When they gave him leave to speak, he still made no attempt to explain.

Instead, he rose, walked to the other end of the table, and tossed the bit of folded paper across to Mackie, the broker.

"I inherited a little money, and I have made and saved enough more to make it an even twenty thousand dollars," he said. "I don't know of any more promising investment just now than Pacific Southwestern at twenty-nine and a half. Will you be good enough to buy for my account, Mr. Mackie?"

The effect was electrical. President Colbrith sat up very straight in his chair; two or three of the anxious ones opened on Ford with a rapid fire of questions; and Brewster, the copper magnate, sat back and chuckled softly in his beard.

"No, gentlemen; there is no change in the situation, so far as I know.

Of course, you are not so foolish as to let the newspaper talk of the tie-up at the Chicago elevators influence you," Ford was saying to the anxious inquirers. "And, apart from that, everything is going our way.

As I have remarked, our stock at the present figure is good enough for me, and I only wish I had two hundred thousand, instead of twenty thousand, to put into it."

Brewster stopped chuckling long enough to hold up a finger to the broker. "You may buy for my account, too, Mackie, while you are at it--and keep on buying till I tell you to quit."

This broke the deadlock instantly, and for a few minutes the board room was as noisy as the wheat pit with a corner threatening. Brewster, still laughing in his beard, pulled Ford out of the press at the broker's end of the table.

"I'm going to ask only one thing of you, young man," he began, his shrewd little eyes twinkling. "Just let me know when you are going to get out, so I can pull through without having to take the bankruptcy."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Will you be good enough to buy for my account, Mr.

Mackie"]

"I'll do it, Mr. Brewster," laughed Ford. "Only I'm not going to get out--unless you folks freeze me out."

"Then it isn't a long bluff on your part?"

"It is, and it isn't. We still stand to win if we have the nerve to hold on--in which event P. S-W. at twenty-nine and a fraction is a gold mine.

That's one view of it, and the other is this: we've simply _got_ to corner our own stock if we expect to sell thirty millions additional bonds."

"Well, I guess you've gone the right way about it. But are you sure about these Chicago terminals? A legal friend of mine here says you'll never get in."

"He was possibly paid to say it," said Ford hotly. "There has never been a shadow of doubt touching our trackage rights on the C. P. & D.

contracts, or upon our ability to maintain them. All the Transcontinental people hoped to do was to make a newspaper stir to help keep our stock down. They know what we are going to do to them over in their western territory, and they won't stop at anything to block us."

"Of course; I think we were all inclined to be a little short-sighted and pessimistic here, Mr. Ford. When do you go back to your fighting ground?"

"To-night."

"You won't wait to see what happens here?"

"I don't need to, I am sure. And the minutes--my minutes--are worth dollars to the company just now."

"Well, go in and win--only don't forget to give me that tip. You wouldn't want to see a man of my age going to the poorhouse."

"One other word, Mr. Brewster," Ford begged, as the copper magnate was pointing for the door of escape. "Please don't let any of these timid gentlemen sell till we get our bonds floated. You mark my word: the temptation to make a big killing is going to be very great, within a week."

The copper king laughed; openly, this time.

"You overrate my influence, Mr. Ford; but I'll do what I can--by word of mouth and by example. You can count on me--as long as you let me stay on your side of the market."

Ford had three several invitations to luncheon after the meeting adjourned, but he accepted none of them. To Adair he made the declination courteous while they were trundling back to the Waldorf in the big touring car.

"I have lost an entire day because I could not take the time to secure a stenographer before leaving Chicago night before last. I must find one now and go to work."

"All right; if you must. But I was hoping I could take you out to Overlook to dinner this evening. Can't you come anyhow, and take a later train west?"

"Don't tempt me," said Ford. And then: "The ladies are quite well, I hope?"

"Oh, yes; they are in town to-day, and we are all going to luncheon together--though I shan't know just where until I go to the club.

Failing the dinner, won't you make a knife and fork with us at one o'clock?"

"I should like to--more than anything else in the world," Ford protested, meaning it. "But you'll make my excuses to Mrs. Adair, won't you? We've simply got to get a three-cornered hustle on now, if we want to save the day in the West."

"Why? Is there anything new in that quarter?"

