“Whom do those horses belong to?” demanded Mr. Wade, sharply.
“Belong to Carrington,” said Richards, shortly. “That was his man. That’s his house at the other end of the street – that big one on the hill.” He jerked his head to indicate that it was back of them, and they turned to see it. It had a large, comfortable, hospitable look, more suggestive of the South than of the North.
“The hotel’s good enough for me,” said Richards, dryly.
Mr. Wade wondered why this sentiment, which had seemed so admirable to him in New York, lost its flavor here on the ground.
As they passed a blacksmith’s shop, the smith was shoeing a Kentucky thoroughbred, who looked at them with an airy unconcern.
“Carrington’s,” said Richards to Mr. Wade’s uplifted eyebrows.
The expression on Mr. Wade’s face was a curious one. Your tourist in Europe now and then wears its twin, on discovering that the United States is renting a second-rate building for an embassy, when other governments own pretentious ones.
“Tell you what,” said Hastings, suddenly. “I think I shall buy a neat little touring car to run around here. Pretty bad grades, but there are half a dozen makes that could take them easily.”
Mr. Wade looked at him with the ever-growing conviction that he was the kind of nephew to have. In spite of his conservatism, he had adopted the auto as he had the telephone.
“Quite right, Laurence,” he said, complacently. “When you order the one you prefer, have the bill sent to me.”
“Going to import a show-fure?” queried Richards, with ironic pleasantry.
Hastings shook his head.
“Never saw one I couldn’t run yet,” he said, cheerfully, “and when I do I’ll send it back to the factory as defective.”
“If he’ll just put in his time running it, it’s all I’ll ask of him,” communed Richards with himself.
* * * * *
At two o’clock of that day Mr. Wade had concluded that all he had ever heard of the enormities of the West was far below the actual fact.
His first grievance had been the dilapidated conveyance; his second the fact that Richards, who for reasons of his own had not tried to make the expedition a bed of roses, had insisted on his getting out a dozen times to see certain offices, the shaft house, and a number of other buildings, about whose use he was extremely hazy. And these pilgrimages had necessitated his walking through fine red dust, which not only reduced his immaculate footgear to its lowest terms, but bordered the bottom of his pale gray trouser legs with a deep red band, which Richards assured him was indelible.
But the crowning enormity came with the dinner at Raegan’s Hotel, which invitation Mr. Wade had felt he could hardly refuse in courtesy.
At the moment they entered the dining room Richards was called to the phone.
“Take these gentlemen down to my table, Maggie,” he said to the head waitress as he turned away.
Mr. Wade regarded this young woman disapprovingly. The curve of her pompadour and the curves of her figure were too aggressively spherical. That her overgenerous bulk could be compressed to the dimensions of her waist seemed to indicate that whalebone had been unduly overlooked in modern mechanics. It hinted, too, though not to Mr. Wade, of a forcefulness of spirit which, seeing in a handkerchief-sized, knife-pleated white apron a legitimate adornment, adjusted the physical, Spartan-like, to its requirements. But Mr. Wade’s mere passive and impersonal dislike quickened to an active rage in that awful moment when she tucked her arm comfortably in his, and promenaded him the length of the dining room to an untidy looking table already occupied by a portly Hibernian, who was engaged in extensive molar exploration with a diminutive wooden pick.
“Friends of Mr. Richards, Mr. O’Shaughnessy,” she said, glibly, and Mr. Wade felt himself released from her muscular arm only to feel the front of a chair pressed with energetic purpose against the back of his knees.
As certain muscles automatically relaxed to enable him to be seated, his stunned sense of propriety recovered consciousness enough to enable him to decide that of all outrages ever perpetrated on a gentleman, this last was the worst.
“Mr. Richards’ friends are my friends,” responded Mr. O’Shaughnessy, cordially.
Mr. Wade looked at Hastings, who was seating himself with outer sobriety and inward hilarity. He comforted himself by taking that sobriety for disgust.
“I suppose you are not out here for your health?” Mr. O’Shaughnessy opined, genially.
“No,” said Mr. Wade, icily.
“What line ar-re you in?” Mr. O’Shaughnessy pursued.
“I fail to understand you,” said Mr. Wade, stiffly.
“What house are you thravelin’ for? What are you selling?” Mr. O’Shaughnessy explained.
That he, Mr. Livingstone Wade, should be taken for a traveling salesman!
