Part 22

"Is there any dividend in sight?" demanded Stoughton bluntly.

Followed a little silence and the long thin fingers of Birch began an intermittent tap on the polished table. Presently Wimperley glanced up and smiled dryly. He had not known that Birch understood the Morse code. "Birch has told you," he said.

Stoughton and the rest looked puzzled.

"We can't pay a dividend if we let Clark build this railway."

"Then why build it?"

"Clark claims it is necessary to secure a dependable supply of spruce for the pulp mills, and hard wood for the veneer works. He reckons it will cost two million, and says the Government will help--but perhaps they won't." He broke off, rather red in the face.

"Do any of you fellows remember Marsham?" put in Birch quietly.

Stoughton looked up. "Only too well, what about him?"

"Well, you know he's been gunning for me for years since that Alabama scrap in which he got knocked out. Now he's gunning for all of us."

"Why?" demanded Wimperley.

"Because I have the present privilege of being associated with you. I had it privately from perfectly reliable sources. Marsham's looking for a hole in the Consolidated, and if he finds one he's going to get busy and you know what that means. So far we're all right because we've got the Dutch farmer behind us and his money is coming in, in a good steady trickle. It's our job to keep it trickling till we get out of the woods into which our prophet has led us."

Wimperley nodded gravely. "That sounds good to me. But I've got something else in my mind."

"Well," snapped Birch, "spit it out."

"I've got to go back a bit to a day you'll all remember, except you, Birch."

"The day of hypnosis?" suggested Stoughton.

"I guess it was, if you like to put it that way. We were satisfied with what Clark told us and what we afterwards saw for ourselves, and we found him three millions, then another and another and so on. Now, as it stands and as it goes, I don't see any end to this thing. It's like throwing money into the rapids at St. Marys--a fresh sweep of water comes and carries it away. You see it glint for a moment and there's apparently no bottom to the river. The trouble with Clark is that he is not equipped with brakes. He can't stop. He's always the roof on one station and, at the same time, contracting for another one still further on. We've got to do the braking, that's all." He turned to Riggs, "How about it?"

"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 damned 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?"