There were benches as if for pa.s.sengers. In one corner with a grated window was a little part.i.tioned off s.p.a.ce labeled "President's Office."

Hanging from a strap were a lot of blank baggage checks, on the walls were all kinds of railroad timetables, and painted on a board running the entire width of the room were great glaring black letters on a white background, comprising the announcement: "Dover & Springfield Short Line Railroad."

To complete the presentment, many sheets of heavy manilla paper formed one entire end of the room, and across their surface was traced in red and black paint a zigzag railway line.

One terminal was marked "Dover," the other "Springfield." There were dots for minor stations, crosses for bridges and triangles for water tanks.

Ralph readily comprehended that this was the plan of a railroad right-of-way crossing The Barrens north and south from end to end, and the big blue square in the center was intended to indicate the headquarters where he now stood in the presence of the actual and important president of the Dover & Springfield Short Line Railroad.

Ralph must have been two full minutes taking in all this, and when he had concluded his inspection he turned to confront Gibson, whose face showed lively satisfaction over the fact that the layout had interested and visibly impressed his visitor.

"Well," he challenged in a pleased, proud way, "how does it strike you?"

"Why," said Ralph, "to tell the truth, I am somewhat astonished."

"That is quite natural," responded Gibson. "The idea of the world in general of a railroad headquarters is plate gla.s.s, mahogany desks and pompous heads of departments, looking wise and spending money. The Short Line has no capital, so we have to go in modest at the start. All the same, we have system, ideas and, what is surer and better than all that put together, we have the Right of Way."

"The Right of Way?" repeated Ralph, taking in the announcement at its full importance.

"Yes, that means what? That under the strictest legal and full state authority we have a franchise, empowering us to construct and operate a railway from Dover to Springfield, and vesting in us the sole t.i.tle to a hundred-foot strip of land clear across The Barrens, with additional depot and terminal sites.

"That must be a very valuable acquisition," said Ralph.

"I am not used to talking my business to outsiders," responded Gibson, "and you are one of the very few who have ever been allowed to enter this place. I admit you for strong personal reasons, and I want to explain to you what they are."

He sat down on one of the benches and waved Ralph to the one opposite.

His mobile face worked, as silently for a minute or two he seemed concentrating his ideas and choosing his words.

"I am a strange man," he said finally, "probably a crank, and certainly not a very good man, as my record goes, but circ.u.mstances made me what I am."

A twinge of bitterness came into the tones, and his eyes hardened.

"The beginning of my life," proceeded Gibson, "was honest work as a farmer--the end of it is holding on with bulldog tenacity to all there is left of the wreck of a fortune. That's the layout here. The Short Line, no one knows it--no one cares--just yet. But no one can ever wrest it from me. Ten years ago, when the Great Northern was projected, your father saw that a road across here was a tactical move, but the investors were in a hurry to get a line through to Springfield, and dropped this route. Later the Midland Central cut into Dover. They too never guessed what a big point they might have made cutting through here to Springfield. Well, I got possession of the franchise. I had to bide my time and stay in the dark. To-day, with the Short Line completed, I would hold the key to the traffic situation of two States, could demand my own price from either railroad for it, and they would run up into the millions outbidding each other, for the road getting the Short Line completely dominates all transfer pa.s.senger and freight business north and south."

"Why, I see that," said Ralph, roused up with keen interest. "It becomes a bee-line route, saving twenty or thirty miles' distance, and opens up a new territory."

"You've struck it. Now then, what I want to lead up to is Farrington--Gasper Farrington. You know him?"

"Yes, I know him," a.s.sented Ralph emphatically.

"Between my old honest life and the dregs here his figure looms up prominently," resumed Gibson. "Around him has revolved much concerning your father and myself in the past. Around him will loom up considerable concerning you and myself in the future. For this reason I take you into my confidence--to join issues, to grasp the situation and to move down on the enemy. In a word: Gasper Farrington ruined my chances in life. In another, he robbed your father."

Ralph was becoming intensely interested.

"He robbed my father, you say?"

"Yes."

"Are you sure of that, Mr. Gibson?"

"I am positive of it. I have the proofs. Even without those proofs, my unsupported word would substantiate the charge. The more so, because I helped him do it."

CHAPTER x.x.xI--A REMARKABLE CONFESSION

"You helped Gasper Farrington rob my father!" exclaimed Ralph.

"Yes," answered Gibson unhesitatingly.

