"Well," said the little man out of the corner of his mouth. "It's our funeral just as much as Clark's. Why didn't we apply the brakes long ago?"

"You know as well as I do."

"I'm d.a.m.ned if I do."

"It's just because we're better business men in Philadelphia than we are when we get to St. Marys," grunted Stoughton reflectively. "We're outside the charmed circle down here, but when we get up there," he waved his hand, while the end of his cigar glowed like a miniature volcano, "we get locoed, the whole bunch of us."

"And yet," said Birch reflectively, "there's nothing the matter."

Wimperley leaned forward. "Go on."

"It's simple enough, we're not using Clark properly."

"Isn't seven millions proper?" boomed Stoughton.

"You don't get me," Birch spoke in a thin dry voice totally devoid of any emphasis. "The proper use of a man like that is the purpose for which nature designed him. He's an originator--but not an executive.

Dividends don't interest him half as much as the foundations of a new mill."

Wimperley shook his head. "That may be all right, but from my point of view he has become dangerous. He surmounts our resolutions, the ones we make when our pulse is normal. I have never seen him fail to carry his point. Take the matter of this railway. I don't mind betting that if we go up there to-morrow to kill that road we'll be committed to it in twenty-four hours."

"I'll take that for a thousand." There was a spot of faint color in Birch's hollow cheeks.

Wimperley laughed. "I'm on. What about lunch and finish this afterwards?"

But Stoughton sat tight. "You'll go too far. Suppose that Clark gets on his ear and tells us to run the thing in our own way, and that he'll get out. As I see it, he holds the works together and represents the works in the mind of every one who knows him."

"Well, what if he does drop out? There's no living man who can't be replaced."

"Except one called Robert Fisher Clark. As a first consequence our stocks drop on the Philadelphia exchange like a wet sponge. You can imagine the rest---you all know enough about the market, and, by the way, does any one happen to remember the various things we have publicly said about that same individual?"

This was food for thought. Wimperley, dismissing the idea of lunch, sat down. The group became universally reflective, and for a little while no one spoke. Stoughton threw away his cigar, rested his chin on his hand and stared at the model of the pulp mill on Wimperley's desk.

Wimperley's eyes wandered to the big map and again he saw Clark's finger sliding over its glazed surface. Riggs twisted his handkerchief with a puzzled look in his bright eyes, and Birch leaned back, stretching his long legs, while his tremulous lids began to flicker and his lips moved inaudibly. To each man there seemed to come the rumble of the mills, the wet grind of the huge stones against the snowy billets of spruce, and behind it all the deep tones of the rapids.

Presently the voicelessness of Birch found speech.

"As I said there's nothing to worry about--yet. Two of us might go up next week. I'll be one, if you like--and put the brakes on--but not so that he'll feel them. If we only get out of the coach and take the driver's seat the thing will be all right. Trouble is we've sat too long inside and wondered where we were. Wimperley is right. And don't forget that Clark has something at stake too."

It was all so even and sane that it acted like oil on troubled waters.

Stoughton jumped up, remarking that now he could eat, while Riggs, remembering that six per cent. on seven millions of issued bonds was four hundred and twenty thousand, stared at Birch and marveled how he could have managed to put it away in the face of such expenditure.

Just as he was reaching for his hat, the door opened and a telegram was brought in. Wimperley took it carelessly. He was too full of relief to be interested in anything else and experienced a gratified glow in that he had spoken what was in his mind and been upheld. Then, glancing at the telegram, his face changed and he felt his temples redden. The message was from Clark, who now asked that serious consideration be given to the building of blast furnaces at St. Marys.

He stood for a moment while the others glanced at him curiously.

"What about that?" he jerked out, and gave the yellow sheet to Birch.

Birch read it aloud slowly, and, after an impressive pause read it again and still more slowly, the pink spots on his cheeks becoming brighter, his hard dry tones still more cold and mechanical. When he looked up Stoughton had turned his back and, with shoulders up, was staring out of the window. Riggs was red and fl.u.s.tered. After a moment the little man found breath.

"He's crazy, that's all."

"Well, Wimperley?" Birch had not moved.

