The Main Chance Part 28

"To tell the truth," said Wheaton, choosing his words carefully, "those out of town people I spoke to you about have written me that they'd like a little more, if it can be got at the right figure. You might pick up a hundred shares for me at the current price, if you can."

"How do you want to hold it?"

"Have it made to me," he answered. He had debated whether he should do this, and he had been unable to devise any method of holding the stock without letting his own name appear. Porter would not know; Porter was concealing his own purchases. Wheaton could not see that it made any difference; he was surely ent.i.tled to invest his money as he liked, and he raised the sum necessary in this case by the sale of some railroad bonds which he had been holding, and on which he could realize at once by sending them to the bank's correspondent at Chicago. He might have sold them at home; Porter would probably have taken them off his hands; but the president knew that his capital was small, and might have asked how he intended to reinvest the proceeds.

"Of course this is all confidential," said Wheaton.

"Sure," said Burton.

"And when you get it, telephone me and I'll come up and settle," said Wheaton.

A few days later Burton sent for Wheaton to come to his office. One hundred shares had been secured from a ranchman. Wheaton carried the purchase money in currency to Burton's office; he was as shrewd as William Porter, and he did not care to have the clerks in the bank speculating about his checks.

He locked his certificate, when Burton got it for him, in his private box in the vault, and waited the rebound which he firmly expected in the price of the stock. His sole idea was to make a profit by the purchase.

He felt perfectly confident that Porter had bought Traction stock with a definite purpose; he still had no idea who were the princ.i.p.al holders of Traction stock or bonds, and he was afraid to make inquiry. A man who was as secretive as Porter probably had confidential sources of information, and it was not safe to tap Porter's wires. His conscience was easy as to the method by which he had gained his knowledge of Porter's purchases; he certainly meant no harm to Porter.

CHAPTER XXII

AN ANNUAL Pa.s.s

Timothy Margrave was, in common phrase, a good railroad man. He had advanced by slow degrees from the inc.u.mbency of those lowly manual offices called jobs, to the performance of those n.o.bler functions known as positions. Margrave's elevation to the office of third vice-president and general manager was due to his Pull. This was originally political but later financial; and he now had both kinds of Pulls. There is no greater arrogance among us than that of our railway officials; they are greater tyrants than any that sit in public office. The General Something or Other is a despot, the records of whose life are written in tissue manifold; his ideals are established for him by those of his own order who have been raised to a higher power, which he himself aspires to reach in due season. Margrave had gone as high as he expected to go with the corporation whose destinies he had done so much to promote; all who were below him in the Transcontinental knew that he held their lives in his hands; all his subordinates, down to the boys who carried long manila envelopes marked R. R. B. to and from trains called him IT.

Margrave had resolved that the railroad was getting too much out of him and that he must do more to promote his own fortunes. The directors were good fellows, and they had certainly treated him well; but it seemed within the pale of legitimate enterprise for him to broaden his interests a trifle without in any wise diminishing his zeal for the Transcontinental. The street railway business was a good business, and Clarkson Traction appealed to Margrave, moreover, on its political side.

If he reorganized the company and made himself its president he could greatly fortify and strengthen his Pull. Tim Margrave's Pull was already of consequence and it would be of great use in this new undertaking; moreover, it would naturally be augmented by his control of the little army of Traction employees. He proposed getting some of the Eastern stockholders of the Transcontinental to help him acquire Traction holdings sufficient to get control of the company; and, with Margrave, to decide was to act.

Almost any day, he was told, the Eastern bondholders might pounce down and put a receiver in charge of the company. Margrave did not understand receiverships according to High or Beach or any other legal authority; but according to Margrave they were an excuse for pillage, and it was a regret of his life that no fat receivership had ever fallen to his lot.

But he was not going into Traction blindly. He wanted to know who else was interested, that he might avoid complications. William Porter was the only man in Clarkson who could swing Traction without a.s.sistance; he must not run afoul of Porter. Margrave was a master of the art of getting information, and he decided, on reflection, that the easiest way to get information about Porter was to coax it out of Wheaton.

He always called Wheaton "Jim," in remembrance of those early days of Wheaton's residence in Clarkson when Wheaton had worked in his office.

He had watched Wheaton's rise with interest; he took to himself the credit of being his discoverer. When Wheaton called on his daughter he made no comment; he knew nothing to Wheaton's discredit, and he would no more have thought of criticizing Mabel than of ordering dynamite subst.i.tuted for coal in the locomotives of his railroad. When he concluded that he needed Wheaton, he began playing for him, just as if the cashier had been a councilman or a member of the legislature or a large shipper or any other fair prey.

