The Main Chance Part 38

"Come again, Jim?" he called pleasantly, as he backed within the door and closed it to return to his guests.

Wheaton reached his room, filled with righteous indignation. He might have known that a coa.r.s.e fellow like Margrave cared only for people whom he could control; and he decided after a night of reflection that he had acted handsomely in saving Porter's package of securities from Margrave the night of the encounter at the bank. The more he thought of it, the more certain he grew that he could, if it became necessary to protect himself in any way, turn the tables on Margrave. He called Margrave a scoundrel in his thoughts, and was half persuaded to go at once to Fenton and explain why Margrave had been at the bank on the night that Fenton had found him there.

Wheaton continued to call at the Porters' daily to make inquiry for the head of the house. On some of these occasions he saw Evelyn, but Mrs.

Whipple, whose staying qualities were born of a rigid military sense of duty, was always there; and he had not seen Evelyn alone since she gave him her father's key. Other young men, friends of Evelyn, called, he found, just as he did, to make inquiry about Mr. Porter. Mrs. Whipple had a way of saying very artlessly, and with a little sigh that carried weight, that Mr. Raridan was so very kind. Wheaton wanted to be very kind himself, but he never happened to be about when the servants were busy and there were important prescriptions to be filled at the apothecary's.

On the whole he was very miserable and when, one morning, while Porter's condition was still precarious, he received a letter from Snyder, postmarked Spokane, declaring that money was immediately required to support him until he could find work, he closed that issue finally in a brief letter which was not couched in diplomatic language.

The four days that were necessary for the delivery of this letter had hardly pa.s.sed before Wheaton received a telegram sharply demanding a remittance by wire. This Wheaton did not answer; he had done all that he intended to do for William Snyder, who was well out of the way, and much more safely so if he had no money. The correspondence was not at an end, however, for a threatening letter in Snyder's eccentric orthography followed, and this, too, Wheaton dropped into his waste paper basket and dismissed from his mind.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

PUZZLING AUTOGRAPHS

The affairs of the Traction Company proved to be in a wretched tangle.

Saxton employed an expert accountant to open a set of books for the company, while he gave his own immediate attention to the physical condition of the property. The company's service was a byword and a hissing in the town, and he did what he could to better it, working long hours, but enjoying the labor. It had been a sudden impulse on Fenton's part to have Saxton made receiver. In Saxton's first days at Clarkson he had taken legal advice of Fenton in matters which had already been placed in the lawyer's hands by the bank; but most of these had long been closed, and Saxton had latterly gone to Raridan for such legal a.s.sistance as he needed from time to time. Fenton had firmly intended asking Wheaton's appointment; this seemed to him perfectly natural and proper in view of Wheaton's position in the bank and his relations with Porter, which were much less confidential than even Fenton imagined.

Fenton had been disturbed to find Margrave and Wheaton together in the directors' room the night before the annual meeting of the Traction stockholders. He could imagine no business that would bring them together; and the hour and the place were not propitious for forming new alliances for the bank. Wheaton had appeared agitated as he pa.s.sed out the packet of bonds and stocks; and Margrave's efforts at gaiety had only increased Fenton's suspicions. From every point of view it was unfortunate that Porter should have fallen ill just at this time; but it was, on the whole, just as well to take warning from circ.u.mstances that were even slightly suspicious, and he had decided that Wheaton should not have the receivership. He had not considered Saxton in this connection until the hour of the Traction meeting; and he had inwardly debated it until the moment of his decision at the street corner.

He had expected to supervise Saxton's acts, but the receiver had taken hold of the company's affairs with a zeal and an intelligence which surprised him. Saxton wasn't so slow as he looked, he said to the federal judge, who had accepted Saxton wholly on Fenton's recommendation. Within a fortnight Saxton had improved the service of the company to the public so markedly that the newspapers praised him.

He reduced the office force to a working basis and installed a cashier who was warranted not to steal. It appeared that the motormen and conductors held their positions by paying tribute to certain minor officers, and Saxton applied heroic treatment to these abuses without ado.

The motormen and conductors grew used to the big blond in the long gray ulster who was forever swinging himself aboard the cars and asking them questions. They affectionately called him "Whiskers," for no obvious reason, and the report that Saxton had, in one of the power-houses, filled his pipe with sweepings of tobacco factories known in the trade as "Trolleyman's Special," had further endeared him to those men whose pay checks bore his name as receiver. In snow-storms the Traction Company had usually given up with only a tame struggle, but Saxton devised a new snow-plow, which he hitched to a trolley and drove with his own hand over the Traction Company's tracks.

John was cleaning out the desk of the late secretary of the company one evening while Raridan read a newspaper and waited for him. Warry was often lonely these days. Saxton was too much engrossed to find time for frivolity, and Mr. Porter's illness cut sharply in on Warry's visits to the Hill. The widow's clothes lines were tied in a hard knot in the federal court, to which he had removed them, and he was resting while he waited for the Transcontinental to exhaust its usual tactics of delay and come to trial. On Fenton's suggestion Saxton had intrusted to Raridan some matters pertaining to the receivership, and these served to carry Warry over an interval of idleness and restlessness.

"You may hang me!" said Saxton suddenly. He had that day unexpectedly come upon the long-lost stock records of the company and was now examining them. Thrust into one of the books were two canceled certificates.

