now as Adam Vallory’s boy and not as a hired man. We were ground to the
limit on the bidding; and at every turn the railroad people are trying
to get more than they bargained for--something for nothing. It’s all
right; that’s their part of it, you’ll say. But in addition to all this
we’ve got Jim Lushing against us; a man who will stoop to any kind of
low, disreputable trickery to do us up. You may say it’s dog eat dog,
and so it is. But it’s business.”
David took a leaf from his father’s book and proffered it, not too
confidently.
“Dad was always so strong on the ethics of a thing,” he began; but Eben
Grillage interrupted with a good-natured laugh.
“Your father is a white-haired old angel; and he is just about as
completely out of touch with the modern business world as the other
angels are. There are no theoretical ethics in business, David. If you
don’t fight for your own hand, you go to the wall, every time. That is
one reason why I offered you a job. I didn’t want to see Adam Vallory’s
boy settle down in the old Middleboro Security and become a fossilized
back-number before he could grow a beard.”
Here it was, deep in the personalities again, and David Vallory would
have been either more or less than human if he could have disentangled
himself from the purely friendly relation.
“You have been mighty good to me--good to all of us,” he broke out
gratefully. “If I’ve said too much about that tunnel roof----”
“Just you forget the tunnel roof and let it go. It has stood up all
right since we drove through it, and you know what it would cost to
shoot it down and plug the hole. I want to see you succeed, David, and
you can’t do it if you are always worrying about the other fellow’s
side of things. I only wish I had a boy like you of my own.”
“You have something vastly better,” said the model son, with a smile.
“Vinnie, you mean? Sometimes I think so; and then, again, I’m sort of
worried. When it comes right down to the jumping-off place, I’m afraid
she isn’t going to pick out a sure-enough man. Look at the crowd she
runs with! Half of ’em are after my money, and the other half haven’t
got brains enough to fry, or sand enough in ’em to keep the wheels from
slipping.”
David was far enough beyond the tunnel and all other troubles now to
be able to laugh happily. It was reasonably evident that any obstacles
which might lie in his way in the sentimental race were not such as
might be raised by a purse-proud father, and once again his heart
warmed toward the benefactor and foster-father who was so generously
overlooking the master-and-man hamperings.
“Virginia is your own daughter, Mr. Grillage; you needn’t be alarmed
about her,” he put in loyally.
“I know; but she’s got a raft of high-flown notions about ethical
culture--whatever that is--and the brotherhood of man, and ‘tainted
money’, and all that--you probably know the whole rigmarole. And
when Vinnie sets her head on anything you couldn’t switch her with a
hundred-and-fifty-ton crane and a five-yard steam-shovel put together.
I tell her what she needs is to marry a man who is in the thick of
the business fight for himself--and for her. Then she’d learn a few
practical, every-day facts.”
David Vallory felt that it would be almost a breach of confidence--the
confidence that had been growing up day by day between Virginia
and himself--if he should let the talk dig any deeper into the
personalities in Virginia’s direction. So he spoke again of his
father’s coming, and of his hope that the change of scene and climate
might prove beneficial.
“We’ll make it beneficial,” declared the big man, with a return to the
genially masterful mood; and after a few minutes more of the friendly
talk, David took his leave, warming himself once again at the fires of
henchman loyalty. Who was he to set up the standards of his own narrow
convincements against the wisdom and experience of a man whose success
was equalled only by his generosity and princely liberality? And beyond
this, had not Eben Grillage as good as said that his consent was
already gained if his daughter’s choice should fall upon a man who was
_not_ of the great army of idlers?
Other phases of the talk emphasized themselves for the young chief
of construction after he had seen the big boss striding sturdily up
the steep path toward the ridge-top hotel. In no uncertain sense his
father’s benefactor had shown himself willing to be a second father
to the son, supplying, from his wider experience of men and things,
the lacks of a too-narrow upbringing. In an upflash of the newer
partisanship, David could smile at his own compunctions. In a world
of shrewd battlings one might easily theorize too much. But deep
down under this generalization the new loyalty, born first of worthy
gratitude, was digging a channel for itself; the channel leading now to
blind fealty. The problem was no longer a question of right and wrong
in the abstract. It was resolving itself into a grim determination to
hew doggedly to the line--the line being the success, in a financial
sense, of the Grillage Engineering Company.
