The Trainmasters Page 29

  “Ten men won’t do that either,” Collins said reasonably. “Or twenty-five, or fifty. What we do have is brains. And we know who’s in charge here. And that’s what they don’t have. So we wait.”

  And then there was a shout from outside.

  Walking toward them from the direction of the stables, where he must have made his headquarters, came Egan O’Rahilly, alone, carrying a white flag.

  “Do you think he is giving up?” John asked, smiling to himself.

  “Not goddamn likely,” Collins said.

  When Egan was about five yards from the porch he stopped and waited.

  Collins went to the door but kept out of sight and undercover. “What do you want?” he called out, despising Egan more than ever.

  “It’s time to talk.”

  “What do you want to talk about?” Collins asked. “You want to talk about when you’re going to get out of this place?”

  Egan laughed.

  “That’s the only thing on my mind to talk about,” Collins went on.

  “Aren’t you frightened some?” Egan asked. “Just a tiny bit? Seeing that you are surrounded by armed men that hate you enough to want you dead?”

  “I don’t know about that,” Collins said.

  “About whether you are surrounded? Or about whether they want you dead?”

  Collins didn’t answer that.

  “What’s goin’ on up there?” Henneberry hollered out from the rear.

  “Keep your shirt on,” Collins yelled back. “And stay where you are and do what I asked you to do.”

  “I’ve got an offer to make to you,” Egan called. “But you’ll have to come out here and talk.”

  “I should go out and talk to O’Rahilly,” John said to Collins when his attention returned to Egan out in front.

  “You?”

  “I represent the railroad. I think I should go out and see what he has to say.”

  Collins thought about that for a moment. “All right,” he said at last. He didn’t want to do it himself.

  John then buttoned the top of his shirt and straightened his tie. Next he retrieved his hat, which he had laid aside when he and the others had come into the building. He wiped the sweat from his face and forehead with his handkerchief. Then he marched out of the building onto the porch. And stopped.

  “I’m going to talk with you, O’Rahilly,” he said.

  “Why not, you English fruit?” Egan said. “Come on down. See if the sun wilts you.”

  The sun was blazing hot. But John tried to look cool and unruffled as he proceeded into the open space where Egan waited.

  “All right then, O’Rahilly,” he said in a loud, clear, imperious voice that everyone could hear, “what’s on your mind?” Then, under his breath, “You’ve done a grand job, Egan. I’m astonished.”

  “All right, listen to our offer.” And under his breath he added, “Thanks, Mr. Carlysle. It was scary, but satisfying. Nobody’s dead. Nobody’s hurt. And nothing’s damaged. I’d have never thought anything like this could happen… considering. And… you’ve got a lot of backbone yourself, Mr. English Carlysle.” There was just the hint of a warm smile on his face, though not enough of a smile for anyone but John to see.

  “We’re not out of this yet,” John said, with a slight nod. “But I’m starting to get hopeful.”

  “What about Collins?” Egan asked.

  “He’s near breaking, I think.”

  “So you’ll tell him the offer?”

  “Yes. And I think he will reject it. But I think the fire will do the job.”

  “He doesn’t want to burn.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “I’ll do my best to see that you don’t burn,” Egan said with a grin.

  “Thanks.”

  “But you must be burning already, dressed in that armor.”

  “I had to dress the part, you know that.”

  And Egan gave him another smile. “All right, Carlysle,” he said in a loud voice. “Go tell your master what we want. Like a good hound. Bring him his bone.”

  John retraced his steps to the building.

  Once inside, he tore his hat and tie off and loosened his shirt buttons. “Damned hot out there,” he said to Collins, almost in apology for breaking the uniform code.

  “You’re mad to be in that getup in the first place,” Collins said. Then he added quickly, “So what did he have to say?”

  “They want all of us out of here. They promised us all our lives. They said they’d even give you a horse.”

  “That’s nothin’ but what he’s been saying all along… with a couple of sweeteners.” Collins’s words were negative, but his face showed he was looking at the idea now with favor.

  “Do you have a better idea?”

  “Let’s wait a little longer.”

  “Why? That man O’Rahilly means business.”

  “Wait. I’ve told you more than once before that I know these men pretty damn good. They’ll lose interest in us… and start thinkin’ about what happens next if they do some-thin’ to us.”

  “What happens next?”

  “The army gets after them and strings up the whole lot of ‘em.”

  “But what about us—if they kill us?” John said, with a hint of a whine.

  “Don’t you worry. I know what I’m doing.”

  “I have to tell him something. O’Rahilly’s waiting out there for an answer.”

  “Let him cook.”

  But Egan did not wait and cook. He returned to the stable. And a few minutes later, several men came out of it. They were pushing a large wagon piled high with hay.

  Another man came out bearing a burning torch. The wagon moved toward the administration building.

  “What now?” John asked Collins anxiously. He was only acting a little.

  Collins gave him a look. There was very little of his usual confidence remaining in that look. “We could shoot the man with the torch,” Collins said, uncertainly.

  “And how long would that keep them from doing what they have in mind?”

  “So what do you have in mind?”

  “Tom Collins,” John said, “1 think it’s time to give in.”