"It's certainly queer," he said, as Warry went over to his desk. He spread out one of the certificates which Margrave had taken from Wheaton the night before the annual meeting. "That's certainly Wheaton's endors.e.m.e.nt all right enough."

Raridan took off his gla.s.ses and brought his near-sighted gaze to bear critically upon the paper.

"There's no doubt about it."

"And look at this, too." Saxton handed him Evelyn Porter's certificate.

Raridan examined it and Evelyn's signature on the back with greater care. He carried the paper nearer to the light, and scanned it again while Saxton watched him and smoked his pipe.

"You notice that Wheaton witnessed the signature."

Raridan nodded. Saxton, who knew his friend's moods thoroughly, saw that he was troubled.

"I can find no plausible explanation of that," said Saxton. "Anybody may be called on to witness a signature; but I can't explain this." He opened the stock record and followed the history of the two certificates from one page to another. It was clear enough that the certificates held by Evelyn Porter and James Wheaton had been merged into one, which had been made out in the name of Timothy Margrave, and dated the day before the annual meeting.

"It doesn't make much difference at present," said Saxton. "When Mr.

Porter comes down town he will undoubtedly go over this whole business and he can easily explain these matters."

"It makes a lot of difference," said Warry, gloomily.

"We'd better not say anything about this just now--not even to Fenton,"

Saxton suggested. "I'll take these things over to my other office for safe keeping. Some one may want them badly enough to look for them."

Raridan sat down with his newspaper and pretended to be reading until Saxton was ready to go.

CHAPTER x.x.xII

CROSSED WIRES

A great storm came out of the north late in January and beat fiercely upon Clarkson. It left a burden of snow on the town and was followed by a week of bitter cold. The sun shone impotently upon the great drifts which filled the streets; it seemed curiously remote, and ashamed of its failure to impress the white, dazzling ma.s.ses. The wires sang their song of the cold; even the confused wires of the Clarkson Traction Company lifted up their voices, somewhat to the irritation of John Saxton, receiver, as he fought the snow banks below and sought to disentangle the twisted wires above. Upper Varney Street, beyond Porter Hill, was receiving his attention late one afternoon as the winter sunset burned red in the west. The iron poles of the trolley wires had been pulled far over into the street by the blast and the weight of snow; and trolley, telephone, and electric light wires were a baffling tangle which workmen were seeking to straighten. Saxton's men had detached their own wires and were restoring them to the poles. Traffic on the Varney Street line would, he concluded, be resumed on the morrow; and he gave final instructions to the foreman of the repair crew and turned toward his office.

Evelyn Porter, who had come out for the walk she had been taking every afternoon since the beginning of her father's illness, stopped at the narrow aisle which had been trampled in the snow-piled sidewalk to watch an adventurous lineman scale an icy telephone pole. There is a vintage of the North that is more stimulating than any that comes out of Southern vineyards. It brings a glow to the cheeks, a sparkle to the eyes, and a nimbleness to the tongue which no product of the winepress ever gives. It is a wine that makes the heart leap and the blood tingle.

It is distilled in the great ice-clasped seas of the North, and the pine and balsam of snowy woods add their quintessence to it; it tickles no palate but is a.s.similated directly into the blood of the brave and strong; it is the wine of youth, of perpetual youth. Evelyn felt the joy of it to-day, her heart leaped with it,--it was a delight to be abroad in the pure, cold air. Her coloring was freshly accented. The remote Scotch grandmother who conferred it upon her, across years of migration, would have rejoiced in it; where the Irish strain maintained its light of humor in her blue eyes, the gray mist of the Scotch moors still held its own. There are women who are dominated by their clothes; but Evelyn Porter was not one of them. Her dark green skirt might have belonged to any other girl, but it would not have swayed in just the same way to any other step; and her toque and cape of sable would have lost their distinction on any other head and shoulders. Her father's convalescence was only a matter of time and care; he had withstood the fever better than the physicians had thought possible, and there was no question of his restoration to health. It was good to be free of the anxious strain, and the keen air was like a tonic to her happiness. Saxton recognized her as he jumped over the drifted snow at the curb to the path. His face, where it was visible between his cap and collar, was red from the cold.

"They say freezing to death's an easy way,--but I don't believe I'd prefer it."

"Oh, it's you, is it? I wondered who the busy man was." She was interested in the lineman, the points of whose climbers were shaking down the ice coating of the pole as he ascended.

"Won't you order that man to come down? It isn't nice to make him risk his life for a wire or two."

"He's not my man," said John, beating his hands together, "he's fixing telephone wires, and besides, he's not taking any chances."

Evelyn half turned away to continue her walk, still with her eyes on the lineman.

"Poor fellow; it must be very cold up there."

"Yes, polar expeditions are usually that way."

"Wretched man, to pun about a human life in peril!" The lineman was sitting on one of the cross beams, and Evelyn started ahead, Saxton following.

"Is that the overcoat?" she asked, over her shoulder.

"What overcoat?"

"The one that's in the newspapers. Aren't you the man in the gray ulster who runs the trolleys?"

"I've been too busy to read the papers, so I don't know."

"It might pay you to join a current topics cla.s.s and learn what's going on."

"That presupposes a little knowledge. I'd never pa.s.s the entrance exams."

"You needn't be afraid, they probably carry a prep. department."