The map of the United States in Edward E. Allison’s library began, now, to develop little streaks1 of red. They were not particularly long streaks, but they were boldly marked, and they hugged, with extraordinary closeness, the pencil mark which Allison had drawn2 from New York to Chicago and from Chicago to San Francisco. There were long gaps between them, but these did not seem to worry him very much. It was the little stretches, sometimes scarcely over an inch, which he drew with such evident pleasure from day to day, and now, occasionally, as he passed in and out, he stopped by the big globe and gave it a contemplative whirl. On the day he joined his far western group of little marks by bridging three small gaps, he received a caller in the person of a short, well-dressed, old man, who walked with a cane3 and looked half asleep, by reason of the many puffs4 which had piled up under his eyes and nearly closed them.
“I’m ready to wind up, Tim,” remarked Allison, offering his caller a cigar, and lighting5 one himself. “When can we have that Vedder Court property condemned6?”
“Whenever you give the word,” reported Tim Corman, who spoke7 with an asthmatic voice, and with the quiet dignity of a man who had borne grave business responsibilities, and had borne them well.
81Allison nodded his head in satisfaction.
“Not if I say it’s all right,” and the words were Tim’s only reproof9. His tone was perfectly10 level, and there was no glint in his eyes. Offended dignity had nothing to do with business. “Give me one week’s notice, and the Vedder Court property will be condemned for the city terminal of the Municipal Transportation Company. Appraisement11, thirty-one million.”
“I only wanted to be reassured,” apologised Allison. “I took your word that you could swing it when I made my own gamble, but now I have to drag other people into it.”
“That’s right,” agreed Tim. “I never get offended over straight business.” In other times Tim Corman would have said “get sore,” but, as he neared the end of his years of useful activity, he was making quite a specialty12 of refinement13, and stocking a picture gallery, and becoming a connoisseur14 collector of rare old jewels. He dressed three times a day.
“How about the Crescent Island subway?”
“Ripe any time,” and Tim Corman flecked the ashes from his cigar with a heavily gemmed15 hand. “The boosters have been working on it right along, but never too strong.”
“There’s no need for any particular manipulation in that,” decided16 Allison, who knew the traction17 situation to the last nickel. “The city needs that outlet18, and it needs the new territory which will be opened up. I think we’d better push the subway right on across to the mainland. The extension would have to be made in ten years anyhow.”
82“I think, too, that we’d better provide for a heavy future expansion,” went on Allison, glancing expectantly into Tim’s old eyes. “We’d probably better provide for a double-deck, eight track tube.”
Tim Corman drew a wheezy breath, and then he grinned the senile shadow of his old-time grin; but it still had the same spirit.
“You got a hen on,” he deduced. In “society,” Tim could manage very nicely to use fashionable language, but, in business, he found it impossible after the third or fourth minute of conversation. He had taken in every detail of the room on his entrance, and his glance had strayed more than once to the red streaks on the big map. Now he approached it, and studied it with absorbed interest. “You’re a smart boy, Ed,” he concluded. “Across Crescent Island is the only leak where you could snake in a railroad. You found the only crack that the big systems haven’t tied up.”
“All you can get me to admit, just now, is that the city needs an eight track tube across Crescent Island, under lease to the Municipal Transportation Company,” stated Allison, smiling with gratification. A compliment of this sort from shrewd old Tim Corman, who was reputed to be the foxiest man in the world, was a tribute highly flattering.
“That’s right,” approved Tim. “All I know is a guess, and I don’t tell guesses. This is a big job, though, Eddie. A subway to Crescent Island, under proper restrictions21, is just an ordinary year’s work for the boys, but this tube pokes22 its nose into Oakland Bay.”
“I’m quite aware of the size of the job,” chuckled23 Allison. “However, Tim, there’ll be money enough behind this proposition to fill that tube with greenbacks.”
83Between the narrow-slitted and puffy eyelids24 of Tim Corman there gleamed a trace of the old-time genii.
“Then it’s built.” He rose and leaned on his cane, twinkling down on the man who, years before, he had picked as a “comer.” “I’ve heard people say that money’s wicked, but they never had any. When I die, and go down to the big ferry, if the Old Boy comes along and offers me enough money, I’ll go to Hell.”
