Part 64

Bowers thrust out his lips. He had seen men come in from the woods with their pockets full of money, and that was bad enough, but without money--!

"I've had a talk with Manson who seems good for it, and the works will be under heavy guard. That's all we can do in the meantime. I'm going to Philadelphia as soon as possible."

"But not at once?"

Clark smiled. "No, not at once."

XXII.--THE MASTER MIND AT WORK

Bowers went thoughtfully home and; next morning, flung himself into his work with renewed courage. He had need of it--they all had need of it. There were now thousands who waited for their pay, and daily these ranks were swelled by others who drifted in from the woods. Hundreds of merchants began to refuse credit, though Filmer valiantly used all his resources. St. Marys was, in truth, stupefied, and when the first shock began to smooth itself out, the reality of the thing became grimly apparent, and then arose the first rumor of trouble in Ironville, that straggling settlement of shacks where dwelt the bone and muscle of the works.

To the Swede and Polander there was no suggestion of achievement in the vast buildings in which they labored. It was only the place where they earned their living. They worked amongst giant mechanisms beside which they were puny, but theirs was a life of force and strength which took from them the fear of anything that was merely human. Thus surprise changed to resentment, and resentment began to resolve itself into a slow and consuming anger. The works were dead, but in the main office the accounting staff was bending desperately over statements imperatively demanded by Philadelphia. The black browed Hungarians saw the lights at night, and felt that they were being played with by those more powerful than themselves. If a furnace man was discharged, why keep on these scribblers?

Outside St. Marys the news ran apace. Toronto papers dwelt on it, and the Board of Trade read it with regret mingled with thankfulness that Clark had embarked on no financial campaigns in their own city. Thorpe went carefully over the Philadelphia acceptances in his vault, and wondered what they were worth. To St. Marys set out a stream of representatives of various creditor companies, that filled the local hotels and journeyed out to the works and came back unsatisfied. Philadelphia dispatches were devoured, and the word "reorganization" was one to charm with. One by one, the Company's steamers slid up to the long docks, made fast and drew their fires, till it seemed that the works, like a great octopus, was withdrawing every arm and filament it ever had radiated, and was coiling them endlessly at its cold and clammy side. Yet, for all of this, it did not seem possible that the whole structure was tumbling, the structure on which so many years of labor--so much genius and enthusiasm--so many millions--had been lavished, until one afternoon a drunken Swede threw a stone into a butcher's window in Ironville and, putting forth a horny hand, seized a side of bacon and set forth, reeling, down the street. Two hours later the startled chief accountant, from a window in his office, saw a swarm of a thousand men surge through the big gates of the works and, trampling the guard, flow irregularly forward.

The mob spilt on, a river of big strong men, unaware of its own strength. They were not bent on willful destruction, but the whole mass was animated by an inchoate desire to find out something for itself. At the door of the rail mill stood the superintendent and his firemen, with drawn revolvers. The rioters liked these men because they worked with and understood them. They were not associated with the present trouble. So on to the administration building, where the office staff looked out, petrified with fear. Here, the mob decided, was another breed, so there commenced a hammering on the big oaken door and stones showered through the windows.

At this, Hobbs, stricken with mortal terror, and oblivious of the girls who gathered around him, lost his head. There was no escape downstairs, but opposite his desk was a grated iron window that led on to an adjoining roof. Noting it desperately, he heaved up his soft body and made a plunge for safety. But such was his bulk that, though head, arms and shoulders went through, he stuck there, anchored in an iron grip.

"Help!" he called chokingly, "Help!"

The mob looked up and stared, when from the rear ranks came a bull-like roar of laughter. Then another burst out and another, till from the ground spouted a fountain of jeers, hoots and ridicule that reached the fat man as he hung suspended, with purple face and gesticulating arms.

Clark, in his office, waiting coolly for what might come, caught the change in the note of riot and, stepping into the next room, saw the legs of his comptroller brandished in the air. The rest of him was invisible, and still in the square outside rocked the booming shouts of Slavic and Scandinavian mirth. A moment later Hobbs was dragged back, with torn clothing, swollen neck and scratched body. Clark glanced at him contemptuously and went out. Then the doors opened, and he was on the front steps.