With this determination in the saddle, David Vallory did not return to
his bunk car. A locomotive was about to make the run up to the tunnel
with a supply of freshly blacksmithed drill-bits, and he boarded it.
The night breeze, slipping down from the peaks of the higher range,
was like a draft of invigorating wine. The moon had gone down, but the
carbide flares and electric arcs illuminating the scene in the huge
cuttings made the men and machines stand out in harsh relief. Above the
clatter of the locomotive the rapid, intermittent volley-fire of the
steam-shovels rose like the snortings of strange monsters; and against
the inky background of the western mountain a single electric star
marked the mouth of the tunnel.
At the portal David dropped from the step of the engine and made his
way, unaccompanied, into the heart of the mountain. The thread of
incandescent bulbs starred the blackness, each illuminating its little
circle of the underworld. The distant clamor of the drills ceased
shortly after David reached the spot where the threatening roof was
sprinkling its daily warnings. Posturing solely as the cool-headed
engineer and technician, he would have decided at once that the danger
signals were growing more portentous--did so decide in the inner depths
of him. The overhead rock had an appearance not unlike that of a
slaking lime bed, checked and crisscrossed in every direction with fine
seams and cracks.
While he was still examining the roof and telling himself that this was
only one of the many chances that had to be taken in the battle for
success, a man came out of the half-lighted darkness of the farther
depths and spoke to him. It was Silas Plegg.
“Getting your goat so that you can’t sleep nights, is it?” said the
first assistant, with his teeth-baring smile.
David ignored the reference to his responsibilities and asked a
question.
“Any more strike talk among the men?”
“A little; yes.”
“What do you think about this roof by this time? I know what you
thought a few days ago.”
Plegg shook his head.
“It’s not up to me to do the thinking. What do you think?”
“Frankly, Plegg, I don’t know what to say. Just before you came up I
was thinking that if I were called in here as an outsider and asked
to give an opinion I’d say it was a risk--a damned bad risk. But
as a Grillage man, I’ve come around to your point of view on the
necessities. We’ve got to trust to luck and bully it through.”
“Yes; if the devil doesn’t take too good care of his own.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that it doesn’t lie with us any more to keep this thing quiet.”
“What? Have the inspectors caught on?”
“Since we haven’t had a bunch of them jumping onto us, I infer not.
But there is at least one warm enemy of yours who knows about it.”
“Who is it?”
“Black Jack Dargin.”
David flew into a rage for the second time that day.
“Can’t I get a positive order obeyed any more on this job?” he rasped.
“How many times have I got to say that nobody from the outside is to be
allowed in this tunnel?”
“Dargin hasn’t been here,” said Plegg evenly. “But he has had one of
his steerers working here as a mucker.” A pause, and then, in the same
even tone: “I guess you’ll have to give up your idea of running Black
Jack off the lot. It isn’t worth while, anyway.”
David Vallory was still angry. “I’ll be shot if I’ll give it up!” he
snapped. “I’ve got a string to pull that will clean those Powder Can
dives off the map, and I’ll pull it to-night before I sleep!”
“And take the risk of Dargin’s giving this thing away?”
“I’m not considering risks just now! If that tin-horn gambler thinks he
can put something over on us, let him try it.”
Plegg turned aside and stooped as if to examine a joint in the
pressure pipe which led the air from the compressor-plant at the portal
to the drills in the heading. When he straightened up it was to say,
“Have you seen Lushing?”
“No.”
“He is here at the front again; so Altman told me this afternoon.”
“Which means that from now on we’re to have him around under foot!”
gritted the angry one.
Plegg glanced back into the depths where the _chug-chug_ of the drills
had ceased.
“We’d better be moving out; they’re getting ready to fire a round of
shots,” he offered; and after they were in the open air and the muffled
reverberations of the dynamite had come rolling out to jar upon the
midnight silence: “Lushing will do more than get under foot. He is
spiteful, and when he gets ready to hit out, we’ll all know about it.
I’m only hoping that he and Dargin won’t get together and compare
notes.”
They had started to walk down to the approach track where the waiting
locomotive was standing before David made his comment on the Lushing
vindictiveness.
