Chapter X: Part 10

“I know; it has been rather hard on you, Dick. But the suspense is nearly over. At two o’clock we are due in Judge Walsh’s chambers in the Federal Building, and you will then learn all you need to know--and possibly a good bit more. You’ll have to forgive me for fogging you up as I went along. I guess that is part of the detective slant in me; to want to go my own way, and to go it alone. The minute I begin to talk over the reasoning process with somebody else I begin to lose the keen sense of values. Writer people have told me that the same thing is true of plotting and novelling.”

Maxwell smiled grimly. “Speaking of novel plots, I hit upon the start for a good one this forenoon--just after you went away. I was glancing over the hotel register and I saw a name there that was full of all sorts of mysteries and plotting suggestions.”

“Whose name?” queried the expert.

“I’m going to devil you for a while now, and let you find out for yourself,” laughed the railroad man. “I don’t know the owner of the name, and I don’t suppose you do; but I’ll bet a piebald pinto worth fifty dollars that, when you see what I saw, you’ll sit up and take notice and do a little stunt of wondering that will make mine look like a cheap imitation.”

The big man grinned good-naturedly.

“Rub it in,” he said. “I don’t wonder that you are getting a bit collar-sore. But don’t forget to eat. Two o’clock is the time, you know. And, by the way, I hope you haven’t failed to keep in touch with the various members of your staff--the men whom Dimmock was in such an indecent hurry to discharge. We may need their help a little later.”

Maxwell told circumstantially what had been done, and from that the table-talk slipped easily into a discussion of human loyalty in the abstract, and so continued until the waiter brought the cigars. Sprague was looking at his watch as they made their way among the well-filled tables toward the door, and it was in the midst of a sentence pointing to the need for haste to keep the two o’clock appointment that he found Maxwell halting him.

Now it may say itself that a man may be a very Solon among reasoners and a modern Vidocq in the fine art of unravelling mysteries, without in the least approaching the type which is so aptly described by the slang phrase, “Johnnie-on-the-spot.” When Sprague dropped his watch back into its pocket he found himself halted beside a table at which were seated the cold-featured, accurately groomed chief raider of the captured railroad, and a young woman whose radiant beauty was bedazzling more eyes than those of the interested on-lookers at the surrounding tables.

Sprague looked, lost himself, and then came slowly back to earth in the realization that Dimmock was speaking.

“Excuse me, Mr. Maxwell,” he was saying: “I wanted you to meet my daughter. Diana, this is Mr. Richard Maxwell, whose wife is one of the Fairbairn girls, you know, and Mr. Maxwell’s friend, Mr. Sprague, of the Department of Agriculture.”

It was the young woman herself who broke in.

“Oh, yes; Mr. Sprague and I have met before; haven’t we, Mr. Sprague?” with a mocking smile for Sprague’s benefit. And then: “We’ve been missing you at Topaz Tepees. Have you been finding it too far to ride?”

What the athletic chemistry expert managed to stammer out in reply, what he went on saying to Miss Carswell during the fraction of a minute or so that Dimmock was holding Maxwell in talk, he could not remember a single second after the swinging together of the glass doors which shut them out of the dining-room. That was because the astounding discovery was still crippling him to blot out all the intermediate details.

But one large fact stood clear in the confusing medley. Clutching Maxwell’s arm he shoved him headlong into the near-by writing-room, which was opportunely deserted.

“Richard, I’m out of it!” he gasped hoarsely. “Dimmock knew what card to play, and he has played it. My Lord! Why didn’t I guess that the Mrs. Carswell he married four years ago was Diana’s mother? I didn’t guess it; it never entered my mind! I knew Diana was a niece of the chief wrecker--the man we’ve been after all summer; I found that out last week, and that was why I told you I couldn’t stay with you. And now: oh, dammit, dammit, _dammit_!”

“Take it easy, old man,” said Maxwell soothingly; “and remember that as yet I’m only groping around the edges. What is it that Dimmock has done to you?”

