Maxwell reached for the telephone and put the receiver to his ear. It was Stillings who was at the other end of the wire, and he was frantically incoherent. But out of the attorney’s coruscating babblement the superintendent picked enough to enable him to surround the principal fact. In the face of all precedent, in defiance of all its legal rights, the Nevada Short Line had been practically declared bankrupt and a receiver had been appointed.
Notwithstanding his nerve, which was ordinarily very good, the snappy little superintendent’s hand trembled when he replaced the ear-piece on its hook and turned to his visitor.
“So you’ve got us at last, have you, Mr. Dimmock?” he said, constraining himself to speak calmly. “It was on the Hixon case, our attorney tells me.”
The visitor nodded blandly.
“You should have compromised that case, Mr. Maxwell—if you will allow me the privilege of criticising, after the fact. But we needn’t come to blows over the purely academic question. Judge Watson has appointed me receiver—temporary, of course—for the railroad property. I am here to take charge in the interest of all concerned, and I am assuming that you won’t put yourself in contempt of court by any ill-considered resistance. Here is the court order.” And he tossed a folded paper across to the desk.
For the moment Maxwell was speechless. Then he slowly straightened up and took a few packets of papers out of the desk pigeon-holes marked “R. Maxwell, Private,” putting them into his pocket. That done, he removed the desk and door keys from his pocket ring and laid them upon the desk.
“I think that is about as far as I have to go, personally,” he said, rising and reaching for his hat. “And, of course, I have nothing to ask for myself. But for the staff and the rank and file, Mr. Dimmock—I hope you’re not going to make a clean sweep. We have a mighty good working organization, and it will cause a great deal of hardship if you take the usual course of discharging and replacing all heads of departments.”
The new head of all departments smiled, and in the smile much of the cold hardness of his face disappeared.
“That is a matter with which I shall have very little to do, Mr. Maxwell,” he returned. “Mr. Carmody, lately in charge of the Transcontinental’s Pacific Division, will be my operating chief, and I am sure that you yourself, as a practical railroad man, would counsel me to give him a free hand.”
Maxwell took the additional bitter dose of the medicine of defeat like a man, but he made one more attempt—an attempt to save Calmaine’s head.