“Plegg,” he said grittingly, “you know, and I know, the particular
reason why Lushing wants to stick a knife into us. It’s running in my
mind that somebody ought to put him out of the game. And if he strikes
me just right, I’m the man to do it!”
XIX
The Ultimatum
On the day succeeding David Vallory’s midnight visit to the tunnel the
guest list of the Alta Vista Inn had a number of additions. Upon the
arrival of the stub train from Agorda, David met the three for whose
coming Oswald’s letter had prepared him, and even in the moment of
welcomings saw his difficulties take on added thorninesses. Oswald, his
face set in lines of frowning determination, was evidently anticipating
reproaches, or something sharper; but when David saw his sister, and
marked her quick little groping for Oswald’s hands in the descent from
the car-steps, his heart smote him and he said neither more, nor less,
than was meet.
A mountain motor hack was at the service of the Alta Vista group for
the drive to the top of the ridge, and with the transfer in process,
David had time to observe the other arrivals. One was a well-groomed
young man with sleepy eyes and a bored expression, and on one of
the numerous traveling-bags obstructing the foot space in the car
David read the initials “F. W.” Another of the newcomers was a rather
solemn-faced person in clothes of English cut; he, also, looked bored,
and the monocle which he occasionally fitted to an eye with grimaces
provocative of subdued mirth in the other passengers, gave him the
appearance of a weary owl contemplating sad and depressive surroundings
with a single eye. David, sitting with his father and pointing out the
various phases of the big job as the car climbed the ridge, needed no
additional tags to enable him to identify the pair on the opposite
seat. Of Miss Virginia’s retinue at least two, Mr. Frederic Wishart and
the Englishman, Cumberleigh, had discovered her retreat.
In the hotel dining-room, where he secured a table for his own party,
David ate his heart out under an outward mask of the welcomer’s
cheerfulness when he saw Virginia making merry with the owlish
Englishman and the son of the multimillionaire breakfast-food king at
a table four removes distant. Gone for him were the joyous excursions
over the work in the company of a khaki-clad maiden whose interest in
the technical activities had been scarcely second to his own. Gone,
likewise, were the ecstatic evenings in the secluded porch nook,
shadowed by the wall-tapping fir-tree, with no one to interfere and
none to distract.
“Yes, we are getting along fairly well,” David was saying, continuing
the talk with his father and Oswald and wrenching himself forcibly
aside from the heart-consuming spectacle four tables away. “If nothing
unforeseen happens, the through trains ought to be running over the new
line before snow flies.”
“Accidents, you mean?” queried the sweet-voiced one who sat in darkness.
“Accidents or other hamperings. Of course, on a job as big as this
there is always a chance for the unexpected.” And he went on to
enumerate some of the hamperings which might cause delay, carefully
avoiding, however, any mention of tunnels and caving roofs therein.
Later, the table talk was led to other topics. David wished to know
how they had fared on the long journey from Middleboro; he spoke
of the satisfaction it gave him to have the family united again;
melting a little in the glow of his own galvanized warmth, he was even
hypocritical enough to descant upon the good luck which had enabled
Oswald to join the vacation party.
After dinner business intruded. Plegg came up to secure his chief’s
decision upon certain foundations which were being sunk for one of the
bridges, and David had to go with him to the bunk-car office to consult
the blue-prints. When he was free to return to the Inn he found his
family scattered. Eben Grillage had swooped down upon the friend of
his youth and had spirited him away; and it was only after some little
search on the porches that David discovered his sister and Oswald.
Coming up behind them unnoticed, he went away again without intruding
upon them. The after-glow of another of the gorgeous sunsets was
spreading itself in the western heavens, and Oswald was describing
it for the blind girl. It was the low-spoken admission of the blind
one that made David forbear to break in. “You think I am missing it,
Herbert, but that is not so. Sometimes it seems as if I could see
things through your eyes better than if I had my own.”
On another of the porches David had a glimpse of Virginia and the two
newcomers, and a dull fire of resentment was kindled. The daughter of
the luxuries was evidently in her gayest mood, and if there were any
lingering regret for the change from the technicalities and the duet
evenings in the shadow of the fir-tree her manner did not betray it.