“Heavens and earth! don’t you see? For Diana’s sake I’ve monkeyed and schemed and side-stepped on this receivership business until I’ve got it in shape to pull you out without pulling her uncle in. But to do that, I’ve put Dimmock, her step-father, so deep in the hole that a yoke of oxen couldn’t haul him out! He knows it, too; and that was the reason for that bit of by-play just now at the luncheon-table. He was saying to me in just so many words, ‘Now you know who you’re hitting; go ahead, if you dare!’”

“And, naturally, since Miss Carswell is the one altogether lovely, you don’t dare. I can’t blame you, Calvin. Drop it, and we’ll do the best we can without you.”

Sprague was walking the floor of the little writing-room with his big hands jammed deep in the pockets of his short business coat. Suddenly he stopped and smacked a huge fist into a hollowed palm.

“By George, Dick, we’ll do it yet!” he broke out. “I’ll beat him at his own game--come on!” And again seizing the railroad man’s arm, he dragged him out of the hotel and almost flung him into the nearest waiting taxicab.

The order to the cab-driver ran to the Brewster National Bank; and two minutes later Sprague, with Maxwell at his heels, shouldered his way through a group of waiting customers to the president’s room. Gray old David Kinzie was at his desk, and he nodded toward a door in the opposite wall of the business office leading to the isolated directors’ room. “Stillings and Hunniwell are in there,” he said, “and Starbuck has gone after the culprit.”

“And the other man?” queried Sprague sharply.

“He didn’t want to come, but he will. He thinks it is a conference to discuss the bank’s attitude, and he doesn’t want to commit himself. I convinced him that he’d better come.”

Again Sprague led the way, pausing at the inner door, however, to push Maxwell in ahead of him. The two lawyers were sitting opposite each other at the far end of the long committee table which filled the centre of the room; and their greetings to the new-comers were wordless. Maxwell had scarcely taken the chair next to Stillings when the door opened again, this time to admit a stoop-shouldered, thin-haired man whose face was even grayer than Banker Kinzie’s. This last arrival was Judge Watson, and when he saw Sprague and Maxwell he would have withdrawn, only Starbuck was behind him to make it impossible.

As before, the greetings were merely nodded; and a silence that could be felt settled down upon the room. It was the judge who broke it first.

“I think I have made a mistake, gentlemen,” he began. “I was expecting to meet Mr.--ah--er--a gentleman who is not here.”

The words were hardly out of his mouth before the door was opened for the third time, and Dimmock, closely followed by Kinzie, entered. Like the judge, the receiver would have withdrawn when he saw the group around the table; but again Starbuck intervened, this time to shut the door and to stand with his back against it.

At the click of the latch, Sprague rose ponderously in his place at the head of the table.

“Sit down, Mr. Dimmock,” he directed. “This is a little business meeting preliminary to another and more important one, and our time is exceedingly limited.”

The receiver looked sharply at the speaker. “My time is much more limited than yours, Mr. Sprague,” he retorted crisply. “I shall have to ask you to excuse me.”

“Certainly,” said Sprague suavely, “if you wish it. But in that case, I must tell you that Mr. Starbuck, who is standing just behind you, has been properly sworn in as a United States deputy marshal, and he will promptly take you into custody on a charge of conspiracy.”

If the chemistry expert had suddenly rolled a bomb, with the fuse lighted, down the length of the long table, the sensation could scarcely have been greater or more startling. Dimmock took a backward step and put up his hands as if to ward off a blow; and Hunniwell, the imported attorney, sprang to his feet as if his chair had been suddenly electrified.

“What’s this?” he stormed. “This is not a court of law! I demand that that door be opened! We cannot be held in duress!”

“Sit down!” said Sprague shortly. “Mr. Dimmock is your client, and you are here, not to defend him, but to advise him. As to the duress you’re so much afraid of, I’ll say this: I am going to make one short statement of facts. After you have heard it, if you and your client wish to withdraw, the door will be opened.”

“I--I am ill,” said the judge weakly, and he made a motion to rise from his chair. Kinzie grimly poured out a glass of water from the pitcher on the table and gave it to him without comment, while Dimmock took the chair Starbuck was offering him and sat down.

