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The others went their way, and Wimperley walked back to his office immersed in profound contemplation. Feelings of personal injury were mixed with those of apprehension. How would the affair proceed after Clark had taken with him his unrivaled and intimate knowledge of the works; for, and in spite of all the dictates of prudence, it seemed impossible to think of the vast enterprise at St.
His argument will be that we didn't back him to the necessary limit that another million would have done it and," concluded Birch reflectively, "that may be perfectly true. But God knows we did what we could. What's this one?" He glanced at Wimperley, who was reading a telegram just brought in.
Riggs, Stoughton, and Wimperley came up next day. Clark met them at the station, where a bitter wind was droning down from the north, and Belding, by engineering of a high order, made room for them at his quarters. Then they drove out to the canal, and with Clark climbed the icy embankment while the latter expounded the situation.
The country to the north is full of pulp wood, but the people up there don't know it." Wimperley felt a throb of interest. The power question in Philadelphia was up at the moment, but it was power developed from coal and it came high. "What else?" he said evenly, "and how do you know it?" "Seven different lumbermen have offered to contract for ten thousand cords a year.
He could see Stoughton, red with discomfort and resentment; Riggs' excited and anxious little face, and Wimperley himself, cast with a new severity; all supremely conscious of that which probably must be faced on the morrow. And what about Marsham? Tottering was now their faith in the essential future of the works and the great cycle of their operations.
It was as though a hurricane had blown fiercely through the town, and then died over the encircling hills. And in the bank office Brewster was thoughtfully reading two telegrams from Thorpe, one commending his attitude for the past few weeks, the other authorizing him to credit the Consolidated account with two million dollars. A few days later Wimperley and Birch arrived.
Wimperley knew perfectly well that, once admitted, Clark would convert him to his own present belief, whatever that might be, and that under Clark's magnetic persuasion he would shortly find himself treading a totally unexpected path. "Good morning. I'd like to have fifteen minutes." Clark was inwardly amused, but he spoke with perfect gravity. Wimperley drew a long breath.
In his own cabin, he lay for an hour staring out of the porthole at the dim world beyond. He tried to think of the works, but they receded mysteriously beyond the interlocking branches of the neighboring pines. They seemed, somehow, less imposing than formerly, and Wimperley and Stoughton and the rest of them were a long way off.
They were in the padded seclusion of the president's inner office, while two blocks away swelled a storm, whose echoes only reached them in the sharp staccato of the ticker in the corner as it vomited a strip of white paper. Wimperley stood there, the strip slipping between his fingers, while selling orders began to pour in to Philadelphia, and the price of Consolidated crumbled like dust.
Presently Wimperley, who knew something of ore, bent stiffly forward, picked up a fragment of rock and, after a long scrutiny, nodded slowly. "This exposure is about half a mile long," said the quiet voice. "It crops out there and there," he pointed to neighboring ridges, "and there's more beyond that, if you'd care to walk over." But no one cared.
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