Maxwell put an unlighted cigar in his mouth and began to chew on it absently.
“Dimmock’s daughter is here. Did you know that?”
The big-bodied chemistry expert was staring fixedly at the revolving street door which was whirling slowly to admit a group of passengers from the lately arrived Red Butte accommodation.
“I didn’t know that he had a daughter; or rather I do know that he hasn’t one. He was married only three or four years ago,” he returned half-absently.
“That’s where you’re off wrong,” retorted the railroad man. “He certainly has one, and she is here; she was at breakfast with him when I came down this morning. She is so distractingly pretty that I couldn’t believe she was the daughter of that hard-featured piece of financial machinery which is running our railroad. So I asked the head-waiter. He said she was Mr. Dimmock’s daughter.”
“It’s a mistake,” insisted Sprague. Then he changed the subject abruptly, rising and buttoning his coat. “I have an appointment that I’ve got to keep, and I may not get away for a couple of hours. Meet me here for a one o’clock luncheon. If I make the point I’m going to try to make, you’ll be needed.”
When he was left alone, Maxwell did his best to kill time easily and to possess his soul in patience. The inaction of the past two days had been a keen agony, unrelieved by any glimpse into the mysterious depths in which Sprague, after his usual fashion, was groping alone.
Was it possible that Sprague could reason out a way of escape for the captured Short Line? For the hundredth time Maxwell went over the well-intrenched position of the enemy, searching vainly for the weak point in the lines which had been so swiftly and surely drawn about the confiscated property. Every legal requirement had been astutely met, and the law itself seemed to bar the way to any attempt at recovery. True, Judge Watson had grossly misused the authority given him by his high office, but the equity of his act could be questioned only in the courts; questioned, and set aside, it might be, but too late to save the bewildered and panic-stricken stockholders.
Lighting the dry cigar, Maxwell got up to stroll to the clerk’s desk. The register lay open on the counter, and he absently read the later signatures. Among them there was a woman’s name, written in a firm, bold hand, and lacking the identifying “Miss” or “Mrs.” “Diana Carswell” was the name, and in the place-column was written, “New York.”
Maxwell’s teeth met in the centre of the newly lighted cigar when he saw the signature. He did not know Miss Carswell, truly, but all the world knew of her, and the masculine half of it, at least, was wont to wax eloquent over her beauty, her accomplishments, and her vast wealth. Maxwell remembered vaguely of hearing that her father was dead, and that the Carswell many-millions had been left to the mother and daughter; also that Miss Carswell was the niece of a still larger fortune—namely, that of the great captain of finance whom he and Ford had all along credited with the planning of the raids made on the Nevada Short Line.