“I’ll be very brief, gentlemen,” Sprague went on, taking out his watch and laying it on the table. “The facts are these. There has been a conspiracy entered into for the purpose of depriving the stockholders of the railroad known as the Nevada Short Line of their property under a form of law. That purpose has apparently succeeded, but I have here”--taking a packet of papers from his pocket--“documentary evidence inculpating various and sundry persons who figure as the conspirators. Three of these persons are here in this room. In another room, namely, in Judge Walsh’s chambers in the Federal Building, there is waiting another and quite informal gathering: it is composed of the leading members of the Bar Association of the Timanyoni District, and it is presided over by Judge Walsh. It is assembled to prevent, if possible, one of the greatest scandals that has ever threatened the fair name of the courts of this State.”

“I object!” shouted Hunniwell, struggling to his feet again; and this time Sprague pushed him back into his chair without ceremony.

“To this statement of fact,” the self-appointed chairman continued, quite as if there had been no interruption, “we will add a demand and impose an alternative. The demand is that the railroad be turned over to its rightful owners at once. If it is not complied with, you, Judge Watson, and you, Mr. Dimmock, and you, Mr. Hunniwell”--indicating each in turn with a squarely pointed forefinger--“may choose your alternative: which is to go with me to Judge Walsh’s chambers, where I shall lay before the gentlemen there assembled this packet of evidence.”

“It’s a bluff!” yelled the attorney for the defence. “Do you think we’re going to be taken in by any such flim-flam as that? We’ll call your bluff, you damned amateur! You don’t dare to show up that evidence here!”

Sprague looked down with a good-natured grin upon the red-headed lawyer. Then he dropped the packet of papers on the table in front of Hunniwell.

“I’ll stay with you,” he said quietly. “Read for yourself. Those are only copies, however. The originals are locked up in Judge Walsh’s safe.”

Hunniwell ran through the papers hurriedly and the color came and went in his florid face. Dimmock was staring straight ahead of him at nothing, and his shapely fingers were beating a nervous tattoo on the arm of his chair. The judge had sunk into a shapeless heap in the easy chair he had chosen and his face was ashen.

At the end of his hasty examination of the papers, Hunniwell looked up, and Stillings, who sat opposite, saw defeat in his eyes.

“If I could speak to Mr. Dimmock and Judge Watson in private--” he suggested; and Sprague nodded. There was a small ante-room at the right of the larger directors’ room, and the three withdrew, the attorney lending the judge a much-needed arm.

Almost immediately the conferees returned, and Hunniwell acted as spokesman.

“You’ve turned the trick, Mr. Sprague, for this one time,” he said briefly, “but only because one man--a sick man--cannot stand the pressure--which is doubtless what you figured on. Judge Watson will rescind his order at once, and the road will be turned over to its former management--on one condition; that you surrender the original papers which you say are locked up in Judge Walsh’s safe.”

“No,” said Sprague instantly. “The condition does not stand. Stillings, get Judge Walsh on the ’phone, will you?”

That was enough. Hunniwell quickly withdrew the condition; or, rather, he modified it, lawyer-wise.

“Never mind,” he cut in hastily. “We’ll waive that, with this proviso--that you’ll put the papers into Mr. Kinzie’s hands, to be destroyed in the presence of such witnesses as we each may choose, after we shall have proved that we have acted in good faith. Do you agree to that?”

Sprague nodded, and Starbuck stepped aside and opened the door leading out through the banker’s office. At the upper end of the table, Maxwell and Stillings and the gray-faced bank president were all trying to shake hands with Sprague at one and the same moment; and when Hunniwell had led the tremulous judge away, Dimmock walked the length of the table and took his turn. Stillings, being Western-bred, anticipated violence; but instead of falling upon the big-bodied ex-athlete, Dimmock, too, held out his hand.

“Mr. Sprague, you’ve outgeneraled us,” he said, with more frankness than his hard-lined face and austere manner promised, even as a possibility. “Diana tells me that you are wedded to your Government position, and if that is so, you are simply throwing yourself away. Come to New York, and we’ll put you in the way of doing something worth while.” Then he added, with the charming smile he seemed to be able to summon at will: “You played a finer game than I thought you would; in fact, I thought I had trumped your ace to-day at the luncheon-table.”