"This is the last straw. It's a case of our getting rid of him before he gets rid of us, or the shareholders do."

Birch turned to the window. "Well, what about it?"

Stoughton hunched his shoulders still higher. "Fire him," he said stolidly, then puffed his cheeks and breathed on the widow pane. In the fog he wrote "Fire him" with his forefinger, taking particular care to make it legible with neatly formed letters. The next moment both fog and words evaporated. It flashed into Stoughton's mind that they had not lasted long. He swung round, "It's the only thing to do, but I don't want the job. You can have it, Birch."

The lean face changed not a whit. "I take my end of it. If I don't, Marsham will."

"Look here, this isn't a one man job." Wimperley's voice had barely regained its steadiness. "This message settles, as I take it, our views of Clark. G.o.d knows we don't question anything but his suitability for his position at the present stage of affairs. He's got to be told the inevitable and we've all got to go up. There's no other way out of it. We'll give him one or two of the smaller companies to run and the public needn't know anything about it. I remember the point you made, Stoughton. It's a good one and we've got to look out for it."

But Stoughton did not move. "I'll be d.a.m.ned," he said softly, still staring at the roof lines of Philadelphia. "Blast furnaces!"

"You will, if you don't come up with us," replied Birch acidly.

"I suppose I will. When do we go?"

"Will a week from to-day suit?"

They all made it suit. After a contemplative moment Riggs asked:

"Will you let him know, Wimperley, and just what do you propose to say?

You'll remember there have been other times when we contemplated putting the brakes on, but we all got galvanized and the thing didn't work."

"I'd merely say that we four are coming up--that's all."

Stoughton grinned a formidable grin in which there was a show of teeth and an outthrust jaw.

"That's enough, he'll know."

They went off together, but rather silently, to lunch. On the way to the street Stoughton a.s.serted several times aloud, and with complete conviction, that he would be d.a.m.ned, while the rest began to experience a carefully concealed regret for the victim of their mission. At the club they sat aimlessly and played with their food, conscious that they were observed and known by all as the insiders in one of Philadelphia's largest investments. Then, too, they learned that that morning the stock of the Consolidated companies had leaped forward in one of those unexpected boosts for which it was noted. Wimperley and the rest of them had never gambled in it, but time and time again it moved as though animated by the spread of secret and definite information. Just as they were about to rise Birch leaned forward and began to arrange pepper pots and salt cellars in a semi-symmetrical design.

"This," he said, "is all right and that, and that. These are out of the question. You get me?"

The others nodded.

"No blast furnaces," he went on almost inaudibly. "No railway--no further capital expenditure--and then we reach the melon of dividend,"

here he touched his untasted cantaloupe.

Now, just at this moment, Wimperley nodded energetically and laughed outright, whereupon a man whose name was Marsham, who sat at an adjoining table, turned--for Wimperley did not often laugh--and saw Birch's long finger resting on the melon, and, since Marsham was, without the knowledge of the others, one of the largest operators, in Consolidated stock, that stock took a further jump just half an hour later, and all through Pennsylvania there were farmers, mechanics, country doctors and storekeepers who read the news and rejoiced exceedingly thereat.

The others went their way, and Wimperley walked back to his office immersed in profound contemplation. Feelings of personal injury were mixed with those of apprehension. How would the affair proceed after Clark had taken with him his unrivaled and intimate knowledge of the works; for, and in spite of all the dictates of prudence, it seemed impossible to think of the vast enterprise at St. Marys without its central pivot.

X.--CUPIDITY VS. LOYALTY

And all this time the chief constable of St. Marys was speculating in property with steadily increasing success. So crafty was he that few people in the town knew it. When the fourth year of Clark's regime was completed, Manson had made profits that astonished him. His purchases covered both farm and town lands, and amongst the latter was a mortgage on the vine clad cottage of Fisette. But not a man in his circle would have guessed that what prompted the acquisition of the Fisette mortgage was Manson's remembrance of a friendly joke about a Unitarian wolf; a joke which still lived and set up a minute but unceasing irritation.

Now, at any time, Manson might be in a position to teach the bishop a lesson.