  “Henneberry,” Collins called. “Tom Henneberry!”

  There was no answer.

  “Where the hell are you, Henneberry? Jesus!”

  “He’s left.”

  “There are some others,” Collins said. He called out to them, ordering everyone else in the building to assemble.

  He got no answers. They’d all left. Slipped away. Deserted.

  The wagon came closer.

  “There’s only us now,” John said.

  “All right then,” Collins said, sweating—and not from the heat. “What should I do?”

  “Get out of here and don’t come back. They say they’ll let you off with your life. I believe them.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ll go to Philadelphia. I’ll be all right. Edgar Thomson will think of something for me.”

  Collins stared out of the window at the approaching wagon. The man with the torch was beginning to set the hay on fire.

  “You’re alive, man,” John went on. “But I wouldn’t presume on that for long. If O’Rahilly’s any indication of the mood of all of them, they want your scalp… and your balls … and your heart. I’d get out fast.”

  “You really think so?” Collins was truly shaken.

  “Run!” John said the word softly but with passionate intensity.

  “Yes,” Collins said. “I’ll do that.”

  When John Carlysle arrived in Philadelphia earlyon Monday morning, he found Edgar Thomson’s offices booming, buzzing hive of activity. Men were rushing frantically about, shouting, moving papers from one desk to another.

  All the excitement reminded John of the first time he had met Thomson in his railroad car. And John wondered if he was fated to come in upon his superior at moments of crisis.

  When John entered the chief engineer�
��s private office, Thomson seemed no less excited than the rest of his staff, though he had not lost his legendary control and self-possession. Unlike everyone else, he was not agitated but rather intensely focused, unassailably concentrated, possessed of a passionate singularity of purpose.

  When Carlysle was led into the room, Thomson spoke to him without looking up from a set of papers he was scanning and initialing. “John, I received the telegram early today saying you were coming. And it was good news to me when it arrived. I’m glad to have you in Philadelphia. I’ll be most interested to hear why you’ve come.”

  “It’s quite a story,” John said.

  “Can’t wait to hear it. But I have to. Can you bear with me a bit. Be patient. You’ll see why soon enough.”

  So John sat and waited, uneasily at first but with growing calmness: It was clear to him that Thomson was genuinely glad to have John at his side even if the chief engineer never said that in so many words.

  Throughout the morning John had learned bits and pieces of news more astonishing than his own message. William Patterson had fled the country. He had taken passage the previous night on a ship bound for Naples and had left the Pennsylvania Railroad in financial shambles.

  Apparently Patterson had taken for his own use hundreds of thousands of dollars of railroad money. He had also issued hundreds of shares of fraudulent Pennsylvania stock, which he had gone on to use as collateral for huge personal loans. And what was worse, the two men who held these bad shares were Cornelius Vanderbilt and Daniel Drew.

  Vanderbilt was now on the warpath. He was scheduled to appear in Philadelphia on the following afternoon, and he was sure to demand that the railroad make good on the bad shares.

  This the railroad was unable to do.

  Drew had not been heard from yet. But Thomson had no doubt that he would prove to be every bit as difficult as Vanderbilt promised to be.

  As John listened and watched and waited for Thomson to speak with him, he paid close attention to Thomson himself, liking more and more what he saw. Not only did he clearly welcome John’s presence, but all evidence of the malaise that had worried Kitty was now gone. His old confidence was very much in evidence.

  Thomson, in fact, was charged with a fierce energy which at the same time was quiet and intensely directed. John knew the man was a dominant force, but he had never before realized how strong Thomson could be. The only man John knew who could equal him in that respect was Sir Charles Elliot.

  At long last, Thomson stood up and walked over to his office door. “Sam,” he called out to his assistant, “I’m going to shut this for half an hour. During that time I’m not to be disturbed. No one. Nothing. Clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” a voice from outside said.

  Then Thomson shut the door.

  “Now for you,” he said, turning to John. “Tell me your good news.” His eyes had a sardonic gleam that John had not seen during their previous meetings. But it was not a malicious look, John could tell. It was the look one man of rich experience gave to another, acknowledging what Vergil long ago called “the tears of things”… and his refusal to drown in them.

  “And tell me,” he went on, “what you think of all the news you’ve been listening to this morning.” He moved to sit down in his desk chair. “I never thought,” he said with a sigh as he sank into his seat, “that running a railroad could be so stimulating.”

  “I’m not sure what I think about all that,” John said. “Except that it is yet another astonishing addition to an uncommonly large number of amazing accidents and mishaps.”

  Thomson gave a nod of understanding. He had obviously had similar thoughts himself. “So tell me about the labor troubles at Gallitzin,” he said. “Then we should discuss the cause of our accidents and mishaps.”

  “Before I do that,” John said, “I’d like you to satisfy a bit of curiosity of mine.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “I assume now that you’ll become president of the Pennsylvania.”

  “Yes, that’s true,” Thomson said simply, without making any kind of show of modesty or humility. “There’ll be an extraordinary meeting of the board tomorrow morning. They’ll vote me the job… though God knows if it will mean a damn thing by the end of the year.” He said this darkly, sadly.

