XII
The Rocket and the Stick
For a full fortnight after the preliminary visit to the Brewster CityNational Bank, Smith was easily the busiest man in Timanyoni County.Establishing himself in the Hophra House, and discarding the workingkhaki only because he was shrewd enough to dress the new partbecomingly, he flung himself into what Colonel Baldwin called the"miracle-working" campaign with a zest that knew no flagging moment.
Within the fourteen-day period new town offices were occupied on thesecond floor of the Brewster City National Building; Stillings, mostefficient of corporation counsels, had secured the new charter; and thestock-books of Timanyoni High Line had been opened, with the BrewsterCity National named as the company's depository and official fiduciaryagent.
At the dam the building activities had been generously doubled. Anelectric-light plant had been installed, and Williams was working dayand night shifts both in the quarries and on the forms. Past this, thenew financial manager, himself broadening rapidly as his fieldbroadened, was branching out in other directions. After a briefconference with a few of his principal stockholders he had instructedStillings to include the words "Power and Light" in the cataloguing ofthe new company's possible and probable charter activities, and by theend of the fortnight the foundations of a power-house were going inbelow the dam, and negotiations were already on foot with the Brewstercity council looking toward the sale of electric current to the city forlighting and other purposes.
Notwithstanding all the demands made upon him as the chief energizer inthe working field, Smith had made the planting of his financial anchorsecurely to windward his first care. Furnished with a selected list byColonel Baldwin, he had made a thorough canvas of possible investors,and by the time the new stock was printed and ready for delivery throughKinzie's bank, an iron-clad pool of the majority of the originalTimanyoni Ditch stock had been organized, and Smith had sold to Maxwell,Starbuck, and other local capitalists a sufficient amount of the newtreasury stock to give him a fighting chance; this, with a promise ofmore if it should be needed.
The stock-selling campaign was a triumph, and though he did notrecognize it as such, it marked the longest step yet taken in the marchof the metamorphosis. As the cashier in Dunham's bank Smith had beenmerely a high-grade clerk. There had been no occasion for thedevelopment of the precious quality of initiative, and he had hardlyknown the meaning of the word. But now there seemed to be no limit tothe new powers of accomplishment. Men met him upon his own ground, and alilting sense of triumph gave him renewed daring when he found that hecould actually inspire them with some portion of his own confidence andenthusiasm.
But in all this there had been no miracle, one would say; nothing butenterprise and shrewd business acumen and lightning-like speed inbringing things to pass. If there were a miracle, it lay in this: thatnot to Maxwell or to any of the new investors had Smith revealed thefull dimensions of the prize for which Timanyoni High Line was enteringthe race. Colonel Baldwin and one William Starbuck, Maxwell'sbrother-in-law, by courtesy, and his partner in the Little Alice mine,alone knew the wheel within the wheel; how the great Eastern utilitycorporation represented by Stanton had spent a million or more in theacquisition of the Escalante Grant, which would be practically worthlessas agricultural land without the water which could be obtained only bymeans of the Timanyoni dam and canal system.
With all these strenuous stirrings in the business field, it may sayitself that Smith found little time for social indulgences during thecrowded fortnight. Day after day the colonel begged him to take a nightoff at the ranch, and it was even more difficult to refuse the profferedhospitality at the week-end. But Smith did refuse it.
With the new life and the larger ambition had come a sturdy resolve tohold himself aloof from entanglements of every sort. That Corona Baldwinwas going to prove an entanglement he was wise enough to foresee fromthe moment in which he had identified her with the vitalizing youngwoman whose glove he had carried off. In fact, she was alreadyassociated in his thoughts with every step in the business battle. Washe not taking a very temerarious risk of discovery and arrest merely forthe sake of proving to her that her "hopeless case" of the lawn-partycould confute her mocking little theories about men and types withouthalf trying?
