“Sure! But I might as well have gone out on the court-house steps and shouted at the scenery! Watson told me, in the same half-absent way, that the receivership was only temporary, and that we should have ample opportunity to show cause, if we could, why the receiver should be discharged at the regular hearing, which he there and then set for the twelfth of the month, naming his chambers as the place. Before I could wedge in another word, court was adjourned and Watson was leaving the bench.”
Sprague was nodding slowly.
“Now we know the meaning of the Sunday track-laying, and the sudden influx of strangers—most of whom will doubtless turn out to be T-C. officials and employees—and the mysterious kidnapping of the Short Line’s attorney night before last,” he said. And then to Maxwell: “I suppose the thing is definitely done, and you have been properly kicked out of your office, Dick?”
Maxwell briefed the short interview with Dimmock for the benefit of the others.
“Dimmock and Carmody are in charge,” he concluded, “and before night they will have tried and executed everybody in the service whose head sticks up far enough to give them an excuse for cutting it off. They are going to make a clean sweep. Dimmock practically admitted it. By this time to-morrow the Nevada Short Line will be part and parcel of the Transcontinental System, with only T-C. men in charge.”
“Holy Smoke!” said Kendall, and the ejaculation from him meant more than the most frenzied outburst of the average man: and then again he said, “Holy Smoke!”
It was Starbuck, himself a small stockholder in the confiscated railroad, who first got his feet upon the solid earth again.
“I reckon we-all are just going to sit around and bite our thumbs and let these hold-ups put it all over us,” he said, in his slow drawl; adding, after the proper pause: “I don’t think!”
Maxwell sprang out of his chair.
“I must go to the commercial office and wire Ford!” he broke out. “He’ll know what to do, if there is anything that can be done. Stillings, you get in touch with our general counsel in Chicago. We’re an interstate road, and this thing can’t be settled in a Timanyoni county court!”