“I am a banker,” said Mr. Wade. He felt it due to himself to say as much as that.
“Faro and that face of yours ar-re twins the world over,” said Mr. O’Shaughnessy, genially, closing one eye and looking intelligently at Hastings through the other. Then he cast the toothpick on the floor. “Have a cigar?” he said, hospitably, throwing a couple carelessly on the table as he rose to depart. “Drop in and see me if you get thirsty while you’re here. The palm garden. Two doors up. The house is good for a few yet.”
He stopped to joke with the head waitress a moment on his way out.
Richards, returning, decided that Mr. Wade was pretty well fagged. He had become monosyllabic.
The catsup bottle in the middle of the table, the greasy, lukewarm soup in stone-china bowls, the tasteless profusion of canned vegetables, the dubious-looking water, and the muddy mixture, bitter from long boiling, which the Raegan House called coffee, were only additional affronts to a man already at the limit of his endurance.
His announcement of his intention to spend the rest of the day in the car, and to make it his headquarters during his stay, was delivered with a decision which left no possibility for protest.
What was mere dynamite to such indignities as these!
He stepped into the landau, which Richards had ordered round again, with a sensation of relief, heightened by that gentleman’s statement that he shouldn’t be able to see them again until morning. Richards found Mr. Wade rather exhausting, on his side.
“If you see a fellow in freak clothes on your way back, you can know it’s that son of Carrington’s,” he observed, as he stood on the sidewalk.
Hastings had his foot on the step of the landau, but he wheeled.
“Is Ned Carrington here?” he demanded.
“Been here all summer. Father broke his leg in a runaway and sent for him,” Richards growled.
“Then I think I’ll walk over and see him,” Hastings said promptly, “if you’ll excuse me, sir.”
He smiled confidently at his uncle.
“You shan’t go near him,” said Richards, fiercely, “with that shark of a father of his trying to swindle us every way he can.”
“Whatever his father is, Ned Carrington is a gentleman and my friend,” said Hastings, quietly.
“Tell him he can’t go,” Richards demanded of Mr. Wade. And his insistence was fatal. Mr. Wade would not have influenced his nephew at Richards’ dictation just now if Hastings had announced his intention of going to perdition.
Moreover, he trusted Hastings. And – this is an awful anti-climax – he wanted a nap.
“I hope you will find your friend home, Laurence,” he said, suavely. “Business quarrels can safely be ignored between gentlemen.”
Richards, watching the erect old figure disappearing in the landau toward the station, and the athletic young one striding off in the direction of the Star mine, hated them with an equal intensity.
* * * * *
John Carrington, dozing away on the great wicker divan on his broad veranda, in the warmth of a September afternoon, opened his eyes at the click of the gate.
The young man coming rapidly up the graveled walk was a stranger.
“Mr. Carrington?” he said, pleasantly.
“Yes, sir,” Carrington replied.
“Your son and I were friends in Paris, Mr. Carrington,” he went on. “My name is Hastings. I hope he is at home.”
Hastings! Paris! This was the young fellow whom Sarah had written about – who was so attentive to Elenore.
Carrington looked at him critically, and was pleased.
“Sit down, Mr. Hastings,” he said, cordially. “Ned just went in to order the horses for a little later. He will be out presently, and will be glad to see you.”
“I was surprised to hear that Ned was here, Mr. Carrington,” Hastings went on, seating himself. “He was to start for the East with Velantour the day I left Paris, and I supposed he was painting away for dear life somewhere in the Vale of Cashmere.”
“I didn’t even know he intended to go,” said Carrington, quietly.
“What!” said Hastings. “He hasn’t told you that Velantour asked him to go? It was the greatest opportunity he could ever have!” Then he thought. “Of course your illness was first with him,” he said. “I hope I haven’t been telling tales out of school.” He smiled frankly. Then “He’s a genius, though.” The praise burst out spontaneously. “They expect great things of him in Paris, Mr. Carrington.”
John Carrington did some rapid thinking. So the boy had put aside the biggest opportunity in his life to come back to him. Put it aside cheerfully. To gratify – John Carrington was hard on himself now – his father’s selfish pride. The need had not been imperative. He could have written him all the questions it was advisable to ask him. But he had been in pain, and harassed, and he had sacrificed the boy to it. Well, he should go back soon. He, John Carrington, was not so near senility that he couldn’t manage his own affairs. His jaw set squarely.