It was not until after Miss Corona--driving to town with her father, asshe frequently did--had thrice visited the new offices that Smith beganto congratulate himself, rather bitterly, to be sure, upon his wisdom instaying away from Hillcrest. For one thing, he was learning that CoronaBaldwin was an exceedingly charming young woman of many moods andtenses, and that in some of the moods, and in practically all of thetenses, she was able to make him see rose-colored. When she was not withhim, he had no difficulty in assuring himself that the rose-coloredpoint of view was entirely out of the question for a man in daily perilof meeting the sheriff. But when she was present, calm sanity had a wayof losing its grip, and the rose-colored possibilities reassertedthemselves with intoxicating accompaniments.
Miss Corona's fourth visit to the handsome suite of offices over theBrewster City National chanced to fall upon a Saturday. Her father,president of the new company, as he had been of the old, had a privateoffice of his own, but Miss Corona soon drifted out to the railed-offend of the larger room, where the financial secretary had his desk.
"Colonel-daddy tells me that you are coming out to Hillcrest for theweek-end," was the way in which she interrupted the financialsecretary's brow-knittings over a new material contract. "I have justwagered him a nice fat little round iron dollar of my allowance that youwon't. How about it?"
Smith looked up with his best-natured grin.
"You win," he said shortly.
"Thank you," she laughed. "In a minute or so I'll go back to thepresident's office and collect." Then: "One dinner, lodging, andbreakfast of us was about all you could stand, wasn't it? I thoughtmaybe it would be that way."
"What made you think so?"
"You should never ask a woman why; it's a frightfully unsafe thing todo."
"I know," he mocked. "There have been whole books written about the lackof logic on your side of the sex fence."
She had seated herself in the chair reserved for inquiring investors.There was a little interval of glove-smoothing silence, and then, like aflash out of a clear sky, she smiled across the desk-end at him andsaid:
"Will you forgive me if I ask you a perfectly ridiculous question?"
"Certainly. Other people ask them every day."
"Is--is your name really and truly John Smith?"
"Why should you doubt it?"
It was just here that Smith was given to see another one of MissCorona's many moods--or tenses--and it was a new one to him. She wasvisibly embarrassed.
"I--I don't want to tell you," she stammered.
"All right; you needn't."
"If you're going to take it that easy, I _will_ tell you," she retorted."Mr. Williams thought your name was an _alias_; and I'm not sure that hedoesn't still think so."
"The Smiths never have to have _aliases_. It's like John Doe or RichardRoe, you know."
"Haven't you any middle name?"
"I have a middle initial. It is 'M.'" He was looking her fairly in theeyes as he said it, and the light in the new offices was excellent.Thanks to her horseback riding, Miss Corona's small oval face had atouch of healthy outdoor tan; but under the tan there came, for just aflitting instant, a flush of deeper color, and at the back of the grayeyes there was something that Smith had never seen there before.
"It's--it's just an initial?" she queried.
"Yes; it's just an initial, and I don't use it ordinarily. I'm notashamed of the plain 'John.'"
"I don't know why you should be," she commented, half absently, hethought. And then: "How many 'John M. Smiths' do you suppose there arein the United States?"
"Oh, I don't know; a million or so, I guess."
"I should think you would be rather glad of that," she told him. Butwhen he tried to make he
r say why he should be glad, she talkedpointedly of other things and presently went back to her father'soffice.
It was not until after she had gone out with her father, and he had madeher wager good by steadfastly refusing to spend the week-end at theranch, that Smith began to put two and two together, erroneously, as ithappened, though he could not know this. Mrs. Baldwin's home town in hisnative State was the little place that her daughter had visited andwhere the daughter had had a lawn-party given in her honor. Was it notmore than probable that the colonel's wife was still keeping up somesort of a correspondence with her home people and that through this, orsome mention in a local paper, Corona had got hold of the devastatingstory of one J. Montague Smith?
There were fine little headings of perspiration standing on thefugitive's forehead when the small sum in addition had progressed thusfar. But if he had only known it, there was no need, as yet, for thesweat of apprehension. Like some other young women, Miss Baldwinsuffered from spasmodic attacks of the diary-keeping malady; she hadbeen keeping one at the time of her return from school, and thelawn-party in the little town in the Middle West had its due entry.
