the blame because it was his. I have no doubt in the world now that
Bertram Meade had made his protest in writing. Perhaps he indorsed
it on the missing sheet," continued the woman, making bold and
brilliant guesses. "Or maybe he wrote a letter that was attached to
the sheet that we lack, and Mr. Meade got it out of the safe and
wrote his letter and attached it with Bertram's protest to the
missing drawing and gave them to Shurtliff and told him to take them
to the papers. You know Shurtliff said that Meade declared he would
assume the blame and he told the reporters so. Shurtliff has, or he
knows who has, the missing paper."
"But what motive would the secretary have for such concealment?"
"He idolized the older Meade. Mr. Curtiss told me about him. A
failure himself when he was a young man, Mr. Meade had faith in him
and offered to promote his engineering efforts, but the man preferred
to attach himself, personally, to Mr. Meade and so he became his
private secretary. By his own showing he had been with the dead man
on that afternoon. He has the papers."
The woman rose to her feet as she spoke with fine conviction.
"I believe you are right," said Rodney, leaning back in his chair and
staring at her through his glasses. "If we can only make him
speak----':
"We can."
"How?"
"I don't know, but that shall be my task."
"But where is he?"
"Working for my father."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean that I suspected him from the first, and as there was an
opening for a private confidential man, who understood engineering--a
vacancy made by the promotion of my father's private secretary--I
prevailed upon him to give the position to Shurtliff. Father hates
the name of Meade, but he worships efficiency and he knows that
Shurtliff is the very incarnation of the particular kind of ability
that he desires, so he is with my father constantly and I have him
always under my eye. When we go away in the car, he goes along."
"What are you going to do?"
"Win his confidence, his affection if I can, appeal to him, and----"
"By Jove," said Rodney, "I believe you can do it. You can't drive
that old man."
"I know it," said the woman.
"You haven't told him that you thought it was his fault?"
"No. Now, to return to that picture and that plan. I can remember
the day Bert saw it first."
"When was it?"
"The morning after the night I nearly fell off the bridge."
"Yes?"
"It was on the table on the observation platform where the men had
left it. I had gone to the door to tell the attendant that Mr. Meade
would breakfast with us; when I came back he was staring at it like
one possessed. We had some conversation about it. I remember every
word." She repeated it verbatim. "It was not so much what he said,
but the way he looked; strained, one might say, alarmed. I puzzled
over it a good deal and as we had"--she stopped and smiled--"we had
other things to think of, I didn't dwell upon it until afterward.
Mr. Rodney, he knew that lacing was weak. There was relief in his
look and voice when he found that Curtiss and Abbott were both
satisfied. If he knew it was weak, or if he thought it might be, he
is the kind of man who would have said so. If we can find that
missing sheet, if we can make Shurtliff tell, we can establish his
innocence beyond peradventure."
"We certainly can and, if we do, it will be through you."
"Don't forget your own part, Mr. Rodney."
"I couldn't do anything with a man like Shurtliff. You can. You can
win his devotion, you can let him see how much the reinstatement of
Bert Meade in honor again means to you. You can do it."
"Meanwhile you will help me, won't you?"
"In any way, in every way. Do you know where he has gone?"
"I haven't the slightest idea. He might be in Africa, or South
America, or out West, or up North. Do you see those flowers?"--she
pointed to a great bunch of American Beauty roses, which had been
forced for her apparently, and which she had received on that very
day--"Dards, you know the Madison Avenue florist, sends me a box of
magnificent blossoms, roses, violets, orchids, always different,
every week. They speak to me of him."
"Have you ever tried to trace them?"
"No. I know whence they come and that is all. We will hear from him
some day, somewhere, somehow. Meanwhile, we will work, work, work!"
"Miss Illingworth," said Rodney, rising, "I will transcribe this
conversation and send you a copy. We will study it. Meanwhile if
anything occurs to me I will communicate with you."
"And I with you."
"And you will allow me to say before I go that since I have had this
conversation with you I do not see how even love for his father or
his family name would have led Meade to do it."
"Don't say anything against him," said Helen Illingworth quickly.
