We found the three disappointed afternoon callers already on hand when we reached the headquarters. Fred May was back from his dinner, and he had let them in as far as the ante-room. The boss said, "Good evening, gentlemen," as pleasant as a basket of chips; told Fred he might go, and invited the waiting bunch into the private office, snapping on the lights as he opened the door.

In the big room he indicated the sitting possibilities, and the three callers planted themselves in a semicircle at the desk end. No introductions were needed. One of the pair Hatch had brought with him was a lawyer named Marrow, whose home town was Sedgwick; a sharp-nosed, ferret-eyed man who figured as one of the many "local counsels" for Red Tower. The other, Dedmon, was a political place-hunter who had once been sheriff of Arrowhead County.

"You've kept us cooling our heels in your waiting-room for just about the last time, Mr. Norcross!" was the spiteful way in which Hatch opened fire. "We've come to talk straight business with you this trip, and it will be more to your interest than ours if you'll send your clerk away."

While they had been dragging up their chairs and sitting down, I had heard Fred May lock up his typewriter and go, and had been listening anxiously for some noise that would tell me Tarbell was on deck. I thought I heard the door of the outer office open again just as Hatch spoke and it comforted me a whole lot.

The boss didn't pay any attention to Hatch's suggestion about sending me away; acted as if he hadn't heard it. Opening his desk he took a box of cigars from a drawer and passed it. Dedmon, the ex-sheriff, helped himself, but the lawyer and Hatch both refused. With this concession to the small hospitalities the boss swung his chair to face the trio.

"My time is yours, gentlemen," he said; and Hatch jumped in like a man fairly spoiling for a fight.

"For six months, Norcross, you've been mowing a pretty wide swath out here in the tall hills. You've been posing as a little tin god before the people of this State, and all the while you've been knifing and slugging and black-jacking private capital and private business wherever and whenever they have happened to get in your way. Now, at the end of the lane, by Jupiter, we've got you dead to rights—you and your damned railroad!"

"Cut out as many of the personalities as you can, and come to the point," suggested the boss quietly.

"You think I haven't any point to come to?" barked the grafter, with rising anger. "I'll show you! You've beaten us in the courts, and your imported lawyers have——"

"Excuse me, Mr. Hatch," was the curt interruption. "Abuse isn't argument. State your case, if you have one."

"Oh, I've got the case, all right. You've been keeping your finger on the pulse, or you think you have, but I can wise you up to a few things that have got away from you. You thought you were the only original trust-buster when you started your scheme of locally owned elevators and warehouses and coal- and lumber-yards and ran us out of business. But I'm here to tell you that your fine-haired little deal to rob us began to die about as soon as it was born."

"How so?" inquired the boss, just as though Major Kendrick hadn't already given him his pointer about the how.

"In the way that everything of that kind is bound to die. It wasn't a month before your little local stockholders began to get together and swap stock and sell it. In a very short time the control of the whole string of local plants was in the hands of a hundred men. To-day it's in the hands of less than twenty, with John Marshall at the head of them."

This time the boss let out a notch. "So far, you haven't told me anything new. Go on."

"If I should name Marshall's bunch, you'd know what's coming to you. But we needn't go into statistics. Citizens' Storage & Warehouse is now a consolidated property, and John Marshall, Henckel and I control a majority of its stock. How does that strike you?"

"It strikes me that the people most deeply interested have been exceedingly foolish to sell their birthright. But that is strictly their own business, and not mine or the railroad company's."

"Wait!" Hatch snarled. "It's going to be both yours and the railroad company's business, before you are through with it. Marrow, here, represents Marshall, and I represent Henckel and myself. What are you going to do about those ground leases?"

"Nothing at all, except to insist upon the condition under which they were granted by the railroad company."

"Meaning that you are going to try to hold us to the fixed percentage charge for handling, packing, loading, and transferring?"

"Meaning just that. If you raise the proportional market-price charge on the producers and merchants, the leases will terminate."