"There is: something that I didn't dare to mention back yonder in the board meeting. You may remember that I told you I had left a man in my place on the Plug Mountain--Frisbie? I had a wire from him, night before last, just as I was leaving Chicago. As you know, the Pacific Southwestern inherits, from the old narrow-gauge purchase, the right-of-way over Plug Pa.s.s and down the valley of the Pannikin. Frisbie wires that the Transcontinental people have begun ma.s.sing building material at the terminus of their Saguache branch, only twenty miles from the Pa.s.s."

"And that means?--I'm lame on geography."

"It means that they'll cut in ahead of us, if they can. Plug Pa.s.s is the only available unoccupied outlet through the mountains for thirty or forty miles north or south; and if we don't get our building force on the ground mighty suddenly, we'll find it fortified and held by the enemy."

The touring car had turned into Broadway, and the traffic roar precluded further talk. But when Ford was dismounting from the tonneau at the entrance to his hotel, Adair said: "There appears to be no rest for the wicked. You ought to have some of that thirty million dollars to spend right now."

Ford's smile was little more than a sardonic grin.

"Adair," he said, "I'm going to tell you something else that I didn't dare tell those money-tremulous people in McVeigh and Mackie's private office. I have been signing contracts and buying material by the train-load ever since the first grain shipment was started eastward on our main line. Also, I've got my engineering corps mobilized, and it will take the field under Frisbie as its chief not later than to-morrow.

Putting one thing with another, I should say that we are something over a fresh million of dollars on the wrong side of solvency for these little antics of mine, and I'm adding to the deficit by the hundred thousand every time I can get a chance to dictate a letter."

Adair lighted a cigarette and made a fair show of taking it easily. But a moment later he was lifting his hat to wipe the perspiration from his forehead.

"Lord! but you have the confidence of your convictions!" he said, breathing hard. "If we shouldn't happen to be able to float the bonds--"

"We are in too deep to admit the 'if.' The bonds must be floated, and at the earliest possible moment that Magnus will move in it. You wanted something big enough to keep you interested. I have been trying my best to accommodate you."

Adair leaned forward and spoke to his chauffeur. The man watched his chances for room to turn in the crowded street.

"Where are you going?" asked Ford.

"Back to McVeigh and Mackie's--where I can watch a ticker and go broke buying more Pacific Southwestern," was the reply, and just then the chauffeur found his opening and the big car whirled and plunged into the down-town stream.

In the financial news the next morning there was a half-column or more devoted to the sudden and unaccountable flurry in Pacific Southwestern.

Ford got it in the Pittsburg papers and read it while the picked-up stenographer was wrestling with his notes. After the drop in the stock, caused, in the estimation of the writer, by the company's sudden plunge into railroad buying at wholesale, P. S-W. had recovered with a bound, advancing rapidly in the closing hours of the day from the lower thirties to forty-two, with a strong demand. The utmost secrecy was maintained, but it was shrewdly suspected that one of the great companies, of which the Pacific Southwestern was now a compet.i.tor on an equal footing for the grain-carrying trade, had gone in to absorb the new factor in trans-Missouri traffic. Other and more sensational developments might be expected if the battle should be fought to a finish. Then followed a brief history of the Pacific Southwestern, with a somewhat garbled account of the late dash for a Chicago terminal, but lacking--as Ford remarked gratefully--any hint of the company's designs in the farther West.

"If Adair and Brewster and the others only have the nerve to keep it up!" said Ford to himself. Then he tossed the paper aside and dived once more into the deep sea of extension building, working the picked-up stenographer until the young man was ready with his resignation the moment the final letter was filed for mailing in the Chicago station.

Five days the young engineer waited for news from New York--waited and worked like a high-pressure motor while he waited. Each day's financial news showed the continued and growing success of the home-made "corner,"

and now the reporters were predicting that the stock would go to par before the price should break.

Ford trembled for the good faith of his backers on the board. When one has bought at twenty-nine and a half and can sell within the week for eighty-seven, the temptation is something tremendous. But at the closing hour of the fifth day the demand was still good; and when Ford reached the hotel that night there was a telegram from Adair awaiting him.

He tore it open and read it, with the blood pounding through his veins and a roar which was not of the street traffic drumming in his ears.