"He was mad with anxiety, shame, regret. Whatever he did I love him
just the same."
XXII
WORKING UP
The autumn went by as a dream. Winter, warm and mild in that far
southern clime, was at hand before Meade realized it. An ordinary
engineer of half the ability of Bertram Meade so suddenly reduced to
the ranks would have chafed against the position of subordination and
would have resented the humble duties with which he was charged. But
Meade was happy to be following, even in this extremely modest way,
the profession that he loved. And he did his unimportant work with
zeal and care. It is not much to say, but he was the most efficient
of the junior engineering force on the dam. That compensated for
another not quite so admirable fact. He did not mingle with the men.
They thought him reserved and unfriendly and but for his unfailing
courtesy to everybody and his obvious expertness he would perhaps
have become unpopular. Of course, many of the men were far beneath
him socially and intellectually, but there was a spirit of democracy
among the workers on the dam. Except for the foreigners and others
of the manual laborers, rank and station were more or less laid aside
after hours. Even Vandeventer himself put on no airs.
It was not because Meade was unsocial that he kept to himself, not at
all. From his own galvanized iron quarters, he used to stare
longingly at the men grouped around the big camp fires, for the
nights were growing chill, smoking and laughing, exchanging
experiences and telling stories. Nothing would have pleased him
better than to have joined in and he could have told stories and
related experiences that would have been unique even in that gay
crowd of young adventurers. But he did not dare. He feared to
betray himself. What he wanted above everything was to preserve his
incognito. It would be fatal to his chances of ever working up to
anything worth while if they found out who he was.
And he had a tremendous pride to sustain him. They respected him
now. As a matter of fact they put his withdrawal of himself down to
vagaries of temperament or causes they could not imagine and they
grew rather to like him even as they left him alone. And a few of
the men of the humbler sort to whom he had been kind on occasion and
helpful, were stoutly devoted to him. Little indications gave him
the feeling that Vandeventer had his eye on him and that if it were
possible he would get a chance. He was not moody or morose. He was
just afraid, afraid he would be found out, questioned, pitied. So
when the others gathered together in jolly fellowship after working
hours Meade, perforce, wandered away alone.
The idleness of an aimless life did not appeal to him even in his
off-duty periods. Doing nothing had no attraction. He could not get
relief that way. Even rambling alone about the hills would not
serve. So quick and active a man, so vigorous and buoyant a spirit,
so strong a body and mind were not calculated for aimless wandering.
Meade was a very accomplished engineer indeed. There was no branch
of the art about which he did not know a little, although hydraulics
and structural steel were the things that most appealed to him. He
got relief in the duality of his affections for these branches of his
profession. Neither one of them ever palled on him because he did
not work monotonously at either of them. He had a natural instinct
for topography, and instead of purposelessly strolling about the
country, he made a careful inspection of the valley which was to be
converted into a huge reservoir by the dam.
The dam itself was, perhaps, an eighth of a mile long at the bottom
and, as it touched the receding hill on one side and the spur of
Spanish Mesa on the other at the top, it there exceeded that basic
extent considerably, perhaps twice. It was a huge mound of earth
with a clay core extending from side to side at the narrowest part of
the valley, near the south end of Spanish Mesa and a few miles above
Baldwin's Knob, the highest but by no means the most picturesque hill
or mesa in the valley of the Picket Wire. When completed the dam
would be one hundred and twenty-five feet high above the old river
bed with a roadway twenty feet broad on the top of it.
The engineers had fortunately found a long flat space of ground, like
a meadow, just at the narrows and the huge mound of earth they had
built upon it fell away in a long slope toward the lower valley.
Below the dam and on the low ground between the mesa and Baldwin's
Knob the camp, with its galvanized iron shops, bunk houses, dining
halls, kitchens, and officers' quarters, had been erected. The
configuration of the ground was such that, although it was unusual to
put them there, convenience had rendered it desirable in this case.