Ralph wondered how he could make the admission thus boldly and unblushingly. Gibson, however, acted like a man who had taken a desperate stand with an important end to attain, and for the time being at least had set aside all questions of sentiment and conscience.

"It will be brief," said Gibson, after a pause. "When the Great Northern was on its first boom and everybody gone wild to invest in its bonds, I caught the fever too. My wife had died and I had no children, and converting my land into cash I came up to Stanley Junction with thirty thousand dollars in my pocket. I was always stuck on railroading. I fancied myself a director, riding in the president's car and distributing free pa.s.ses to my friends. In a black moment in my life I ran afoul of Gasper Farrington. He took me under his wing and encouraged my visionary ideas. At that time your father had twenty thousand dollars in Great Northern bonds. They were not all paid for, but nearly so. They were, in fact, held by a bank as trustee in what is known as escrow--that is, subject to his call on payment of the small sum still due on them. Your father had great confidence in Farrington.

So had I. I put my capital in his hands."

Gibson became so wrought up in his recital that he could not sit still.

He got up and paced the floor.

"If we had kept to a straight investment, your father and I," proceeded Gibson, "we would have been all right. But Farrington dazzled us with his stock-jobbing schemes. He actually did let us into a deal where by dabbling in what is called margins we increased our pile considerably.

In about a month, however, he had us where he wanted us. That is, he had our affairs so mixed up and complicated that neither of us knew just where we stood, and didn't dare to make a move without his advice. For some time we had all been dabbling in Midland Central securities. One day, after he had got me to buy a big block of that stock, the market broke. I was a pauper."

"Had Mr. Farrington lost too?" inquired Ralph.

"He pretended that he had, but later I found that he was the very person who was manipulating the stocks on the sly, and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g us. We had a bitter quarrel. Then he said all was fair in war and business. I was desperate, lad, about my money, and when he set up a plan to get hold of your father's bonds, I went into it. I am sorry now. I was crazy those days, I guess, money-mad!"

The man's candor vouched for his sincerity, but Ralph looked sad and disturbed.

"Anyway, he got your father in a tight corner, and I helped him do it.

It was a complicated deal. I can't say that Farrington stole those bonds outright, but in a roundabout way they finally came into his possession. If the transaction was ever ripped up, I don't believe it would stand in law. But I don't know that positively. Your father lost his bonds, and I got nothing out of the transaction. But there is something else that I want to get at. A little later, never doubting Farrington's honesty, your father gave him a mortgage on his homestead.

It was done to protect your mother--that is, feeling himself getting involved, your father wished to be sure that she had at least a shelter over her head. There was no consideration whatever in the deal. It was merely put temporarily in the shape of a mortgage until affairs had cleared somewhat, when it was to be deeded to a third party, and then direct to your mother."

"Then Mr. Farrington never had a right to collect that interest money,"

said Ralph.

"He wasn't ent.i.tled to a cent of it. Farrington then got me into another deal. I had borrowed one thousand dollars from my brother. He got me to take security for it, as he called it. In some way he had got hold of the old Short Line charter here. At that time it was treated as a joke, and considered worthless. I didn't know it. He got my thousand dollars, claimed to lose it in a deal, and I was flat broke."

"And later?" suggested Ralph, recalling in an instant what he had heard from Big Denny about Gibson.

"Well, I got hard pressed. I saw a chance to get even with him. We were in a deal together. I canceled it to get a few hundred dollars, and signed our joint names as a firm. Later I learned that I had a right only to sign my own name. I went to his house. He threatened to have me arrested for forgery the next day, showed me the forged paper, as he called it, and a warrant he had sworn out. We had a fearful row.

I beat him up good and proper, smashed some windows, and, disgusted with life and mankind, fled to this wilderness."

It was a vivid recital, running like some romance. Gibson took breath, and concluded:

"A man can't sit forever eating out his heart in loneliness. I knew that Farrington would not hesitate to send me to jail. I located here.

One day, yonder faithful fellow, Van Sherwin, came along. He was an orphan outcast, I took him in. His company gave a new spur to existence. I got casting up accounts. I rarely ventured to the towns, but I sent him to a relative, who loaned me a few hundred dollars. I investigated the Short Line business, even paid a lawyer to look it up.

I found I had something tangible, and that for a certain date, then two months ahead, provided I did some work each day except Sunday thenceforward on the right of way, I could hold the franchise indefinitely, unimpaired. Since then, Van and I have been at the grading work, as you see."