“You did--mighty nearly,” laughed the big one. And then to Stillings: “Robert, will you go over to Judge Walsh’s chambers and tell the gentlemen who are waiting there--well, tell them what is necessary. You’ll know how.”

But Dimmock was not to be so easily turned aside.

“I say you played it fine,” he repeated, still amiable. “You knew that, under the circumstances, the--er--sentimental circumstances, we may call them--you couldn’t afford to go before that larger committee with your evidence, Mr. Sprague.”

Sprague’s mellow laugh rang in the empty room.

“Just now I am the prisoner at the bar, Mr. Dimmock, and I’m not obliged to incriminate myself,” he retorted jokingly. And at that the three who remained went out through the banker’s office together. On the sidewalk Dimmock paused for one other word; the word which had been at the bottom of his friendly approach to Sprague.

“Diana knows nothing of this?” he said.

“Nothing more than you have told her,” said Sprague.

“And that is less than nothing,” was the prompt return. After which they separated, Dimmock going up the street toward Hunniwell’s hotel, Maxwell hurrying off to the telegraph office to wire the good news to Ford, and Sprague sauntering slowly back to the Hotel Topaz, wondering if, by any hook or crook of good fortune, he should be lucky enough to find Miss Diana Carswell disengaged and willing to accord him an hour or so of an afternoon which was still young.

It was in the evening of the same day, after Maxwell had been reinstalled in his office by order of the court, and the summarily discharged staff had been reinstated, that the superintendent turned upon Sprague, who was sitting, as his evening custom was, in the easiest of the office chairs, puffing at a black cigar, and with his gaze fixed upon the disused gas chandelier marking the exact centre of the ceiling.

“How did you do it, Calvin?” came the abrupt demand from Maxwell’s corner. “Did you really have any evidence against Miss Diana’s step-father and her uncle?”

The big-bodied man from Washington chuckled softly.

“Oh, yes; I had the evidence. There was a hitch between Watson and Dimmock, and they were both of them injudicious enough to send notes back and forth; notes which, by the help of two good friends of yours and mine, were intercepted, carefully copied, the originals preserved, and the copies forwarded. It was a little off-color, but when you are fighting the devil you can’t always stop to pick your weapons. Watson was to have a Federal judgeship, and Big Money was to see that he got it. The hitch came in reference to Watson’s leaving town. He was afraid to go; afraid of public sentiment; and Dimmock was holding him on the rack. I don’t know whether the evidence of the letters would have held in an ordinary court, but I do know that I had Judge Walsh on my side.”

Maxwell whirled around in his chair.

“Sprague, did those letters incriminate Dimmock and Miss Diana’s uncle?”

“Oh, don’t let’s say ‘incriminate’; let’s use the milder word, ‘inculpate’. Yes, I guess they did, Dick.”

“Now I’ve got you!” snapped the square-shouldered one at the desk. “You would never--never in this wide world--have let that evidence get out. You know you wouldn’t!”

The big man was grinning affably. “You’re only half right,” he rejoined. “Up to luncheon-time to-day I meant to do it; I had it framed up so that the uncle, who is really the high spellbinder of the entire push, could slip out and the whole load would come down on Mr. Dimmock’s shoulders. But that luncheon play queered me, and I had to think quick to invent a new way out. It worked, and that’s all there is to it; all but one little item--Miss Diana let me drive her out to Lake Topaz this afternoon, and I stole your car to do it.”

“No; there is one other little item,” said Maxwell, rising and closing his desk upon the evening’s work. “I wired Ford, as you know, and I gave you the credit that belonged to you--which you may not know. Our New York crowd is properly grateful, and they promptly wired Kinzie. I don’t know how you’re fixed, Calvin, but I guess this won’t come amiss if you’re going to try to marry Diana Carswell,” and he handed Sprague a slip of paper which bore Banker Kinzie’s promise to pay ten thousand dollars to the order of one Calvin Sprague.

Sprague took the draft, glanced at the figure of it, and handed it back with another of his deep-chested laughs.

