Maude and I were alone that night. As we sat in the library after our somewhat formal, perfunctory dinner, I ventured to ask her why she had gone away when I had offered to read.
“I couldn't bear it, Hugh,” she answered.
“Why?” I asked, intending to justify myself.
She got up abruptly, and left me. I did not follow her. In my heart I understood why....
Some years had passed since Ralph's prophecy had come true, and Perry and the remaining Blackwoods had been “relieved” of the Boyne Street line. The process need not be gone into in detail, being the time-honoured one employed in the Ribblevale affair of “running down” the line, or perhaps it would be better to say “showing it up.” It had not justified its survival in our efficient days, it had held out—thanks to Perry—with absurd and anachronous persistence against the inevitable consolidation. Mr. Tallant's newspaper had published many complaints of the age and scarcity of the cars, etc.; and alarmed holders of securities, in whose vaults they had lain since time immemorial, began to sell.... I saw little of Perry in those days, as I have explained, but one day I met him in the Hambleton Building, and he was white.
“Your friends are doing thus, Hugh,” he said.
“Doing what?”
“Undermining the reputation of a company as sound as any in this city, a company that's not overcapitalized, either. And we're giving better service right now than any of your consolidated lines.”...
He was in no frame of mind to argue with; the conversation was distinctly unpleasant. I don't remember what I said something to the effect that he was excited, that his language was extravagant. But after he had walked off and left me I told Dickinson that he ought to be given a chance, and one of our younger financiers, Murphree, went to Perry and pointed out that he had nothing to gain by obstruction; if he were only reasonable, he might come into the new corporation on the same terms with the others.
All that Murphree got for his pains was to be ordered out of the office by Perry, who declared that he was being bribed to desert the other stockholders.