Extra! The trick by which the A.-P. ran through the mountains over the Inland Pacific’s track!
Extra, extra! The compulsion by which the Midcontinent was brought to complete the big gap in the new A.-P. system!
Tremendous extra! The contracts of freightage, subject strictly to the Inter-State Commerce law, between the A.-P. and the cereal trust, the metal trust, the fuel trust, the cloth trust, and all the other iniquitous combinations in restraint of everything! Wow! Zowie! That was the hot one! The A.-P. was the main stem, and within thirteen seconds of the appearance on the streets of the tremendous extra, every other fragile branchlet of a railroad not under the immediate protection of the A.-P., was reduced to a shrivel, and its stocks began to drop with the sickening plunge of an unopened parachute!
Gail Sargent kept Nanette on the rush for extras from the first yell on the streets, and she read every word, including the underlines on the miscellaneous portraits of Allison and the funny pi-lines which invariably occurred in the middle of the most interesting sentences.
It was true, all true! Here was the first step in Allison’s tremendous project an accomplished fact. The rest of it would be gradually revealed, from day to day, as suited his needs, and the empire he had planned would spread, until its circles touched, and overlapped, and broke into an intricate webbing, over all the land and water of the earth! And she was to be the Empress!
Was she? Through all the night she had battled that question, and the battle had left traces of darkness around her luminous eyes. First, she had been in the swirl of his tremendous compulsion, overwhelmed by the sheer physical force of him, captured not by siege but by sortie. Then had come the dazzling splendour of his great plan, a temptation of power, of might, of unlimited rulership, in the spoils of which, and the honour of which, and the glory of which, she would share. Next, in the midst of her expanding anticipation, there had come, as out of a clear sky, a sudden inexplicable fear. It was a shrinking, almost like a chill, which had attacked her. Allison himself! The sheer physical dominance of him; the tempestuous mastery of him; and again she felt that breathless sensation of utter helplessness which she had experienced in the little lookout house. It was as if he were pulling the very life out of her, to the upbuilding of his own strength! It was in the very nature of him to sweep her away by storm; it was a part of his very bigness. He was colossal, gigantic, towering! And she had conquered this giant, had been the motive of his strength, the very pinnacle of his cloud-topping ambition! There was pride in that, pride and to spare. It distressed her that again and again came that impulse of fear, that shrinking. A new thought dawned. Perhaps this was the thing which she had desired, the thing for which she had been waiting; to be taken, and crushed.