The hills were covered with splendid pines, except where they had
been cut to pieces by the diggers and teamsters to furnish the clay
for the work. It was intended to complete the dam before the early
spring of next year, which was, if any time in the country could be
so characterized, the rainy season. Of course, just as soon as the
dam had begun to rise, the flow of the Picket Wire below it had been
stopped, except when an occasional freshet had been allowed to pass
the under-sluice. It was known that the run-off of the river in the
rainy season of some years was so small as scarcely to fill the
reservoir, and it had been decided to store all the flow of the
autumn and winter so that even if the spring rainy season were
deficient the beginning of the next summer would find the reservoir
full and the new irrigation system could commence operations
successfully.
Vandeventer, like the lost Abbott of the International, was also a
driver, who spared neither his men nor himself. The work had
proceeded with astonishing rapidity, although this was partially
accounted for by the fact that the spill-way, which should have
occupied their attention, had as yet been only partially excavated.
Now, to those ignorant of engineering, an earth dam may seem a
temporary expedient, although most of the great irrigation dams of
the world are of that character; and everybody knows that if the
water should rise high enough to overflow an earth dam it would not
last longer than it takes to describe its utter giving way. A flood
would sweep it out of the way at once.
The device whereby possible floods are controlled and such dangers
averted, consists of a broad channel at one side of the dam, and at
such a distance below its crest that if, through any mischance or
natural happening, such as the failure of the sluice gates, excessive
rains, cloud bursts, or floods, the height of the water is increased
until it promises to overflow the dam, this opening will carry off
the surplus harmlessly. This channel, usually concreted, is called a
spill-way. It is almost always completely open, rarely being
provided with gates, and it works automatically. Just as soon as the
water rises high enough to be menacing, it flows through the
spill-way and is discharged into the valley below the dam until the
water level in the reservoir is lowered and the danger of overflowing
is ended. The discharged water can do no harm, as there is never
more than the river, without the dam, would have sent down anyway.
An earth dam without a spill-way would presage almost certain
destruction to all who lived in the valley below it.
In the case of the Picket Wire dam, the spill-way had to be cut and,
in part, blasted out of the mountain side--that is through the spur
of the mesa, which reached down from its high wall towards the
narrows. There had been a series of blunders and mishaps, which
included the explosion of a shipment of dynamite on the railroad,
with very disastrous consequences to accompanying rock-crushers and
mixers, and other machinery. The spill-way had not been completed.
Its opening should have been about twelve feet below the level of the
dam. Vandeventer was not responsible of course. The chief engineer
had fumed and protested, but had been directed by headquarters to go
ahead with the other work and tackle the spill-way later. There was,
indeed, little reason to hold up the building of that particular dam
because of the non-completion of the spill-way.
That was a country, so the most devoted inhabitants freely admitted,
in which it was always safe to bet that it would not rain, no matter
how threatening might be the appearance of the sky; for in
ninety-nine times out of a hundred the negative would win the bet.
Said inhabitants did not say the hundredth time might compensate for
all the other failures. The weather was like the little girl with
the proverbial curl--when it did rain there was no doubt in anybody's
mind as to the fact. Sometimes the fountains of the great deep,
which in Holy Scripture at least extended overhead, would be broken
open and the violence of the fall and the quantity of it, and
suddenness of it, would be such that the Westerners would graphically
call it a "cloudburst," which, indeed, it seemed to be.
Outside the rainy season cloudbursts were unheard of, and even in
that season, extremely rare. For the valley of the Picket Wire and
in the plain beneath, carefully tabulated reports of the rainfall for
years had been considered by the engineers. They had chosen the
right season for the building of the dam, but when its crest began to
rise above the designed level of the spill-way the delay in opening
the channel gave cause for some alarm. It is not the probable or
certain that is feared. An old version that, of _omne ignotum pro
magnifico_--it is only the unknown of which men are afraid, or only
the unknown is to be feared! Still there was nothing Vandeventer
could do but obey orders and go ahead. The danger after all was
trifling. Another consequence of the waiting was that in his
inability to work on the spill-way, he had more hands to devote to
the dam and it rose the quicker.
