Taking it all in all, the ex-manager’s report was encouraging.  The New Englanders were by no means disposed to lie down in the harness, and since the Western Pacific proper was an interstate line, the Advisory Board had taken its grievance to Washington.  Many of the small stockholders were standing firm, though there had been panicky defections in spite of all that could be done.  Loring had no direct evidence to sustain the stock deal theory; but it was morally certain that the Plantagould brokers were picking up Western Pacific by littles wherever they could find it.

“I am inclined to believe we haven’t much time to lose,” was Kent’s comment.  “Things will focus here long before Washington can get action.  The other lines are bringing a tremendous pressure to bear on Guilford, whose cut rates are demoralizing business frightfully.  The fictitious boom in Trans-Western traffic is about worked out; and for political reasons Bucks can’t afford to have the road in the hands of his henchmen when the collapse comes.  The major is bolstering things from week to week now until the Plantagould people get what they are after—­a controlling majority of the stock—­and then Judge MacFarlane will come back.”

They were within two squares of the Clarendon, and the cross-street was deserted save for a drunken cow-boy in shaps and sombrero staggering aimlessly around the corner.

“That’s curious,” Loring remarked.  “Don’t you know, I saw that same fellow, or his double, lurching across the avenue as we came out of Alameda Square, and I wondered what he was doing out in that region.”

“It was his double, I guess,” said Kent.  “This one is many pegs too drunk to have covered the distance as fast as we have been walking.”

But drunk or sober, the cow-boy turned up again most unexpectedly; this time at the entrance of the alley half-way down the block.  In passing he stumbled heavily against Kent; there was a thick-tongued oath, and Loring struck out smartly with his walking-stick.  By consequence the man’s pistol went off harmlessly in the air.  The shot brought a policeman lumbering heavily up from the street beyond, and the skirling of relief whistles shrilled on the night.  But the man with a pistol had twisted out of Kent’s grasp and was gone in a flash.

“By Jove!” said Loring, breathing hard; “he wasn’t as drunk as he seemed to be!”

Kent drew down his cuffs and shook himself straight in his coat.

“No; he wasn’t drunk at all; I guess he was the man you saw when we came out of the square.”  Then, as the policeman came up puffing:  “Let me do the talking; the whisky theory will be good enough for the newspapers.”

XIX

DEEP-SEA SOUNDINGS

“Oof!  I feel as if I had been dipped in a warm bath of conspiracy and hung up to dry in the cold storage of nihilism!  If you take me to any more meetings of your committee of safety, I shall be like the man without music in his soul—­’fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.’”