“Adair,” he said, “I’m going to tell you something else that I didn’t dare tell those money-tremulous people in McVeigh and Mackie’s private office.  I have been signing contracts and buying material by the train-load ever since the first grain shipment was started eastward on our main line.  Also, I’ve got my engineering corps mobilized, and it will take the field under Frisbie as its chief not later than to-morrow.  Putting one thing with another, I should say that we are something over a fresh million of dollars on the wrong side of solvency for these little antics of mine, and I’m adding to the deficit by the hundred thousand every time I can get a chance to dictate a letter.”

Adair lighted a cigarette and made a fair show of taking it easily.  But a moment later he was lifting his hat to wipe the perspiration from his forehead.

“Lord! but you have the confidence of your convictions!” he said, breathing hard.  “If we shouldn’t happen to be able to float the bonds—­”

“We are in too deep to admit the ‘if.’  The bonds must be floated, and at the earliest possible moment that Magnus will move in it.  You wanted something big enough to keep you interested.  I have been trying my best to accommodate you.”

Adair leaned forward and spoke to his chauffeur.  The man watched his chances for room to turn in the crowded street.

“Where are you going?” asked Ford.

“Back to McVeigh and Mackie’s—­where I can watch a ticker and go broke buying more Pacific Southwestern,” was the reply, and just then the chauffeur found his opening and the big car whirled and plunged into the down-town stream.

In the financial news the next morning there was a half-column or more devoted to the sudden and unaccountable flurry in Pacific Southwestern.  Ford got it in the Pittsburg papers and read it while the picked-up stenographer was wrestling with his notes.  After the drop in the stock, caused, in the estimation of the writer, by the company’s sudden plunge into railroad buying at wholesale, P. S-W. had recovered with a bound, advancing rapidly in the closing hours of the day from the lower thirties to forty-two, with a strong demand.  The utmost secrecy was maintained, but it was shrewdly suspected that one of the great companies, of which the Pacific Southwestern was now a competitor on an equal footing for the grain-carrying trade, had gone in to absorb the new factor in trans-Missouri traffic.  Other and more sensational developments might be expected if the battle should be fought to a finish.  Then followed a brief history of the Pacific Southwestern, with a somewhat garbled account of the late dash for a Chicago terminal, but lacking—­as Ford remarked gratefully—­any hint of the company’s designs in the farther West.

“If Adair and Brewster and the others only have the nerve to keep it up!” said Ford to himself.  Then he tossed the paper aside and dived once more into the deep sea of extension building, working the picked-up stenographer until the young man was ready with his resignation the moment the final letter was filed for mailing in the Chicago station.