“Where on top of earth did you get the idea that I needed money, Dick?” he asked. “Why, Lord love you! didn’t you know that my California uncle, Uncle William, died five years ago and left me more money than I know what to do with? It’s the solemn fact, and I’m working on the Government job purely and simply because I don’t know how to loaf comfortably--never did. Of course, I can’t quite match up with the Carswell millions; but if that were the only thing in the way----”

“What is the other thing?” demanded Maxwell, in mock solicitude.

Sprague had risen and was stretching his arms over his head and yawning sleepily.

“If you’d see me step on the scales, you wouldn’t ask. I’m such a whale of a man, Dick! And, say: did you notice her at table to-day? ‘Pretty,’ you’d say, but that isn’t the word; it’s ‘dainty’, dainty in every look and move and touch. Imagine a girl like that saying, ‘Yes, honey,’ to a great big overgrown stale foot-ball artist like me! Let’s go over to the house and smoke a bedtime. Nobody loves me, and I’m going out in the garden to eat----”

“That is what makes you so frightfully fat--you eat too many of the fuzzy kind,” laughed the snappy little superintendent unsympathetically. And then he flicked the switch of the office lights and they went out together into the calm September night.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Changes have been made to make spelling consistent across this ebook, as follows:

--“Wire Devil” has added a hyphen on page 133;
--A hyphen has been added to “wrecking train” on page 53;
--“Up stairs” has been converted into one word on page 352;
--A hyphen was added to “payrolls” on page 30;
--Hyphens have been added to the word “hillside” on pages 319 and 321;
--The hyphen in “cut-out” has been removed on page 312;
--A hyphen has been added to “midday” on page 273;
--The word “mine-owners” has had the hyphen deleted on page 86;
--A hyphen has been inserted in “notebook” on page 54;
--A hyphen has been inserted in “Quick step” on page 128;
--A hyphen has been added to the word “trainload” on page 374;
--The hyphen in “bed-time” has been removed on page 406;
--The hyphen in “east-bound” has been removed on pages 90 and 336;
--A hyphen has been added to “carload” on page 301;
--The hyphen has been removed in “break-neck” on page 111;
--The hyphen has been removed in “main-line” on pages 16, 113 and 351;
--The hyphen has been removed in “rear-platform” on page 276;
--The hyphen has been removed in “high-line” on page 203;
--A hyphen has been added to “real estate” on page 223;
--The hyphen has been removed in “one-o’clock” on page 387;
--The hyphen has been removed in “fast-mail” on page 13;
--The hyphen has been removed in “kentucky-colonel” on page 370;
--Hyphens have been removed in “rank-and-file” on page 383;
--The hyphen has been removed in “second-section” on page 197;
--A hyphen has been added to “motive power” on page 228;
--The hyphen has been removed in “safety-switches” on pages
177 and 181;
--A hyphen has been added to “street crossing” on page 162;
--The hyphen has been removed in “managing-editor” on page 282;
--A hyphen has been added to “scraper teams” on page 346;
--The hyphen in “shop-track” has been removed on page 249;
--The hyphen in “Big-Nine” has been removed on page 249;
--The hyphen in “telegraph-office” has been removed on page 402;
--A hyphen has been added to “early morning” on page 263;
--The hyphen in “desk-end” has been removed on page 366;
--A hyphen has been added to “yard limits” on page 327;
--The hyphen in “hall-door” has been removed on page 102;
--The hyphen in “west-end” has been removed on page 124;
--The hyphen in “summing-up” has been removed on page 370;
--The hyphen in “false-alarm” has been removed on page 29;
--The hyphen in “off-time” has been removed on page 124;
--The hyphen in “make-shift” has been removed on page 317;
--The hyphen in “cow-punch” has been removed on page 320;

transcriber notes that this list, while extensive, may not cover all inconsistent hyphenation in this e-book.

Spelling of “reconnoissance” on page 314 corrected to “reconnaissance”.

The variant spelling “focussed” has been retained.

Where illustrations occurred in the body of a paragraph, they have been moved to avoid interrupting the text’s flow.