David turned away when he saw her holding a match to light Wishart’s
cigarette. The most infatuated of lovers may be permitted a pang of
disappointment at the discovery that he has apparently been useful only
as a convenient fill-in.
Having the social--and sentimental--nerve centers thus painfully
cauterized, David was fain to fall back upon the job and its
requirements. There need be no lack of occupation. He knew that Plegg
would be hard at work checking the estimate for the month; and there
was always the overseeing round of the night shifts, which one or the
other of them usually made before turning in. But there was another
urge which fitted in better with the mood of the moment. Plegg’s news,
that Lushing was back at the head of the inspection staff, and that
Dargin was the possessor of the tunnel secret, had not yet been acted
upon. In some less morose frame of mind, David Vallory might have
thought twice before yielding to a sudden impulse to carry the war into
the enemy’s country. As it was, he turned his back upon the hotel and a
short half-hour later was entering the single street of the mining-camp.
The impulse which had sent him across the basin was not very definite
in its promptings. In accordance with the minatory promise made to
Plegg, he had written to the president of the railroad company, asking
that some drastic action be taken in the matter of the nuisances.
Something might come of this, in time, but meanwhile Dargin must
be prevented from using his weapon. How to go about the preventing
presented a rather difficult problem. Things which seem measurably easy
of accomplishment at a distance are apt to take on new and difficult
aspects in the face-to-face encounter, and as David made his way toward
the Dargin lair where he had once looked on with Plegg, he was still
undecided as to the manner in which the gambler should be approached.
As he soon found out, an approach of any sort at the moment was plainly
impossible. The bi-monthly Grillage pay-day was still a fresh memory
and the town and its resorts were filled with the money-scattering
workmen. The Dargin place was packed to the doors, and David had some
trouble in wedging himself into the gambling room at the rear of the
bar. Here the impossibility of getting speech with Dargin became
apparent. The master gambler was dealing at the faro table, and his
isolation for the time being was safely assured and secure.
As David was shouldering his way back to the street entrance for a
breath of clean air a man in the bar-room throng touched him upon
the shoulder, calling him by name. It was a prompting of the morose
demon in possession that made him turn and stare at the questioner
half-angrily before he made answer. The man was well-dressed, something
below the middle height, and rather heavy set, dark, and with a closely
cropped brown beard. The mouth outlined beneath the tightly curled
mustaches was full-lipped and gross, and the bulging eyes, with a hint
of a hard drinker in them, evenly matched the sensuous lips.
“Vallory is my name, yes,” David admitted, and the bare admission was a
challenge.
“Mine is Lushing,” was the curt announcement. “I suppose you have heard
of me before this?”
David did not say whether he had or had not. An antagonism of a sort
that he had never before experienced was laying hold upon him so
fiercely that he scarcely dared trust himself to speak. This was the
man who had been audacious enough to make love to Virginia, and who was
now boasting that he would break the Grillage Engineering Company.
“You were looking for me?” David said.
Lushing bit the end of a cigar and struck a match.
“Yes; I’ve been wanting to get hold of you,” he rapped out, between
puffs. “I want to have a talk with you. It’s too noisy here; let’s go
back to one of Jack’s private rooms.”
If David Vallory hesitated it was only because the feeling of
antagonism was growing by leaps and bounds, and he was afraid to be
alone with the man--afraid for Lushing, not for himself.
“Is it business?” he inquired curtly. Then he added: “I’m waiting to
see Dargin.”
“Yes, it’s business. And if you’re waiting for Jack, you’ll wait a long
time. When he sits in at the game, he stays to see it out. Let’s get
out of this mess.”
David reluctantly followed his guide to one of a series of small
card-rooms back of the bar. Lushing snapped the electric light switch
as one who knew his surroundings intimately, and sat down at the
card-table.
“What’ll you drink?” he demanded brusquely.
“Nothing at all; I’m not thirsty.”
Lushing pressed the bell-push for himself, and when the bar-man came,
ordered a whiskey-sour. “Won’t you change your mind?” he suggested,
after the drink had been served; and when David shook his head: “All
right; every man to his own taste. Here goes,” and he drained his
glass.
