New York - The Novel

of those shares would have dropped far further than you would have dreamed, and he’d buy them cheap himself, and you’d be obliged to take them off his hands at the higher price you’d agreed, leaving him with a handsome profit and yourself with a massive loss. And all he’d needed to do was make the bet—or, more precisely, stack the odds, since he’d certainly known something about those shares that you didn’t.
    Only this time, Gabriel Love was going to do the opposite.
    In any game there are winners and losers. In this game, the loser would be one Cyrus MacDuff.
    “Cyrus MacDuff hates me,” Mr. Love had explained to Sean. “That’s his problem. He’s hated me for twenty years.”
    “Why’s that?”
    “Because I once cheated him out of a boatload of money. But that’s no excuse. If Mr. MacDuff exercised Christian charity, if he knew how to forgive, then the awful fate that is about to befall him might be avoided. It will be his evil nature, I believe, that will blind him to reality, and which the Lord will punish.”
    “Sounds good to me,” said Sean. “How is God’s will to be done?”
    “Through the Hudson Ohio Railroad,” said Mr. Love.
    There was only one thing, in the year 1888, that you could say with certainty about the railroad business. It was dirty.
    With the opening of the great American West, the opportunity for carrying goods by rail was expanding hugely. Great fortunes were being made. And wherever there is money, there is competition. While the British developed their far-flung empire, and the powers of Europe rushed to colonize Africa, so the bold entrepreneurs of the East Coast scrambled to build railroads across the huge tracts of the American West.
    Sometimes there would be a fight for control of a certain route, or of a company that already had a route sewn up. Two groups could be building railroads almost side by side to see who got there first. Trainloadsof armed men from rival companies might even shoot it out—the West wasn’t called wild for nothing. Sometimes, however, the battles were subtler.
    The Niagara line had been quite a modest affair. A nice little railroad that would bring wealth to a western farming region as soon as it was linked to one of the bigger railroads carrying goods across to the Hudson. Mr. Love had bought control of the Niagara three years ago, and believed he had a deal to link to the Hudson Ohio.
    “And then, sir, that evil man, Mr. Cyrus MacDuff, took control of the Hudson Ohio, and blocked my way. Just to spite me. He was happy to lose the extra profits our Niagara traffic would have brought, just to see me burned. I invested heavily in the Niagara, but if I can’t join the Hudson Ohio line, then my Niagara shares are worthless. Is that,” Gabriel Love asked, “a Christian thing to do?”
    “It isn’t,” said Sean. “So what do you propose?”
    “I am going to bring light where there is darkness,” said Mr. Love, in a tone of reverence. “I shall buy control of the Hudson Ohio from under his nose, and join it to the Niagara.”
    “That’s daring,” said Sean. “The Hudson Ohio’s a big line. Can you do it?”
    “Maybe I can, and maybe I can’t. But I am going to make MacDuff think that I can. And belief,” said Gabriel Love, with the smile of an angel, “is a wonderful thing.”
    It was only as Mr. Love outlined the rest of his plan that Sean came to see the remarkable beauty of his soul.
    He had patience, for a start. Two years ago, he’d started quietly buying shares in the Hudson Ohio Railroad. Just a little at a time, always through intermediary companies. He’d done it with such skill that even the sharp eyes of Mr. MacDuff had not detected what was happening.
    “At this time,” he told Sean, “I now have thirty-six percent of the company. MacDuff has forty percent. Another ten percent is owned by other railroads and investors who I know for a fact won’t sell. A scattering of investors have four percent and the last ten percent is in the hands of your friend Frank Master.”
    “I didn’t know he was so big.”
    “It’s his largest holding. He’s built it over time, and in doing so he has shown his good sense—it’s an excellent investment.” He smiled. “But ifhe sold it to me, I’d have control of the company. And since he’s a friend of yours, I’d like you to introduce us.”
    “You want him to sell his ten percent to you?”
    Gabriel Love smiled. “No. But I want MacDuff to believe that