Not that he was uninformed on these topics. Quite the reverse. He was a rotund, florid little man, with twinkling, humorous eyes, which could bore like augers on occasion, and a mouth as firm and close as a steel trap. His name was William Bates Rapp, and his specialty was corporation law. He was counsel for the Western Airline Railway, and just then he was pretending to play billiards with its president, Cromwell York.
York, who also was pretending to play billiards with Rapp, was a dogged gentleman who was accustomed to take his pound of flesh whenever he could not obtain, on some pretext, two pounds. His subordinates said that he worked twenty-five hours a day, which gives, if you consider it, an advantage of some fifteen days per annum. He was in the grip of his business, body and soul. It fascinated him, dominated him more and more as the years went on, as his own fortune and his interests increased. He was continually reaching out for more territory, and in so doing he came in hostile contact with other railway men, also gunning for the same game. Occasionally, therefore, they gunned for each other. When York was hit he took his medicine; when he hit the other fellow he chose as vital a spot as he could. Even as he played billiards his mind was elsewhere, which accounted in part for his poor success at the game.
"Speaking about Prairie Southern," said he, "we have about decided to take it over."
Rapp sighed. "I'm not a perpetual-motion legal machine, York. Won't that keep till to-morrow?"
"We pay you a big enough retainer," said York, with the frankness of years of intimacy. "What do you suppose we do it for?"
"Principally, I imagine, to keep you out of jail," Rapp retorted, with equal frankness. "I've done it so far, but——" He shook his head forebodingly. "Well, if you will talk, come and sit down. I'm tired of this. Now, then, about Prairie Southern: have they come to the end of their rope, or did you pull it in a little for them?"
"I didn't need to," said York. "They have tied themselves up in hard knots. We don't particularly want the road; but, as matters stand, we can buy it cheaply. Later we might want it, and it would undoubtedly cost more. Besides, I don't want Hess to get hold of it as a feeder to his lines."
"Jim Hess is a sort of bugbear to you," said Rapp. "You'll keep prodding him till he horns you one of these days."
"Two can play at that," York replied grimly.
"There's mighty little play about Jim Hess when he goes on the warpath," Rapp commented. "Well, let's get the worst over. There's short of three hundred miles of this Prairie Southern, as I understand it. It runs somewhere near the foothills. The country doesn't grow anything yet. The only reason for its building was a coal-mine boom that petered out. Its bonding privilege was one of the most disgraceful bits of jobbery ever lobbied through a corrupt little legislature. It was a political scandal from its birth. It is burdened with a multitude of equities. It never has paid, and likely it never will pay. You know these things as well as I do. I'm hanged if I see why you want it."