In a moment of idle curiosity on the Saturday forenoon, she had lookedinto the year-old diary to find the forgotten name of the man of whomSmith was still persistently reminding her. It was there in all itsglory: "J. Montague Smith." Could it be possible?--but, no; John Smith,her father's John Smith, had come to the construction camp as a hobo,and that was not possible, not even thinkable, of the man she had met.None the less, it was a second attack of the idle curiosity that hadmoved her to go to town with her father on the Saturday afternoon ofquestionings.
After the other members of the office force had taken their departure,Smith still sat at his desk striving to bring himself back with somedegree of clear-headedness to the pressing demands of his job. Just ashe was about to give it up and go across to the Hophra House for hisdinner, William Starbuck drifted in to open the railing gate and to comeand plant himself in the chair of privilege at Smith's desk-end.
"Well, son; you've got the animals stirred up good and plenty, at last,"he said, when he had found the "makings" and was deftly rolling acigarette--his one overlapping habit reaching back to his range-ridingyouth. "Dick Maxwell got a wire to-day from his kiddie's grandpaw--andmy own respected daddy-in-law--Mr. Hiram Fairbairn; you know him--thelumber king."
"I'm listening," said Smith.
"Dick's wire was an order; instructions from headquarters to keep handsoff of your new company and to work strictly in cahoots--'harmony' wasthe word he used--with Crawford Stanton. How does that fit you?"
The financial secretary's smile was the self-congratulatoryface-wrinkling of the quarry foreman who has seen his tackle hitch holdto land the big stone safely at the top of the pit.
"What is Maxwell going to do about it?" he asked.
"Dick is all wool and a yard wide; and what he signs his name to is whathe is going to stand by. You won't lose him, but the wire shows us justabout where we're aiming to put our leg into the gopher-hole and breakit, doesn't it?"
"I'm not borrowing any trouble. Mr. Fairbairn and his colleagues arejust a few minutes too late, Starbuck. We've got our footing--inside ofthe corral."
The ex-cow-puncher, who was now well up on the middle rounds offortune's ladder, shook his head doubtfully.
"Don't you make any brash breaks, John. Mr. Hiram Fairbairn and hiscrowd can swing twenty millions to your one little old dollar and ahalf, and they're not going to leave any of the pebbles unturned when itcomes to saving their investment in the Escalante. I don't carespecially for my own ante--Stella and I will manage to get a bite toeat, anyway. But for your own sake and Colonel Dexter's, you don't wantto let the grass grow under your feet; not any whatsoever. You go aheadand get that dam finished, _pronto_, if you have to put a thousand menon it and work 'em Sundays as well as nights. That's all; I just thoughtI'd drop in and tell you."
Smith went to his rooms in the hotel a few minutes later to change fordinner. Having been restocking his wardrobe to better fit his new stateand standing as the financial head of Timanyoni High Line, he found thelinen drawer in his dressing-case overflowing. Opening another, he beganto arrange the overflow methodically. The empty drawer was lined with anewspaper, and he took the paper out to fold it afresh. In the act hesaw that it was a copy of the _Chicago Tribune_ some weeks old. As hewas replacing it in the drawer bottom, a single head-line on theupturned page sprang at him like a thing living and venomous. He bentlower and read the underrunning paragraph with a dull rage mounting tohis eyes and serving for the moment to make the gray of the printedlines turn red.
LAWRENCEVILLE, May 19.--The grand jury has found a true bill against Montague Smith, the absconding cashier of the Lawrenceville Bank and Trust, charged with embezzling the bank's funds. The crime would have been merely a breach of trust and not actionable but for the fact that Smith, by owning stock in the bankrupt Westfall industries lately taken over by the Richlander Company, had so made himself amenable to the law. Smith disappeared on the night of the 14th and is still at large. He is also wanted on another criminal count. It will be remembered that he brutally assaulted President Dunham on the night of his disappearance. The reward of $1,000 for his apprehension and arrest has been increased to $2,000 by the bank directors.
The Real Man Page 12