"Such things will have to be found out before they can be punished," was the Vacuum reply. "They will have to find him before they can do anything to him. We will take care of him." "Having in mind," said District Attorney Quinby to the jury, "what happened afterwards—that they should spirit him away."
"The suggestion is altogether wrong," persisted the lawyer. "The action would certainly be very hazardous as well as wrong."
On leaving, the elder of the two, evidently persisting in his plan, said to the lawyer, "If you want to communicate with Albert, you can do so through C.M."[462]—his son.
These men were too careless to note that the lawyer they were talking to was not their lawyer, but Albert's. When they were brought to trial for the crime that followed, and Albert, repentant, told the truth, the lawyer was free to testify against them. "I am entirely willing," said Albert in court, "that Mr. George Truesdale shall state what took place. I withdraw any legal objections I might have."
The accident which has let us see how the employés of a trust coolly debated with lawyers the policy of blowing up a competitor's works, is one of the few glimpses the American public will ever get into the relations of great legal lights and law-reformers with the mighty capitalists who wreck railroads and execute wholesale corruption of courts, legislatures, and trustees, and evade and transgress the laws with the sure march of those who know that indictments and bail-bonds and verdicts of "guilty" and the penitentiary are only for men not rich enough to plan crime "by advice of counsel." When such men went marauding through the treasury of a great railroad and the courts of an Empire State, we saw the greatest of law-reformers, with a host of legal luminaries, picketing and scouting for them. Every sound in nature is phonographed somewhere, as its waves strike, and Judgment Day will be rich with the revelations from these invisible rolls of the confidential conversations between "trustees" and counsel, who are not honorable lawyers as George Truesdale was, prostituting their functions as "officers of courts" into those of officers of crime.
All these trips from Buffalo to Rochester for these interviews made bad breaks in the construction of the works of the new company at Buffalo. The partners, who were wholly dependent upon Albert's knowledge and experience for the building of the refinery, and running it when built, were mystified and alarmed. Time and again he ran away without a word to them, and all work would stop until he came back. When he was on hand his task did not prosper as if his heart were still in it. When one of the three stills of the refinery had been set up ready for use, and before any oil was run, Albert went up to Rochester again. At this rendezvous the sinister suggestion of "doing something" was repeated. "You go back to Buffalo and construct the pipes and stills so that they cannot make good oil, and then if you would give them a little scare ... they not knowing anything about the business ... you know how to do it." Swearing he would not consent, but already succumbing to this temptation, as he had given way to the threat of ruin, he replied as before: "I don't propose to do anything to make myself criminally liable."[463] At their suggestion he took a man they sent all through the new works, showing him how the stills had been constructed, how the oil was to be made, and all the details of the refinery.[464]
The day came at last—long expected, delayed by these unaccountable absences—when the members of the new company were to have the happiness of seeing their enterprise set going. The one still that was ready was filled with crude oil. The morning of the start Albert weighted down the safety-valve with heavy iron, and packed it with plaster of Paris. "Fire this still," he said to his fireman, "as heavy as you possibly can." The fireman did as he was ordered. During the forenoon Albert came to him. "Damn it!" he said, "you ain't firing this still half. Fire this still! I want you to fire this still! You ain't got no fire under it!" He took the shovel himself and threw some coal in, although there was, as the fireman expressed it, "an inordinary fire." The fire-box grew cherry red.[465]
Albert knew well enough what the next chapter in the history of his associates was likely to be. He had carried a dark-lantern into the still-room one day when he was superintendent of the Vacuum. "I was badly burned by the explosion," he testified before the coroner's jury investigating the explosion in Rochester, in 1887. There were four explosions in the Vacuum works while he was there. In the second, four men were burned. As one of them ran to get water, with his clothes burning, he set fire to the gas coming out of the sewer. Flames flashed all about him. "There's hell all around!" he exclaimed. The third explosion came from an overheated condensing-pipe, and destroyed one of the buildings. The fourth burned up three tanks. Remembering all this, he now took himself off to the grounds of the Atlas Company, out of harm's reach. The brickwork about the still cracked apart with the heat.
But the "smash-up or something" had not been thoroughly arranged. Despite the heavy weight and the packing of plaster, the safety-valve lifted itself under the unusual pressure, and was a safety-valve yet. It was blown open, and a large mass of vapor rose and spread. This was the real accident: that the safety-valve broke loose instead of keeping the gases in to explode, as had been planned. The spreading vapor was not steam, as that had not been admitted to the still, but the gas of distilling petroleum, as inflammable as gunpowder. There was danger still, as great almost as that of explosion. A spark of fire, and it would have wrapped all within its reach in flames. The boiler fires were but twenty feet distant; not far from them the distilled oil was being gathered in the "tail-house"; near the tail-house stood the tanks of crude oil, hundreds of barrels of the fuel that conflagration loves—the kind of fuel the cooks use who, beginning with kerosene for kindling, make the whole house into a stove, and cook themselves and the family with the breakfast.
The kindly wind of a June day carried the cloud of gas away from the fire until it passed out of sight. The unsuspecting, inexperienced men, whose lives and property had been at the mercy of explosion, knew nothing of their peril until years afterwards. The worst they knew then was that the "batch" of 200 barrels of petroleum was spoiled, and that Albert, the only practical man among them, was gone, leaving them crippled for a year. They waited for him, but he did not come. They looked for him, but could not find him. Matthews went to the depot night after night, sometimes at midnight, or later, to watch the trains, but Albert never came.