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With its own eastern terminal in Chicago, the Pacific Southwestern could control the grain shipments in its own territory. With the moving of the grain, the depressed P. S-W. stock would inevitably recover, and on a rising market the new issue of bonds could doubtless be floated.
Brewster was the man, but he has too many other and bigger irons in the fire to care much about P. S-W. Connolly could have done it if the scrap had been a political split, but he was out of his element." "Humph!" growled Ford. "It didn't occur to me that there were any differences of opinion to be reconciled. The entire board sat on my proposition as a unit."
It was on the fourth day of the campaign, while Ford was working his way on an inspection trip over the third link in the short-lines chain, that two telegrams overtook him. One was from Adair, announcing the tardy, but now certain triumph of the expansionist faction in the board of P. S-W. directors, and begging pathetically for news of the option-getting.
"Well, you know he wanted to be superintendent of this road. He kept the wires to New York hot for a week after he found out that the P. S-W. was in control. He missed it, and you naturally took it over his head at least, maybe that's the way he looks at it." "Take it for granted and get to the point," urged Lidgerwood, always impatient of preliminary bush-beating.
What Kenneth did to secure the P. S-W. right-of-way across the mining claims, Ford did not know, or seek to know; though a word or two let fall by the attorney led him to believe that the Transcontinental encouragement was not quite specific enough in dollars and cents to warrant the obstructors in holding out.
It could be covered immediately by a reissue share for share of the reorganization stock of the P. S-W., which would amply secure the investors, since the stock of the most prosperous of the three local roads was listed at twenty-eight, ten points lower than the present market quotation of P. S-W.
Gridley, the master-mechanic, will be nominally under your orders, of course; but if it should come to blows between you, you couldn't fire him. In the regular routine he will report to the Colorado-lines superintendent of motive power at Denver. But in a quarrel with you he could make a still longer arm and reach the P. S-W. board of directors in New York." "How is that?" inquired Lidgerwood.
It's no mere brag to say that I could walk into the Chicago, Peoria & Davenport general offices here to-morrow morning and organize a through service over the P. S-W. and the three stub lines within twenty-four hours, if I had to." "Well, that part of it is far enough beyond me," said the attorney. "The stock-chasing is more in my line.
The other was signed "K," and Ford had a sharp attack of joy when he read it. The attorney had been successful at all points. The necessary stock majorities were secured and the certificates were safely on deposit in the Algonquin National Bank, in Chicago. What remained was only a matter of routine, provided the P. S-W. bidders would furnish the capital for the purchases.
His twenty thousand dollars invested in P. S-W. stock at twenty-nine and a half had grown with the rising market to sixty-odd. What did it matter to any one if he chose to put ten thousand of the sixty-odd on a turn of the Little Alicia card? While it was gambling, pure and simple, he did not bet with his eyes shut. Inquiry at the Bank of Copah established Grigsby's reputation for truth-telling.
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