He had unconsciously made a good beginning by making Wheaton the King of the Carnival; he now resorted to that most insidious and economical form of bribery known as the annual pa.s.s.

One of these pretty bits of pasteboard was at once mailed to Wheaton by the Second a.s.sistant General Something on Margrave's recommendation.

Wheaton accepted the pa.s.s as a tribute to his growing prominence in the town. He knew that Porter refused railroad pa.s.ses on practical grounds, holding that such favors were extended in the hope of reciprocal compliments, and he believed that a banker was better off without them.

Wheaton, whose vanity had been touched, could see no harm in them. He had little use for pa.s.ses as he knew and cared little about traveling, but he had always envied men who carried their "annuals" in little bra.s.s-bound books made for the purpose. To be sure it was late in the year and pa.s.ses were usually sent out in January, but this made the compliment seem much more direct; the Transcontinental had forgotten him, and had thought it well to rectify the error between seasons. He felt that he must not make too much of the railroad's courtesy; he did not know to which official in particular he was indebted, but he ran into Margrave one evening at the club and decided to thank him.

"How's traffic?" he asked, as Margrave made room for him on the settee where he sat reading the evening paper.

"Fair. Anything new?"

"No; it's the same routine with me pretty much all the time."

"I guess that's right. I shouldn't think there was much fun in banking.

You got to keep the public too far away. I like to be up against people myself."

"Banking is hardly a sociable business," said Wheaton.

"No; a good banker's got to have cold feet, as the fellow said."

"But you railroad people are not considered so very warm," said Wheaton.

"The fellows who want favors seem to think so. By the way, I'm much obliged to some one for an annual that turned up in my mail the other day. I don't know who sent it to me,--if it's you--"

"Um?" Margrave affected to have been wandering in his thoughts, but this was what he was waiting for. "Oh, I guess that was Wilson. I never fool with the pa.s.s business myself; I've got troubles of my own."

"I guess I'll not use it very often," said Wheaton, as if he owed an apology to the road for accepting it.

"Better come out with me in the car sometime and see the road,"

Margrave suggested, throwing his newspaper on the table.

"I'd like that very much," said Wheaton.

"Where's Thompson now? Old man's pretty well done up, ain't he?"

"He went back to Arizona. He was here at work all summer. He's afraid of our winters."

"Well, that gives you your chance," said Margrave, affably. "There ain't any young man in town that's got a better chance than you have, Jim."

"I know that," said Wheaton, humbly.

"You don't go in much on the outside, do you? I suppose you don't have much time."

"No; I'm held down pretty close; and in a bank you can't go into everything."

"Well, there's nothing like keeping an eye out. Good things are not so terribly common these days." Margrave got up and walked the floor once or twice, apparently in a musing humor, but he really wished to look into the adjoining room to make sure they were alone.

"I believe," he said, with emphasis on the p.r.o.noun, "there's going to be a good thing for some one in Traction stock. Porter ought to let you in on that." Margrave didn't know that Porter was in, but he expected to find out.

"Mr. Porter has a way of keeping things to himself," said Wheaton, cautiously; yet he was flattered by Margrave's friendliness, and anxious to make a favorable impression. Vanity is not, as is usually a.s.sumed, a mere incident of character; it is a disease.

"I suppose," said Margrave, "that a man could buy a barrel of that stuff just now at a low figure."

Wheaton could not resist this opportunity.

"What I have, I got at thirty-one," he answered, as if it were the most natural thing in the world for him to have Traction stock. This was not a bank confidence; there was no reason why he should not talk of his own investments if he wished to do so.

Margrave had reseated himself, and lounged on the settee with a confidential air that he had found very effective in the committee rooms at the state capital when it was necessary to deal with a difficult legislator.

"I suppose Porter must have got in lower than that," he said, carelessly. "Billy usually gets in on the ground floor." He chuckled to himself in admiration of the banker's shrewdness. "But a fellow can do what he pleases when he's got money. Most of us see good things and can't go into the market after 'em."

"What's your guess as to the turn this Traction business will take?"

asked Wheaton. He had not expected an opportunity to talk to any one of Margrave's standing on this subject, and he thought he would get some information while the opportunity offered.

"Don't ask me! If I knew I'd like to get into the game. But, look here"--he moved his fat body a little nearer to Wheaton--"the way to go into that thing is to go into it big! I've had my eye on it for a good while, but I ain't going to touch it unless I can swing it all. Now, you know Porter, and I know him, and you can bet your last dollar he'll never be able to handle it. He ain't built for it!" His voice sank to a whisper. "But if I decide to go in, I've got to get rid of Porter. Me and Porter can't travel in the same harness. You know that," he added, pleadingly, as if there were the bitterness of years of controversy in his relations with Porter.