More and more David was wishing himself well out of it. There could be
nothing but enmity between him and this loose-lipped man across the
card-table, and the savage prompting to precipitate an open conflict
was becoming ungovernable.
“If you’ll say what you wish to say,” he grated. “My time is pretty
strictly limited.”
“Not if you’re waiting for Jack Dargin,” said Lushing. “But perhaps
you want to get back to the hotel.” Then he added in a tone which
seemed to be intentionally insulting: “They tell me you are one of Eben
Grillage’s pets.”
David’s anger flamed alive like a flash of dry powder, but he was
telling himself in many repetitions that his time had not yet come.
“We shall get along faster, and perhaps farther, if you will cut out
the personalities,” he said sourly.
“I was only repeating what I have heard. You are young to be at the
head of a job of this size, and people have a way of explaining such
things to suit themselves.”
“I might go into the repeating business myself, if I cared to,” David
was beginning; but Lushing cut him off with a short laugh.
“I know; some of them have told you that I have a personal quarrel
with Grillage, and perhaps some others have hinted that I wanted to
marry into the company and got kicked out for my impudence. We’ll let
that go. What was, is ancient history, and we’re dealing with the here
and now. Your company is as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, and if you
don’t know it, you ought to. Its days on this job are numbered.”
“Threats are the cheapest things in the world,” said David.
“You will find that this is more than a threat. You are a new man in
the field, and I’ve nothing against you--as yet. What I wanted to see
you for was to say to you that you’d better go while the sledding is
good.”
“You are advising me to discharge myself?”
“That’s it--quit--throw up the job--climb out while you can get out
with a whole skin.”
“But why?”
“Because if you don’t, you’ll be shown up with the other pirates and
sneak thieves.”
David glanced again at the flushed face and bibulous eyes. It was
evident that the drink tossed off while the bar-man waited was only the
latest of a series which had been begun much earlier in the day.
“You are in no condition to talk business with me or with any one,”
he said bluntly. “Some other time, perhaps, when you are entirely
sober----”
Lushing brought his fist down upon the card-table with an oath.
“No, young fellow; you’ll hear what I’ve got to say now, and then you
may take it straight to the fish-eyed old buccaneer you’re working for.
Grillage hasn’t a dollar in this world that he has made honestly, and
you may tell him I say so. Also, you may tell him that I’m going to
make it my business to hound him to his finish. When all the crooked
deals he has worked off on this job are shown up, he’ll be lucky if
he can stay out of the pen. On top of all that, you may tell him that
his daughter will see the day when she’ll beg me on her knees to let
up--and I won’t do it!”
David was upon his feet and his eyes were blazing.
“You’ve said enough, and more than enough!” he broke out in hot wrath.
“If you were not too drunk to be held accountable, I’d cram your words
down your neck for that insult to Miss Grillage! Past that, I’ll say,
once for all, that Mr. Grillage is more than my employer; he is my
friend and my father’s friend. Go to it when you’re ready, and I shall
know how to get back at you.”
At this, Lushing whipped an automatic pistol from his pocket and laid
it upon the table, covering it with his hand.
“You make any bad breaks and I’ll drill you,” he said viciously. “Take
that for a back-sight any time you feel tempted to beat me up. When a
man of your size comes at me, I shoot first and shoot quick. I’m out
to get your crooked company and the man who owns it. You say you’ll
fight for him, and that puts you on the black list. I’m fair enough to
give you a tip, and I’ve given it to you. If you don’t get off this job
quick and fade away, you’ll wake up some fine morning to find yourself
dead.”
What little calm judgment David Vallory still retained was telling
him to go away; that there was nothing to be gained by staying and
listening to Lushing’s threats. But by this time he was well out of
reach of any of the calm voices.
“You’re taking it for granted that I’m unarmed, and you are right,” he
flashed back. “I don’t care for your gun. You’ve laid the law down for
me, and now I’ll lay a little of it down for you. Your inspectors will
be welcome on the job anywhere and at any time, but as for yourself,
you’ll stay away from it. If you show up in any camp of mine, you want
to bring that gun along with you, for I shall take care to have one of
my own, and I’ll use it!”
Lushing picked up the weapon and let it lie in his palm.
“Did the little Grillage tell you to kill me off out of the way?” he
leered.