The Short Line War | Page 8

warm here?" he said, as Harvey struck a match.
"Something cool to drink would go pretty well. If you'll excuse me for
a moment more I'll go down and see about getting it," and without
waiting for a reply, McNally put on his silk hat and stepped out into the
corridor.
"He certainly seems friendly," thought Harvey, as the footfalls
diminished along the floor, and then he puzzled over what he should
say when McNally came back. At last he smiled. "That's it," he said to

himself, "I'll try to rent him that vacant suite in our office building."
When West had made up his mind that the party of four were not to
meet in Wing's office, he had decided to see if they were in McNally's.
He could not ask for Wing, of course, so he asked for McNally and
trusted to the spur of the moment for a pretext for his call. Now that
McNally's absence had enabled him to think of one he took a long
breath of satisfaction. He had accomplished what he had set out to
accomplish, and contrary to Jim Weeks's expressed expectation. There
was no doubt that it was a combination of the C. & S.C. and
Thompson's gang that was booming the M. & T. Moreover there was
no doubt as to their next move. "But it won't work," he thought. "Jim
owns about half of Tillman City, and anyway they'll never sell when
our stock is jumping up the way it is."
And having settled this important matter he switched his train of
thought off on another track. It reached Truesdale in a very short time,
but it had nothing to do with M. & T., or with Mr. McNally. He took
the note out of his pocket and read it through twice, and then smoked
over it comfortably for some time before he began vaguely to wonder
why Mr. McNally didn't come back. Five minutes later he glanced at
his cigar ash. It was an inch and a half long. "That means twenty
minutes," he said thoughtfully, and then it dawned on him that things
had happened which were not down on the schedule.
He walked quickly to the telephone, and a moment later Pease was
talking to him.
"No," said the stenographer; "Mr. Weeks went out to lunch about an
hour ago. He said he wouldn't be back to the office this afternoon."
There had been no words wasted in the two minutes' conversation
between Porter and McNally after Harvey's abrupt entrance, and as a
result of it, while the young secretary waited and thought over the good
stroke of work he had done for Jim Weeks and of another good stroke
he might some day do for himself, Mr. Frederick McNally took the
two-thirty express for Manchester and Tillman City.

CHAPTER III
POLITICS AND OTHER THINGS
Harvey West was a young man. Perhaps had he been older, had his
wisdom been salted with experience, he would not have put two and
two together without realizing that the sum was four; but then, it is the
difference between twenty-six and fifty that makes railroads a
possibility. He walked slowly to the elevator and descended to the
street. At the corner he paused and looked about, turning over in his
mind the singular disappearance of Mr. McNally. "He can't do anything
with Tillman's stock," thought Harvey. "They're solid for us." But
Harvey in his brief business life had not fathomed the devious ways of
the chronic capitalist. He knew that commercial honor was
honeycombed with corrupt financiering, but to him the corrupt side was
more or less vague, and never having soiled his fingers he failed to
realize the nearness of the mud. Harvey had yet to learn that in dealing
with a municipality or with a legislature, the law of success has but two
prime factors, money and speed.
He walked slowly over Madison Street and turned into State. Weeks
was not in the office, and anyway he wished to clear his mind, if
possible, before he talked with him; meanwhile sauntering up the east
side of State Street with an eye for the shopping throng. People
interested Harvey. He was fond of noting types, and of watching the
sandwich-men, beggars, and shoe-string venders. Often at noon he
would walk from Randolph Street to Harrison, observing the shifting
character of Chicago's great thoroughfare. To Harvey it seemed like a
river, starting clear but gradually roiled by the smaller streams that
poured in, each a little muddier than the one next north, until it was
clogged and stagnant with the scum of the city. But to-day he was
going north. The sidewalk was crowded with eager girls and jaded
women, keen on the scent of bargains. These amused Harvey, and he