The shape of the country behind it was such that when the Picket Wire
flowed with sufficient volume to fill it, a long lake going back
through the valley, or cañon, and twisting among the hills for some
miles would result. In other words the dam would make a beautiful
artificial sheet of water bordered on one side by a high range of
hills, on the other by the dam, and on the third by the hills and the
low hog-back above Spanish Mesa, which separated the Picket Wire
valley from the Kicking Horse gorge up which the railroad ran.
Buried in his own thoughts, communing with himself, considering
ceaselessly his position, dreaming of the woman he loved, planning a
new career, Meade yet explored every foot of the valley and ravine.
He climbed to the top of Spanish Mesa and from its height the whole
country clear up the valley to the main range was visible to him. He
could look down into the deep ravine of the Kicking Horse, and note
the marvelous beauty and airiness of the arch bridge for all it so
solidly carried the heavy freight trains of the railway.
He could see far up and around the crooked course of the Picket Wire.
The big grass-covered, but otherwise bare and treeless hog-back, that
ran from the upper end of the stone island of the mesa was equally
visible to him. As it was the low side of the new reservoir he
descended to it and studied it carefully. On another occasion,
having said nothing to anyone about his excursion, he took advantage
of a half-holiday to go out and inspect the hog-back and ascertain
its elevation with relation to the dam. Of course the engineers who
planned the great irrigation works had done that, but he wanted to do
it for himself. At one place, where the distance between what might
be called the edge of the valley and the head of the ravine was
narrowest--indeed, he estimated after pacing it that it measured not
over twenty feet across--he discovered that the rounded earth crest
was slightly lower than the intended level of the top of the dam.
When he returned to the office, he found on examining the
construction drawings that an earth dike was planned to run along the
hog-back so that the top level should be higher than that of the dam.
This dike would be only a hundred and fifty feet long and a few feet
high, and could be built in a few days' time. Work on the main dam
being more important, nothing had as yet been done on the dike.
Meade had been promoted toward the end of the fall and in a rather
unusual way. One of the transit men, a young engineer, got a better
job and left his instrument. Vandeventer called Meade before him.
"Roberts," he said, "there's a vacancy for a transit man. You've
done such good work so far and shown such familiarity with field
work, that I'd give it to you if I had any idea that you know
anything about handling instruments."
"I think I may be trusted with one, sir," answered Meade, his eyes
brightening.
"Yes, perhaps; but I have watched you in odd hours. The young men
around here are constantly practicing with the transits. I've never
seen you put a hand to one. How about it?"
"I'm not exactly a youngster, Mr. Vandeventer," returned Meade, "and
I really didn't think it necessary to practice, but if you trust me
with one I believe I can manage it."
Old Vandeventer leaned back in his chair in the office and looked
carelessly away from Meade to all appearances. He clasped his hands
back of his head and seemed lost in thought. Suddenly he began
humming a little scrap of verse about another college which Cambridge
men sing with zest.
"_I'm a physical wreck,
From the grand old Tech',
But a hell of an engineer!_"
He stopped abruptly, whirled about in his swing-chair, and shot a
quick glance at Meade. It was a trap. And as he sprung it
Vandeventer surprised the ghost of a smile, repressed quickly but
there, on Meade's lips. The chief engineer was satisfied. Before
this, little things had betrayed a fellow alumnus or at least a
fellow student of the old Lawrence Scientific School. Vandeventer
was pleased at his adroitness. He did not, however, refer to it.
"There's a new transit in that box on the floor there," he said,
resuming his indifferent manner. "I've had the case opened, but I
haven't taken it out. Get it, and we'll go outside and see what you
can do with it."
Now a transit, for all it is used in rough field work, is one of the
most expensive and delicate of instruments. It is capable of the
most accurate adjustment, and if it is to be of any real use, the
refinement of these adjustments must not be impaired in any degree by
unskilled and reckless packing. The boxes in which the instruments
are shipped are very carefully constructed in accordance with the
principles which experience has shown to be necessary, and each one
is especially fitted to the particular instrument to be contained
therein. The box is a complicated thing and the transit cannot be
taken out or replaced except in one way. With a knowledge of the
combination, so to speak, it is comparatively simple to take a
transit from the box; without that knowledge, which none but an
expert transitman, or the packer himself, can have, it is rather
difficult without running a risk of ruining the instrument.
