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Updated: June 2, 2025
Farley took a fast train, south-bound, instead, and on reaching South Tredegar, wired his New York broker to test the market with a small block of Chiawassee Limited. There were no takers at the upset price; and the highest bid was less than half of the asking.
He was standing on the brink of the cliff, looking down on Paradise Valley, spread like a silver-etched map far below in the moonlight. The flare and sough of the furnace at the iron-works came and went with regular intermittency; and just beyond the group of Chiawassee stacks a tiny orange spot appeared and disappeared like a will-o'-the-wisp.
Armed guards under pay swarmed at the valley foot, and around the company's property elsewhere. By hook or crook the foundries were kept going, turning out water-pipe for which there was no market, and which, owing to the disturbances which were promptly made an excuse by the railway company, could not be moved out of the Chiawassee yard.
With the Farley stock in his pocket Tom took a room at the Marlboro and spent the remainder of that day, and all the days of the fortnight following, wrestling mightily with the lawyers in winding up the tangled skein of Chiawassee affairs.
"I do brag a lot, don't I? But have you ever noticed that I 'most always have something to brag about? This time, for instance. I built this new firm, and it is all that has kept Chiawassee from going into the sheriff's hands any time during the past six months."
Why, my dear young man! what can you possibly mean?" this in buttered tones of the gentlest expostulation. "I mean just about what I say. You have smashed Chiawassee Consolidated, and now you are going off to leave my father to hold the bag. Or rather I should say, you are taking the bag with you." The president was visibly moved. "Why, Thomas you must be losing your mind!
Tom, as the owner of the patents, was fair with the Chiawassee Consolidated, but he was not liberal; indeed, he would have been quite illiberal if the attorney had not warned him that an agreement, to be defensible, must be equitable as well as legal. At this stage in the journey Tom could not have accounted for himself in the ethical field. Something, a thing intangible, had gone out of him.
It was remarked, also, that neither of the Gordons had anything to say, and that an air of mystery enveloped the little that they did. The small wooden office building was a total loss, but the night shift at the Chiawassee had saved most of the contents; everything of value except the small iron safe which had stood behind the manager's desk in the private office.
There was a little delay in getting the ear of the president of the Iron City National at South Tredegar, and the bounding, pulsing blood of impatience made it seem interminable. "Is that you, Mr. Henniker? This is Gordon at the Chiawassee plant, Gordonia. We have secured that Indiana contract I was telling you about, and I'll be in to see you on the ten o'clock train.
Gordonia, of the single side-track, had grown into a small iron town, with the Chiawassee plant flanking a good half-mile of the railway; with a cindery street or two, and a scummy wave of operatives' cottages and laborers' shacks spreading up the hillsides which were stripped bare of their trees and undergrowth.
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