“I’m glad you told me, Mr. Hastings,” he said, calmly. Quick steps were coming through the hall. “Before he had a chance to head you off,” he concluded, smilingly. The eyes he turned toward the door were very proud. “Here’s a friend you’ll be glad to see,” he said, cheerily. Yet it seemed to him, and to Hastings, that the lad’s first impulse was toward recoil.
He certainly paled a little. And Hastings said to himself that Ned had, in some subtle way, changed indefinably, but certainly. His eyes did not carry out the comfortable familiarity of his attire. It appeared to Hastings that they were making some demand upon him – a demand that he could not understand.
But the next second young Carrington came forward with at least a surface cordiality.
“How did you find me out – Hastings?” he said, with a slight hesitation before the name, as perplexing as the characteristic grasp of his hand, familiar and unfamiliar at once, and the tinge of formality that obtruded itself unmistakably.
“I had no idea you were here until I heard it just now from Richards,” said Hastings, struggling with a vague sense of rebuff.
The name might have been the Medusa head.
Then “Richards?” John Carrington queried. Hastings flushed.
“My uncle, Mr. Wade, has given me the Tray-Spot mine,” he said, and his voice became formal in turn. “We lunched with our manager to-day.”
In spite of his annoyance, his lips twitched at the memory of it.
“It seems that there is war between the two mines, Mr. Carrington;” he turned to the older man. “I don’t know anything of mining, but there must be some way out of it which would be just both to your interests and to ours.”
For John Carrington had impressed him indelibly as an honest man.
Hastings’ tone was both dignified and frank. John Carrington liked it. But could good come out of anything connected with the Tray-Spot? It had always been a thorn in the flesh.
Ned had crossed the veranda quickly, to seat himself behind a book-laden table. Once so ensconced, he drew a long breath of relief. Then he began to look amused.
“We have suggested a way, but it did not meet with your uncle’s approval,” said John Carrington, quietly.
“I quite agree with my uncle that we do not care to sell,” said Hastings, calmly.
“Nor, I assume, do you care to discharge your manager,” John Carrington went on.
“No,” said Hastings, frankly again; “my uncle has always considered Richards an invaluable man.”
“He certainly has been,” Carrington commented, ironically. “Then, I think we can cut out mining as a topic of conversation, Mr. Hastings. You and Ned can gossip about Paris.”
“That’s where I differ with you, dad,” Ned broke in, spiritedly.
Hastings, stung, started to rise, but “Don’t be silly,” the lad said, impatiently, but with more friendliness than he had yet shown. “We may have a thousand pleasant things to say about Paris, but this is the important thing, and we had better keep at it.
“Laurence” – Hastings gave a little start; Ned had never called him Laurence – “is quite as much of a greenhorn about mines as I was a few months ago. It’s only fair to tell him just what our position is. He will at least hear a story of our grievances that hasn’t been garbled.” His tone was spirited.
“I should like that,” said Hastings, quietly.
Ned leaned forward eagerly. Then he settled his cravat with a peculiar twist, which Hastings recognized as Ned’s characteristic preliminary to discourse. He and Elenore had laughed over it many times together.
“Ours is the older and deeper mine,” Ned began. “That’s the first thing. And all the mines here strike the big bodies of water in sinking. That’s the second. Your manager has hit on the economical plan of doing without large pumps; and when you strike water, he lets it seep through to us, and we raise it for you. It increases our dangers and expenses and your dividends. How would you like it in our place?”
John Carrington watched him with a look of mingled pride and amusement.
“In the case you have stated, I shouldn’t like it at all,” Hastings stated, coolly. “But Richards has assured my uncle that this grievance of yours is imaginary; that the water you get comes from your own sinking. Isn’t there a possibility that may be so?”
“No,” said Ned, positively; “there isn’t.”
Hastings hesitated. That Ned believed what he was saying was obvious; but, after all, what did he know about it? Wasn’t he, save in his art, the most impractical soul living? Why shouldn’t it be quite as likely that Carrington’s men deceived him as that Richards deceived his uncle?
“There ought to be the simplest of ways of settling that,” he said, slowly. “Let a couple of your men go down our mine and satisfy themselves that we’re doing what’s right.”
John Carrington’s laugh was ironically amused.
