Western affair," Hildreth went on. "Public interest is on the qui vive for new developments in that. By the way, has the capitol gang any notion of your part in all this upstirring?"

Kent smiled and handed the editor an open letter. It was from Receiver Guilford. The post of general counsel for the Trans-Western was vacant, and the letter was a formal tender of the office to the "Hon. David Kent."

"H'm," said the editor. "I don't understand that a little bit."

"Why?"

"If they could get you to accept a general agency in Central Africa or New Zealand, or some other antipodean place where you'd be safely out of the way, it would be evident enough. But here they are proposing to take you right into the heart of things."

Kent got a match out of the editor's desk and relighted his cigar.

"You've got brain-fag to-night, Hildreth. It's a bribe, pure and simple. They argue that it is merely a matter of dollars and cents to me, as it would be to one of them; and they propose to retain me just as they would any other attorney whose opposition they might want to get rid of. Don't you see?"

"Sure. I was thinking up the wrong spout. Have you replied to the major?"

"Yes. I told him that my present engagements preclude the possibility of considering his offer; much to my regret."

"Did you say that? You're a cold-plucked one, Kent, and I'm coming to admire you. But now is the time for you to begin to look out. They have spotted you, and their attempt to buy you has failed. I don't know how deeply you have gone into Bucks' tinkering with the Universal people, but if you are in the way of getting the grip you spoke of—as this letter seems to indicate—you want to be careful."

Kent promised and went his way. One of his saving graces was the ability to hold his tongue, even in a confidential talk with as good a friend as Hildreth. As for example: he had let the suggestion of watching the secretary of State's office come as a new thing from the editor, whereas in fact it was one of the earliest measures he had taken.

And on that road he had traveled far, thanks to a keen wit, to Portia Van Brock's incessant promptings, and to the help of the leaky clerk in Hendricks' office; so far, indeed, that he had found the "stool pigeon" oil company, to which Hildreth's hint had pointed—a company composed, with a single exception, of men of "straw," the exception being the man Rumford, whose conferences with the governor and the attorney-general had aroused his suspicions.

It was about this time that Hunnicott reported the sale of the Gaston lots at a rather fancy cash figure, and the money came in good play.

"Two things remain to be proved," said Portia, in one of their many connings of the intricate course; "two things that must be proved before you can attack openly: that Rumford is really representing the Universal Oil Company; and that he is bribing the junto to let the Universal incorporate under the mask of his 'straw' company. Now is the time when you can not afford to be economical. Have you money?"

Since it was the day after the Hunnicott remittance, Kent could answer yes with a good conscience.

"Then spend it," she said; and he did spend it like a millionaire, lying awake nights to devise new ways of employing it.

And for the abutments of the arch of proof the money-spending sufficed. By dint of a warm and somewhat costly wire investigation of Rumford's antecedents, Kent succeeded in placing the Belmount promoter unquestionably as one of the trusted lieutenants of the Universal; and the leaky clerk in the secretary of State's office gave the text of the application for the "straw" company charter, showing that the powers asked for were as despotic as the great monopoly could desire.

But for the keystone of the arch, the criminal implication of the plotters themselves, he was indebted to a fit of ill-considered anger and to a chapter of accidents.

XVII

THE CONSPIRATORS

It was chiefly due to Portia's urgings that Kent took Ormsby into his confidence when the campaign was fairly opened. She put it diplomatically on the ground of charity to an exiled millionaire, temporarily out of a job; but her real reason went deeper. From its inception as a one-man fight against political chicanery in high places, the criticism of the Bucks formula was beginning to shape itself in a readjustment of party lines in the field of State politics; and Miss Van Brock, whose designs upon Kent's future ran far in advance of her admissions to him, was anxiously casting about for a managerial promoter.

A little practice-play in municipal politics made the need apparent. It came in the midst of things, basing itself upon the year-gone triumph of agrarianism in the State. In the upheaval, the capital city had participated to the extent of electing a majority of the aldermen on the People's Party ticket; and before long it developed that a majority of this aldermanic majority could be counted among the spoilsmen—was in fact a creature of the larger ring.