Still laughing, Allison telephoned to the offices of the Midcontinent Railroad, and dashed out to his runabout just in time to see Tim Corman driving around the corner in his liveried landau. He found in President Urbank, of the Midcontinent, a spare man who had worn three vertical25 creases26 in his brow over one thwarted27 ambition. His rich but sprawling28 railroad system ran fairly straight after it was well started for Chicago, and fairly straight from that way-point until it became drunken with the monotony of the western foot-hills, where it gangled and angled its way to the far south and around up the Pacific coast, arriving there dusty and rattling29, after a thousand mile detour30 from its course—but that road had no direct entrance into New York city. It approached from the north, and was compelled to circle completely around, over hired tracks, to gain a ferryboat entrance. Passengers inured31 to coming in over the Midcontinent, which was a well-equipped road otherwise, counted but half their journey done when they came in sight of New York, no matter from what distance they had come.
“I don’t know,” smiled Urbank. “I might look at a few.”
84“Here they are,” and Allison tossed him a memorandum33 slip.
Urbank glanced at the slip, then he looked up at Allison in perplexity. He had a funny forward angle to his neck when he was interested, and the creases in his brow were deepened until they looked like cuts.
“I thought you were joking, and I’m still charitable enough to think so. What’s all this junk?”
“Little remnants and job lots of railroads I’ve been picking up,” and Allison drew forward his chair. “Some I bought outright34, and in some I hold control.”
“If you’re serious about interesting the Midcontinent in any of this property, we don’t need to waste much time.” Urbank leaned back and held his knee. “There are only two of these roads approach the Midcontinent system at any point, and they are useless property so far as we are concerned; the L. and C., in the east, and the Silverknob and Nugget City, in the west, which touches our White Range branch at its southern terminus. We couldn’t do anything with those.”
“You landed on the best ones right away,” smiled Allison. “However, I don’t propose to sell these to the Midcontinent. I propose to absorb the Midcontinent with them.”
Urbank suddenly remembered Allison’s traction history, and leaned forward to look at the job lots and remnants again.
“This list isn’t complete,” he judged, and turned to Allison with a serious question in his eye.
“Almost,” and Allison hitched35 a little closer to the desk. “There remains36 an aggregate37 of three hundred and twenty miles of road to be built in four short 85stretches. In addition to this, I have a twenty year contract over a hundred mile stretch of the Inland Pacific, a track right entry into San Francisco, and this,” and he displayed to Urbank a preliminary copy of an ordinance38, authorising the immediate19 building of an eight track tube through Crescent Island to the mainland. “Possibly you can understand this whole project better if I show you a map,” and he spread out his little pocket sketch39.
If it had been possible to reverse the processes of time and worry and wearing concentration, President Urbank, of the Midcontinent, would have raised from his inspection40 of that map with a brow as smooth as a baby’s. Instead, his lips went dry, as he craned forward his neck at that funny angle, and projected his chin with the foolish motion of a goose.
“A direct entrance right slam into the centre of New York!” he exclaimed, cracking all his knuckles41 violently one by one. “Vedder Court! Where’s that?”
“That’s the best part of the joke,” exulted42 Allison, with no thought that Vedder Court was, at this present moment, church property. “It’s just where you said; right slam in the centre of New York; and the building into which the Midcontinent will run its trains will be also the terminal building of every municipal transportation line in Manhattan! From my station platforms, passengers from Chicago or the Far West will step directly into subway, L., or trolley43. When they come in over the line which is now the Midcontinent, they will be landed, not across the river, or in some side street, but right at their own doors, scattering44 from the Midcontinent terminal over a hundred traction lines!” His voice, which had begun in the mild 86banter of a man passing an idle joke, had risen to a ring so triumphant45 that he was almost shouting.
“But—but—wait a minute!” Urbank protested. He was stuttering. “Where does the Midcontinent get to the Crescent Island tube?”
“Right here,” and Allison pointed46 to his map. “You come out of the tube to the L. and C., which has a long-time tracking privilege over fifty miles of the Towando Valley, and terminates at Windfield. At Forgeson, however, just ten miles after the L. and L. leaves the Towando, that road—”
“Is crossed by our tracks!” Urbank eagerly interpreted. “The Midcontinent, after its direct exit, saves a seventy mile detour! Then it’s a straight shoot for Chicago! Straight on again out west—Why, Allison, your route is almost as straight as an arrow! It will have a three hundred mile shorter haul than even the Inland Pacific! You’ll put that road out of the business! You’ll have the king of transcontinental lines, and none can ever be built that will save one kink!” His neck protruded47 still further from his collar as he bent48 over the map. “Here you split off from the Midcontinent’s main line and utilise the White Range branch; from Silverknob—My God!” and his mouth dropped open. “Why—why—why, you cross the big range over the Inland Pacific’s own tracks!” and his voice cracked.
Edward E. Allison, his vanity gratified to its very core, sat back comfortably, smiling and smoking, until Urbank awoke.
