“That’s the best part of the joke,” exulted Allison, with no thought that Vedder Court was, at this present moment, church property. “It’s just where you said; right slam in the centre of New York; and the building into which the Midcontinent will run its trains will be also the terminal building of every municipal transportation line in Manhattan! From my station platforms, passengers from Chicago or the Far West will step directly into subway, L., or trolley. When they come in over the line which is now the Midcontinent, they will be landed, not across the river, or in some side street, but right at their own doors, scattering from the Midcontinent terminal over a hundred traction lines!” His voice, which had begun in the mild banter of a man passing an idle joke, had risen to a ring so triumphant that he was almost shouting.
“But—but—wait a minute!” Urbank protested. He was stuttering. “Where does the Midcontinent get to the Crescent Island tube?”
“Right here,” and Allison pointed to his map. “You come out of the tube to the L. and C., which has a long-time tracking privilege over fifty miles of the Towando Valley, and terminates at Windfield. At Forgeson, however, just ten miles after the L. and L. leaves the Towando, that road—”
“Is crossed by our tracks!” Urbank eagerly interpreted. “The Midcontinent, after its direct exit, saves a seventy mile detour! Then it’s a straight shoot for Chicago! Straight on again out west—Why, Allison, your route is almost as straight as an arrow! It will have a three hundred mile shorter haul than even the Inland Pacific! You’ll put that road out of the business! You’ll have the king of transcontinental lines, and none can ever be built that will save one kink!” His neck protruded still further from his collar as he bent over the map. “Here you split off from the Midcontinent’s main line and utilise the White Range branch; from Silverknob—My God!” and his mouth dropped open. “Why—why—why, you cross the big range over the Inland Pacific’s own tracks!” and his voice cracked.
Edward E. Allison, his vanity gratified to its very core, sat back comfortably, smiling and smoking, until Urbank awoke.
“I suppose we can come to some arrangement,” he mildly suggested.
Urbank looked at him still in a daze for a moment, and a trace of the creases came back into his brow, then they faded away.
“You figured all this out before you came to me,” he remarked. “On what terms do we get in?”
CHAPTER IX
THE MINE FOR THE GOLDEN ALTAR
Vedder Court was a very drunkard among tenement groups. Its decrepit old wooden buildings, as if weak-kneed from dissipation and senile decay, leaned against each other crookedly for support, and leered down, at the sodden swarms beneath, out of broken-paned windows which gave somehow a ludicrous effect of bleared eyes. A heartless civic impulse had once burdened them with fire escapes, and these, though they were comparatively new, had already partaken of the general decay, and looked, with their motley cluttering of old bedding, and nondescript garments hung out to dry, and various utensils of the kitchen and laundry, and various unclassified junk, as if they were a sort of foul, fungoid growth which had taken root from the unspeakable uncleanliness within. There had once been a narrow strip of curbed soil in the centre of the street, where three long-since departed trees had given the quarter its name of “Court,” but this space was now as bare and dry as the asphalt surrounding it, and, as it was too small even for the purpose of children at play, a wooden bench, upon which no one ever sat, as indeed why should they, had long ago been placed on it, to become loose-jointed and weather-splintered and rotted, like all the rest of the neighbourhood.