"I thought that was about where you'd land. Now listen: we're It—Marshall and Henckel and I—and what we say, goes as it lies. We are going to use the present C. S. & W. plants and equipment, charging our own storage and handling percentages, based on anything we see fit. If you pull that ground-lease business on us and try to drive us out, we'll fight you all the way up to the Supreme Court. If you beat us there, we'll merely move over to the other side of your tracks to our old Red Tower houses and yards and go on doing business at the old stand."

The boss sat back in his chair, and I could tell by the set of his jaw that he was refusing to be panic-stricken.

"You are taking altogether too much for granted, aren't you?" he put in mildly. "You are assuming that the courts will eventually nullify the terms of the ground-leases, or, if they do not, that the railroad company will do nothing to save its patrons from falling into this new graft trap."

Hatch snapped his fingers. "Now you are coming to the milk in the cocoanut!" he rapped out. "That is exactly what we're assuming. You are going to let go, once for all, Norcross. You are not going to fight us in the courts, and neither are you going to harass us out of existence with short cars, over-charges, and the thousand and one petty persecutions that you railroad buccaneers make use of to line your own pockets!"

"But if we refuse to lie down and let you walk over us and our patrons—what then?" the boss inquired.

That brought the explosion. Hatch's eyes blazed and he smacked fist into palm.

"Then we'll knife you, and we'll do it to a velvet finish! After so long a time, we've got you where you can't side-step, Norcross. You thought you played it pretty damned fine in that election deal; but we got the goods on you, just the same!"

Again the boss refused to be panic-stricken; or, anyhow, he looked that way.

"We have heard that kind of talk many times in the past," he said. "The way to make it effective is to produce the goods."

"That's just what we're here to do!" snapped the Red Tower president vindictively. "You, and the Big Fellows in New York, want a lot of the State railroad laws repealed or amended. If you can't get that string untied, you can't gamble any more with your stock. Well and good. You came here six months ago and set out to manufacture public sentiment in favor of the railroad. You ran up your 'public-be-pleased' flag and beat the tom-tom and blew the hewgag until you got a lot of dolts and chuckle-heads and easy marks to believe that you really meant it."

"Well, go on."

"With all this humbug and hullaballoo you still couldn't be quite certain that you had made your point; that your measures would carry through the incoming Legislature. After the primaries you counted noses among the candidates and found it was going to be a tight squeak—a damned tight squeak. Then you did what you railroad people always do; you slipped out quietly and bought a few men—just to be on the safe side."

So it was sprung at last. Hatch was accusing us of the one thing that we hadn't done; that the boss knew we hadn't done.

"I'm afraid you'll have to try again, Mr. Hatch," he said, with a sour little smile. Then he added: "Anybody can make charges, you know."

Hatch jumped to his feet and he was almost foaming at the mouth.

"Right there is where we've got you!" he shouted. "You were too cautious to put one of your own men in the field, so you sent outside for your briber. He was fly, too; he never came near you nor any of your officials—to start curious talk. But he was a stranger, and he had to have help in finding the right men to buy. Dedmon, here, was out of a job—thanks to you and your meddling—and the steering stunt offered good pay. Do you want any more?"

The boss shook his head.

"It is a matter of complete indifference to me. I don't know in the least what you are talking about, and you'll pardon me, I hope, if I say that it doesn't greatly interest me."

"By heavens—I'll make it interest you! The easy-mark candidates were found and bought and paid for—and maybe they'll stay bought, and maybe they won't. But that isn't the point. For a little more money—my money, this time—each of these men has made an affidavit to the fact that railroad money was offered him. They don't say whether or not they accepted it, mind you, and that doesn't cut any figure. They have sworn that the money was tendered. That lets them out and lets you in. You don't believe it? I'll show you," and Hatch whipped a list of names from his pocket and slapped it upon the boss's desk. "Go to those men and ask them; if you want to carry it that far. They'll tell you."

I could see that the boss barely glanced at the list. The glib story of the bribery was like the bite of a slipping crane-hitch—slow to take hold. So far as we were concerned, of course, the charge fell flat; and upon any other hypothesis it was blankly incredible, unbelievable, absurd.