“I suppose we can come to some arrangement,” he mildly suggested.
Urbank looked at him still in a daze49 for a moment, 87and a trace of the creases came back into his brow, then they faded away.
“You figured all this out before you came to me,” he remarked. “On what terms do we get in?”
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1
streaks
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| n.（与周围有所不同的）条纹( streak的名词复数 )；（通常指不好的）特征（倾向）；（不断经历成功或失败的）一段时期v.快速移动( streak的第三人称单数 )；使布满条纹 | |
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2
drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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3
cane
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| n.手杖，细长的茎，藤条；v.以杖击，以藤编制的 | |
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4
puffs
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| n.吸( puff的名词复数 )；（烟斗或香烟的）一吸；一缕（烟、蒸汽等）；（呼吸或风的）呼v.使喷出( puff的第三人称单数 )；喷着汽（或烟）移动；吹嘘；吹捧 | |
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5
lighting
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| n.照明，光线的明暗，舞台灯光 | |
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6
condemned
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| adj. 被责难的, 被宣告有罪的 动词condemn的过去式和过去分词 | |
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7
spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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8
hitch
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| v.免费搭(车旅行)；系住；急提；n.故障；急拉 | |
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9
reproof
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| n.斥责，责备 | |
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10
perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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11
appraisement
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| n.评价，估价；估值 | |
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12
specialty
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| n.(speciality)特性，特质；专业，专长 | |
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13
refinement
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| n.文雅；高尚；精美；精制；精炼 | |
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14
connoisseur
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| n.鉴赏家，行家，内行 | |
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15
gemmed
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| 点缀（gem的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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16
decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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traction
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| n.牵引；附着摩擦力 | |
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18
outlet
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| n.出口/路；销路；批发商店；通风口；发泄 | |
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19
immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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20
assented
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| 同意，赞成( assent的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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21
restrictions
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| 约束( restriction的名词复数 )； 管制； 制约因素； 带限制性的条件（或规则） | |
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22
pokes
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| v.伸出( poke的第三人称单数 )；戳出；拨弄；与（某人）性交 | |
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23
chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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24
eyelids
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| n.眼睑( eyelid的名词复数 )；眼睛也不眨一下；不露声色；面不改色 | |
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25
vertical
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| adj.垂直的，顶点的，纵向的；n.垂直物，垂直的位置 | |
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26
creases
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| （使…）起折痕，弄皱( crease的第三人称单数 )； （皮肤）皱起，使起皱纹 | |
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27
thwarted
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| 阻挠( thwart的过去式和过去分词 )； 使受挫折； 挫败； 横过 | |
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28
sprawling
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| adj.蔓生的，不规则地伸展的v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的现在分词 )；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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29
rattling
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| adj. 格格作响的, 活泼的, 很好的 adv. 极其, 很, 非常 动词rattle的现在分词 | |
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30
detour
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| n.绕行的路，迂回路；v.迂回，绕道 | |
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31
inured
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| adj.坚强的，习惯的 | |
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32
marketing
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| n.行销，在市场的买卖，买东西 | |
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33
memorandum
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| n.备忘录，便笺 | |
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34
outright
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| adv.坦率地；彻底地；立即；adj.无疑的；彻底的 | |
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35
hitched
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| （免费）搭乘他人之车( hitch的过去式和过去分词 )； 搭便车； 攀上； 跃上 | |
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36
remains
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| n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹 | |
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37
aggregate
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| adj.总计的，集合的；n.总数；v.合计；集合 | |
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38
ordinance
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| n.法令；条令；条例 | |
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39
sketch
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| n.草图；梗概；素描；v.素描；概述 | |
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40
inspection
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| n.检查，审查，检阅 | |
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41
knuckles
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| n.（指人）指关节( knuckle的名词复数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝v.（指人）指关节( knuckle的第三人称单数 )；（指动物）膝关节，踝 | |
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42
exulted
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| 狂喜，欢跃( exult的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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43
trolley
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| n.手推车，台车；无轨电车；有轨电车 | |
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44
scattering
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| n.[物]散射；散乱，分散；在媒介质中的散播adj.散乱的；分散在不同范围的；广泛扩散的；（选票）数量分散的v.散射(scatter的ing形式)；散布；驱散 | |
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45
triumphant
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| adj.胜利的，成功的；狂欢的，喜悦的 | |
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46
pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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47
protruded
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| v.（使某物）伸出，（使某物）突出( protrude的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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48
bent
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| n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的 | |
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49
daze
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| v.(使)茫然，(使)发昏 | |
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