This command was another of Vandeventer's tests therefore. Meade
knew this as well as his superior. In spite of himself he would have
to betray his familiarity. Well, he had brought himself to the
conclusion that he could not continue his work without very soon
disclosing the fact that he had been an engineer. And in case of the
inevitable the sooner the better. So long as he had to betray
himself, he would have all the advantages as well as the
disadvantages. He unlocked the door of the box, slid the instrument
out quickly, accurately, without a moment's hesitation, and rapidly
unscrewed the head from the slide-board, and screwed it carefully on
the tripod. Vandeventer's eyes sparkled.
"Come outside," he said, leading the way to the side of the hill,
"and set it up there over the tack in that stake and level it."
Beginners have been known to take ten minutes to get a transit set
up, leveled, and centered. It is good work if it is done inside of a
minute, thirty seconds is very fast. In forty-five seconds Meade
reported, "all ready, sir." He could have done it in less, but he
was a little out of practice he said to himself.
"Look here," said Vandeventer, "you can't pull any more bluff on me,
Roberts; you're an engineer all right."
"I know something about the practical side of it, sir," answered
Meade, turning a little pale and wondering how far Vandeventer would
press his questions and what he would learn.
But the engineer was a man.
"Practical, yes and theoretical too, I'll be bound, but I don't seek
to pry into your antecedents. It's enough for me if you do good work
for me here."
"I'll do my best, sir."
"Good, the instrument is yours."
That was the first step and the next step came very shortly after
when, having further demonstrated his capacity in other ways, Meade
was given charge of the work on the east end of the dam.
"I don't care who he is," said Vandeventer to his chief subordinate,
"he knows what he's about and if you watch him you'll see. He's keen
on handling men. The other section foremen will be hard put to keep
up with him. He keeps watch on himself. He's got some secret he
won't betray. He doesn't mingle with the crowd, but every once in a
while something slips out. What he doesn't know about engineering
nobody needs to know, I'll wager."
"How do you account for his being out here?"
"Oh, it's the old story, I suppose; he's come a cropper
somewhere--down and out and wants to begin again, and can't do
anything but this. It's not our business, Stafford; he does good
work for us and we're satisfied."
XXIII.
THE FORMER AND THE LATTER RAIN
The work on the dam was progressing splendidly. Vandeventer, driving
his men hard, shared in all their furious efforts. He was not only
their leader, but their inspiration. He could safely work them to
the limit because by a process of elimination during the work he had
surrounded himself with a body of able assistants, and by the same
method his teamsters and workmen, many of whom were foreigners, had
been culled from a greater number, until they had become a small army
of picked men, of which to be proud. Among all these Meade stood
very high. He still occupied his comparatively humble position as
gang-foreman, but he had shown such capacity in the four months he
had been with Vandeventer, such a grasp of things, such an ability to
handle men, in one or two instances when, with intention to try him,
the resident engineer had given him charge of some special work, that
Vandeventer unconsciously looked to him in any emergency. He
actually found himself consulting Meade on occasion!
He had accompanied the younger man on one of those rambles which he
had hitherto taken alone. He had not broken down Meade's reserve,
but he had won his admiration and regard. Vandeventer was not
unknown in engineering circles. In earth work he was by way of being
an authority. His experience had been varied and extensive. Meade's
reserve and reticence rather hurt the older engineer. He had invited
confidence and had even given his affection. He intimated delicately
that if the other were under a cloud Vandeventer might be in a
position to help him.
It was fortunate for Meade's purpose of concealment, for his
incognito, that most of his engineering work had been done abroad and
that he had been out of touch with American engineering for
practically the whole of his career. Vandeventer was a Harvard man
too, and that made it especially hard for Meade to keep from
betraying himself. As a matter of fact the younger man actually
longed to make a clean breast of it, but he could not quite bring
himself to do it, yet. That might come later.