The mob saw him and held its breath. Few of them had ever been so near him before. He stood with a quiet smile on his face and a light in his keen eyes, and, in the momentary hush, began to speak. There was no fear in voice or attitude. The wind, blowing from the rapids, brought the echo of their clamor to the upper windows so that the accounting staff heard not a word, but the mob heard, and presently the big Pole laughed, just as he had laughed at Hobbs' distorted face suspended above him. It was contagious, and Clark, playing upon the mood of the moment, drove home his point.

The money was coming, and he himself would stay there till it came. In the meantime, the money would be slower to arrive if there was trouble, and that was all he had to say.

There followed a little hesitation, then an indefinite movement, and the crowd began to shuffle toward the shattered gates. As it dwindled Clark glanced over his shoulder and saw a man within twenty feet, both hands thrust eloquently into his bulging coat pockets.

"Thanks very much, Belding, I'm glad it wasn't necessary," he said crisply, and vanished inside the big doors.

The engineer knew better than to follow, but was bitterly disappointed. He had hoped for some word of comfort, but to not a single employee had Clark said anything of explanation. It was not his habit, and he looked to the intelligence of each man to carry him through. And this was typical of his invariable attitude toward those with whom he came in contact. He gauged them by the degree to which they contributed to the work on hand, and just now the only work on hand was that which none but himself could carry out. In personalities Clark was not interested, but identified them only by some very definite achievement he was able to hang round their necks like a label.

Belding saw to it that his own offices were guarded and walked to the head of the rapids. He felt numbed. If Clark had conceived the works, he himself had built them, and, as they grew under his hand, he felt that something of his own existence went forth with every stroke of a drill, and that a fragment of his brain lay in every course of masonry. Like all true engineers, he delighted in the physical expression of his ability, and here had been such an opportunity as few engineers ever realized. He felt not so much dejected as dumbfounded that so much skill and labor could be brought to a full stop just as it reached its permanent stride. In his eyes the figure of Clark had long achieved titanic proportions. Innumerable things had been demonstrated to be possible, and to be chief engineer of such an enterprise had been, thought Belding, all that any man could ask. It was true that in the fatigue of work he had often imagined that Clark was going too fast, but always the thing had been done. Now it seemed the ironical jest of the gods that a shade too much carbon in a steel rail should wreck the whole endeavor.

And there was Elsie. He had never been able to give her up. Against the glamour of his chief's personality he had nothing to put forward except a whole souled worship, and Elsie, it appeared, preferred the invitation of the older man's romantic career. Subconsciously, Belding decided that the thing was wrong and against nature, for he was marked by a certain simple belief in the general fairness of life. He clung to the doctrine of compensation, and held himself trustingly open to whatever good influences might reach him. Elsie was the highest influence of all. In Clark he had found a stimulus that nerved his brain to great accomplishments. But Elsie and Clark had together wounded his very spirit.

Clark, in the quiet of his private office, was thinking not of Belding or Elsie, but of the mob that had trailed so uncertainly out of the big gates. He had played for time and he had won--but that was all. Sooner or later, driven by the impossibility of living without pay, the mob would return, and in a less placable mood. He turned to the telephone. "I want Mr. Filmer." In a moment he was speaking to the mayor.

"What happened up here to-day is but a taste of what's coming. You'd better get out the militia, if Manson can't handle it. Bowers tells me I can do very little from a point of law, and we look to you for protection."

"The militia won't help you much." Filmer's voice was a little shaky. His son was in the militia, but he himself had never taken that body very seriously. It was a matter of uniform, a band and a field day or two in the year--that was all.

"Well, Bowers tells me that if we kill any one in protecting the place we'll have a nasty time of it, so it's up to you. If the local militia are no good, get some up from Toronto. I warn you they'll be needed. Ask Belding if you like, he saw it all."

He leaned back and began a cold blooded survey of the situation. He was not in any way desperate, but he turned involuntarily to the resources of his own brain for some solution. It was certain that no immediate help could be expected from Philadelphia. He was left quite officially and deliberately to stem the tide as best he could, and, in spite of the gravity of the moment, smiled at the thought that his directors leaned on him in their extremity. They did not know what to do, therefore he must know. Then suddenly his mind reverted to Semple, and he spent the next few moments in profound thought. "Get hold of Mr. Semple," he said to his secretary, "and bring him here."

In half an hour Semple appeared, flustered and a little pale. A visit to the works just now filled him with apprehension. It seemed like smoking in a magazine.

"What's the matter?" said Clark, smiling at his agitation.

Semple drew a long breath and, noting the thickness of the office walls, felt a little safer.