ii
When the reporters were gone a stillness seemed to rise about us like an enveloping atmosphere. Receding events left phantom echoes in our ears. Valentine, having gazed for some time fixedly at a non-existent object, looked slowly about him, saying:
“The corpse is gone.”
Then he went and stood in one of the west windows. I stood at the other. The rain had congealed. Snow was falling in that ominous, isolating way which produces in blond people a sense of friendly huddling, instinctive memory perhaps of a north time when contact meant warmth and security. It blotted out everything of the view beyond Trinity church and graveyard. There was a surrounding impression of vertical gray planes in the windows of which lights were beginning to appear, for it was suddenly dark. The Trinity chimes proclaimed in this vortex the hour of noon.
“What day of the month is it?” he asked, clearing his voice after speaking.
“The eighteenth.”
“Twenty years, lacking two days, I have been president of the Great Midwestern,” he said. “In that time—” He stopped.... Trinity chimes struck the quarter past. “How it snows,” he said, turning from the window. “Well, you see what the railroad business is like. Shall I ask a place for you on one of the New York papers? I promised to do that, you remember, if anything should happen.”
“If you don’t mind,” I said, “I’ll stay on here to clear things up a bit.”
“I expected you to say that,” he said. “Still, don’t be sentimental about it. Nobody can tell now what will happen. We shall be in the hands of the court. Well, as you like. I have an appointment to keep with counsel. I may not be back today.”
He departed abruptly.
It occurred to me to go about the offices to see what effect the news was having. That would be something to do. Harbinger, leaning over his desk on his elbows, his head clutched in his two hands, was looking at three models of his stamping device.
“How do they take it?”
“Take what?” he asked, not looking up.
“The news.”
“Oh, that! I don’t know. Go ask them yourself.”
John Harrier was sitting precisely as I saw him that first time, perfectly still, staring at an empty desk.
“Well, it appears we are busted,” I said.
“We’ve been busted for about nine months,” he answered, without moving his head. “But now two and two make four again. Thank God, I say. I couldn’t make her look solvent any longer. Arithmetic wouldn’t stand it, and it stands a lot.”
In the large back office the clerks were gathered in small groups discussing it. Work was suspended.
“Hey!” shouted Handbow. “We’re going to celebrate to-night. A little dinner, with, at the Café Boulevard. Will you come?”
The reckless spirit of calamity was catching. I felt it. Even the shabby old furniture took on an irresponsible, vagabond appearance. Solvency, like a scolding, ailing, virtuous wife, was dead and buried. Nobody could help it. Now anything might happen. The moment was full of excitement. There was no boy in the reception room. I sat down at my desk, got up, took a turn about the president’s office, and was thinking I should lock up the place and go out to lunch when I happened to notice that the Board Room door was ajar. In the act of closing it I was startled by the sight of a solitary figure at the head of the long directors’ table. Though his back was to me I recognized him at once. It was Galt. He had slid far down in the chair and was sitting on the end of his spine, legs crossed, hands in his pockets. He might have been asleep. While I hesitated he suddenly got to his feet and began to walk to and fro in a state of excitement. The character of his thoughts appeared in his gestures. His phantasy was that of imposing his will upon a group of men, not easily, but in a very ruthless way.
“Are you running the Great Midwestern?” I asked, pushing the door open.
Starting, he looked at me vaguely, as one coming out of a dream, and said:
“Yes.”
He asked if I had been present at the meeting and was then anxious to know all that had taken place, even the most trivial detail.
“And now,” I said, when I was unable to remember anything more, “please tell me what will happen to the Great Midwestern?”
“Nothing,” he said. “The court will appoint old rhinoceros receiver, and—”
“Mr. Valentine, you mean?”
“That’s customary in friendly proceedings,” he said. “Anyhow, it will be so in this case. The court takes charge of the property as trustee with arbitrary powers. It can’t run the railroad. It must get somebody to do that. So it looks around a bit and decides that the president is the very man. He is hired for the job. The next day he comes back to his old desk with the title of receiver. All essential employes are retained and you go on as before, only without any directors’ meetings.”
“How as before? I don’t understand.”
“That’s the point, Coxey. You can’t shut up a busted railroad like a delicatessen shop. Bankrupt or not it has to go on hauling freight and passengers because it’s what we call a public utility. A railroad may go bust but it can’t stop.”
“Then what is a receivership for?”
“That’s another point. You are getting now some practical economics, not like the stuff old polly-woggle has been filling you up with. The difference is this: When you are bankrupt you put yourself in the hands of the court for self-protection. Then your creditors can’t worry you any more. A railroad in receivership doesn’t have to pay what it owes, but everybody who owes it money has got to pay up because the court says so. It goes along that way for a few months or a year, paying nothing and getting paid, until it shows a little new fat around its bones and is fit to be reorganized.”
“What happens then?”
“Well, then it is purged of sin and gets born again with a new name. The old Great Midwestern Railroad Company becomes the new Great Midwestern Railway Company, issues some new securities on the difference between r-o-a-d and w-a-y, and sets out on its own once more. The receiver is discharged. The stockholders elect a president, maybe the same one as before or maybe not, and the directors begin to hold meetings again.”