  “So you’re not to be blamed in any way for what has happened?” At the same time, John asked himself, Why the end of the year? Why is he being so ominous?

  “Not at all. On the contrary, I’ll be vindicated, though, again, it may not matter a damn.” The last words fell like a nail into a coffin.

  “Why?” John asked, with growing alarm. “Are you worried about the money that’s lost?”

  “Of course,” Thomson said. “I don’t know where we’ll find the money to continue building. But I’m also worried about some recent movements of Pennsylvania stock. I can’t explain what’s causing them.”

  “Can you tell me about it?”

  “Over the past couple of months there has been considerable activity in Pennsylvania stocks. Unusual activity. Tens of thousands of our shares have changed hands. First the stock rose—presumably on account of the good news about the refinancing that Will Patterson put together. But then the rumors started floating around, rumors of our labor troubles and of the various ‘accidents’ that have been hitting us. And now it turns out that someone has been selling our stock short,” Thomson said. “And doing that in huge volumes.”

  “I don’t understand,” John said. “What do you mean by selling short?”

  “It’s a kind of financial manipulation,” Thomson explained. “An investor can ‘borrow’ stock from its owner and then sell it, without the owner knowing that his stock has been borrowed.”

  John looked even more confused than ever. “The owner doesn’t know about this?”

  “Nothing.”

  “But—”

  “Later, on some due date agreed upon with the broker, the borrower agrees to purchase it from the lender.”

  “Even though the lender doesn’t know that the stock is borrowed?”

  “That’s right. The borrower expects when he borrows the stock in the first place that what he will have to pay on the due date will be less than he receives when he first sells the borrowed stock.”

  “And so he pockets the difference?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And someone,” John said, “is now selling Pennsylvania stock short?”

  “Yes, in vast amounts.” He paused to let that sink in. “But slowly, in order to avoid depressing the market prematurely”

  “And all this is legal?”

  “Every bit of it.”

  “I’m beginning to sense still another accidental misfortune,” John said wryly.

  “Exactly,” Thomson said, with the sardonic gleam again in his eyes. “Another accident.”

  “And these short sales all come due when?”

  “They start coming due sometime next month, as far as I can make out. Again, they are spread out beyond that. But if we don’t do something about the problem within the month —before word spreads about the massive short sales—then the bottom could easily drop out of Pennsylvania stock. And that could mean bankruptcy.”

  “That makes me very happy to be the owner of a thousand shares,” John said.

  “And I own twenty thousand,” Thomson said, grim-eyed. “Which makes me soar with ecstasy.” He hesitated a moment. Then changed the subject. “Now tell me about Gallitzin.”

  Except for an occasional question to clarify a fact or to understand properly the sequence of events, Thomson listened in rapt silence as John told him the story of the weekend at Gallitzin. But when John reached the moment when he and Collins, now deserted by all Collins’s guards, walked past the burning hay wagon and gave themselves into the hands of Egan O’Rahilly, Thomson raised his hands high above his head and cried out, “Whoa! Whoa! Stop right there! I need to catch my breath. I need to set your story straight.”

  John smil
ed and nodded. “Fine,” he said. “What more can I tell you?”

  “You can tell me much, much more.” But then his face broke out into a huge, admiring grin. “In a moment. Before that I want to look at you.”

  “Look at me? Why?”

  The grin was still on his face. “In order to admire you! Because it’s the only way I can grasp what you did the other day. Do you realize what you have accomplished?”

  “I put Tom Collins on the run…”

  “That’s right,” Thomson said. “And for that, you are to be congratulated. But there was more to what you did than that. You averted what could have been a very serious, very violent confrontation. And you very likely saved many lives and much property. Have you thought about that?”

  John made a slight nod. “Yes, actually, I have,” he said quietly.

  “I never realized that I’d hired a man of such daring and imagination,” Thomson said.

  “Thank you,” John said. It was all he could think of as a reply.

  “Now you can tell me why I shouldn’t put you in front of a firing squad.” Thomson was laughing, but there was fierceness in his face as well. “If you were in the army and did what you did, they’d have probably court-martialed you for treason.” And then he caught John’s eyes and acknowledged the doubt he saw in them. “Don’t mistake me. From what you’ve told me, you’ve done the absolutely correct thing. Not only were you right, it looks like your plan might actually bear fruit. But I need some explanations. And I suspect the board tomorrow might well ask for some as well. We don’t just casually drive off by force one of our largest labor contractors.”

  John held Thomson’s eyes. “I didn’t do any of this casually,” he said by way of explanation, not apology. “Nor was 1 unaware of the magnitude of the acts I decided to undertake. Nor was I any less aware that I was doing these without any kind of official sanction by the railroad or by you. You won’t be held accountable for what I’ve done.”

  “That’s once again not what I meant,” Thomson said. “As I said, you were superlatively bold, daring, and imaginative. And I believe every one of your recent actions was brilliantly conceived and executed. I’m happy that we are associated. And I hope we will continue to be. But I am going to be asked questions, and I want to answer them in a way that does credit to both of us. I also—” he paused for a long breath, “am beginning to see more and more clearly the method that is being used to ensure that the short sales bear fruit.”