"The affidavits themselves would be much more convincing," I heard the boss say, "though even then I should wish to have reasonable proof that they were genuine."

Hatch was sitting down again and his grin showed his teeth unpleasantly.

"Do you think for a minute that I'd bring the papers here and trust them in your hands?" he rapped out insultingly. "Not much! But we've got them all right, as you'll find out if you balk and force us to use them."

At this point I could see that something in the persistent assurance of the man was getting under the boss's skin and giving him a cold chill. What if it were not the colossal bluff it had looked like in the beginning? What if.... Like a blaze of lightning out of a clear sky a possible explanation hit me under the fifth rib, and I guess it hit the boss at about the same instant. What if President Dunton and the New York stock-jobbers, believing as they did that nothing but legislative favor would give them their trading capital in the depressed stock, had cut in and done this thing without consulting us?

The boss stirred uneasily in his chair and picked up the paper-knife—a little unconscious trick of his when he wanted time to gather himself.

"Perhaps you would be willing to give me the name of this briber, Mr. Hatch?" he said, after a little pause.

"As if you didn't know it!" was the scoffing retort. "You drive us to the newspapers and everybody'll know it."

"But I don't know it," the boss insisted patiently. Then he seemed to take a sort of fresh grip on himself, for he added: "And I don't believe you do, either, Mr. Hatch. You are a pretty good bluffer, but——"

Hatch broke in with a short laugh.

"There were two of them; one who was hired to do the talking while the real wire-puller stood aside and held the coin bag. We'll skip the hired man." Then he turned to the ex-sheriff: "Write out the name of the bag-holder for him, Dedmon," he commanded, tearing a leaf from his pocket notebook and thrusting it, with a stubby pencil, into Dedmon's hands.

The man from Arrowhead County bent over his knee and wrote a name on the slip of paper, laying the slip on the drawn-out slide of the boss's desk when he had finished the slow penciling. The effect of the thing was all that any plotter could have desired. I saw the boss's face go gray, saw him stare at the slip and heard him say, half to himself, "Howard Collingwood!"

Hatch followed up his advantage promptly. He was afoot and struggling into his overcoat when he said:

"You've got what you were after, Norcross, and it has got your goat. We've known all along that you were only bluffing and sparring to gain time. We've nailed you to the cross. You let this deal with Marshall and his people stand as it's made, or we'll show you up for what you are. That's the plain English of it."

"You mean that you will go to the newspapers with this?" said the boss, and it was no wonder that his voice was a bit husky.

"Just that. We'll give you plenty of time to think it over. The joint deal with C. S. & W. goes into effect to-morrow, and it's up to you to sit tight in the boat and let us alone. If you don't—if you butt in with the ground-leases, or in any other way—the story will go to the newspapers and every sucker on the line of the P. S. L. will know how you've been pulling the wool over his eyes with all this guff about 'justice first,' and 'the public be pleased.' You're no fool, Norcross. You know they won't lay it to Dunton and the New Yorkers. You've taken pains to advertise it far and wide that you are running this railroad on your own responsibility, and the people are going to take you at your word."

Dedmon, and the lawyer—who hadn't spoken a single word in all the talk—were edging toward the door. I heard just the faintest possible little noise in the ante-room, betokening Tarbell's withdrawal. The boss didn't make any answer to Hatch's wind-up except to say, "Is that all?"

The other two were out, now, and Hatch turned to stick his ugly jaw out at the boss, and to say, just as if I hadn't been there to look on and hear him:

"No, by Jupiter—it isn't all! In the past six months you've made Gus Henckel and me lose a cold half-million, Norcross. For a less provocation than that, many a man in this neck of woods has been sent back east in the baggage-car, wearing a wooden overcoat. You climb down, and do it while you can stay alive!"

For some little time after the three men went away the boss sat staring at the slip of paper on the desk slide. At the long last he got up, sort of tired-like, I thought, and said to me: "Jimmie, you go down and see if you can find a taxi, and we'll drive out to Major Kendrick's. I promised him I'd go out to the house, you remember."