Part 61

R.F.C.

There fell a moment's silence, instantly recognized by all four as the precursor of grave events. Birch had spoken the thought that lurked in all their minds. To continue running meant another payroll to be met.

It now appeared suicidal to have stretched their resources to the limit of their credit, but not one of them had remotely dreamed that a few thousand tons of steel rails were to drag the whole structure to toppling destruction. Birch, as usual, first pulled himself together.

"It's put up or shut up, and we've got to tell Clark right now."

Little Riggs sighed despondently. This meeting would soon be over and the decision made, after which he would have to face a totally unexpected set of conditions and a circle of friends and investors who would regard him with close and uncomfortable interest.

"Well, I suppose it's shut up!" he hazarded unsteadily.

Birch looked inquiringly at the other two, who nodded without speaking, then began to write. The rest did not even glance at each other, but found absorption in walls and windows and the big map of poignant memory, while the long, waxen fingers moved inexorably on.

"What about this?"

"'Under existing conditions and the impossibility of making immediate financial arrangements for current needs directors decide best to close down all work of every kind at once, giving notice that this will be only temporary. You will report here as soon as in your judgment you can wisely come down.' Is that all right?"

Stoughton bit at his thumbnail and nodded. "I suppose so--and there'll be hell to pay in St. Marys, eh, Wimperley? Our friend the chief constable will be working over time. Remember the beggar? The damn fool was right too."

"Yes, it's all right," said Wimperley, "and now I suppose there'll be writs and injunctions enough to fill the tailrace. We'd better get out and arrange some support for the market. Birch, you compound a comforting statement for the papers. We adjourn till tomorrow at nine-thirty."

They did adjourn, but lingered for an hour digging into the past seven years. It was a talk such as one might expect under the circumstances. Charged with an apprehension but thinly veiled by manner and speech, events took on for them no perspective. They were too close at hand. All this was so intimately their own and Clark's responsibility that every other consideration became instantly submerged, and it was a matter of living for the day, if not for the hour. Had any one at this time told Wimperley or Stoughton that for a pace or two they had merely fallen out of step in the march of progress, and that however depressing might be the present aspect of affairs it did not really affect the preordained outcome, they would have flouted the thought. It is not given to many men to place themselves correctly in the general scheme of the world, and to fairly estimate their own contribution. Thus it was that Wimperley and his associates read on the screen of the present only the word "failure," and were conscious chiefly of a certain self contempt for the arduous part they had played. At the last moment success had been snatched from their grasp.

Stoughton walked slowly home. He was thinking of Manson, the pessimist, who had been right. And such is the interlinking chain of life. Manson, at this moment, was sitting in his office, while his mind harked aimlessly back to the first time he had met the men from Philadelphia. He stared at a telegram that trembled between his thick fingers. His broad face was gray and ghastly. He had been here motionless for some time, when a gentle knock sounded at the door and his wife came timidly in. One glance at his face, and her arms were round his neck.

"What is it, Peter?" she quavered.

He did not look up but held the message so that she might read it.

Sold you out to-day on stop loss order at thirty-two margin being exhausted. Farthing.

She read it wonderingly. "What does it mean; who is Farthing?"

"My Toronto broker--or at least he was," said Manson heavily.

"But I don't understand, dear."

"Ho, I didn't suppose you would; it means I lose my hundred thousand, that's all."

"Had you a hundred thousand?" she whispered.

"Very, very nearly, and now I haven't anything,--that is, I didn't make a cent."

She drew a long breath. "Peter, tell me just how we stand."

"Exactly where we did the day a man named Clark came to St. Marys," he said dully, "with not a cent more."

There followed a little silence, and the tears began to roll down her cheeks. He put his arm round her, and perceived, with astonishment, that they were tears of happiness.

"Peter dear," she said very softly, "you don't know how glad I am that it's all over."

"You mean the hundred thousand!" He stared at her blankly.

"Yes, just that. I know you won't understand, but things have never been the same for me since you began to try and make it. You were different--everything was different."