“You might suggest that to Richards,” he said. Then his tone changed. “He won’t even give us a map of your workings,” he said, sharply. “As for letting anyone from the Star underground, he has announced pretty clearly that the man who tried it wouldn’t come up again. And though Richards’ word hasn’t any par value, I am willing to believe that for once he meant what he said.”
“Aren’t you painting Richards in rather too black a color?” Hastings protested. “Aren’t you unduly prejudiced against him? Premeditated murder, now?”
“Accident, my dear sir,” John Carrington said, ironically, “and underground accidents are almost too easy.”
Hastings hesitated. He looked at Ned.
The lad made a Gallic gesture that sent his hands far apart. “What would you?” it signified.
There was a tinge of mockery in his friendly smile. Yet something of confidence, too.
“My dear Hastings,” he said; “it is decidedly up to you. Our word or Richards’.”
Hastings flushed.
“My dear Ned,” he said, steadily, “that I should doubt your good faith is impossible. Nor,” he flared, “do I think you doubt mine. I have been thrust suddenly, through the great generosity of an uncle to whom I am as loyal as you are to your father, into a situation that I know nothing about. I have a manager in whom my uncle, a cautious man, has believed implicitly. You tell me this man is a rogue. But you may be wrong. I can’t condemn him unheard. One thing is certain,” he went on. “I shall find out. And if there has been anything crooked about our management, it shall be righted.” The line of his lips straightened. The muscles of his jaw grew tense. It was impossible to doubt that he meant what he said.
Both listeners believed him. Both admired him. But John Carrington looked his admiration frankly, and young Carrington dropped his eyelids satisfiedly over his.
“That is all we could ask,” said John Carrington, approvingly. “Now let me hear you youngsters chat about Paris.”
But Hastings was impatient to be off now.
“I must get back to my uncle,” he said, lightly. “It has been a hard day for him, and I suggested that I would serve as secretary for once.”
“Then, order the horses round for Mr. Hastings, Ned,” said John Carrington, and as the lad disappeared, and Hastings protested: “They are standing harnessed in the stable,” he said, decisively. “You mustn’t insist on our being too inhospitable.”
And as Hastings capitulated, John Carrington followed out a sudden impulse.
“You will explain to your uncle that this half-mended leg of mine will prevent my calling on him,” he stated, feeling suddenly that Hastings’ uncle must have some good points, “but I shall be glad to put my horses at his disposal while he is here. Ned will come over to your car in the morning, and say so gracefully.”
He smiled confidently at the returning lad.
There was a queer, contented look lurking in the lad’s eyes. “As gracefully as he can,” he laughed, lightly. “I’ll walk down to the gate with you,” he added.
It was on the way to the gate that Hastings asked the question which was really the mainspring of his call.
“Where is your sister now? Did she go to Brittany?”
Young Carrington seemed amused.
“Elenore’s plans were rather upset this summer,” he said, lightly, “as well as mine. She’s far from Brittany, in a curious little place you never heard of in France.” He was rather proud of the way that sentence was turned. “She’s with a friend, and enjoying herself, though she says it’s all queer.”
Hastings had a mental vision of Elenore in some far-off corner of France, making gay over all its out-of-the-way absurdities in that companionable way of hers.
“I wish she were here,” he said, suddenly.
“Oh, well, I dare say she’d rather be where she is than anywhere else,” Ned rejoined, carelessly.
Which was cold comfort to Hastings.
“By the way,” he said, turning, as he was about to step into the trap, “I suppose we’re perfectly safe to make our headquarters in the car here?”
“Safe as the Waldorf, if you’re on a siding,” Ned laughed. “If you stay on the main track the cars will hit you.”
Hastings mentally swore at himself. The question had sounded idiotic.
“See you in the morning,” Ned called, as Hastings drove off. But he walked back to the house rather slowly.
“Pretty tired, dad?” he asked, cheerfully.
“Ned,” said John Carrington, slowly, “when you children were little I’m afraid I loved Elenore best. But no daughter can be to a man what his son is.”
There was a little silence. John Carrington lay with his eyes closed. He was tired.
“Do you think Elenore was interested in that young fellow?” he asked, finally.
“If she was, she never said so,” young Carrington replied. He was looking off in the direction of the Tray-Spot.
“If I were a girl, I’m inclined to think he could have me,” John Carrington announced.
Young Carrington’s laugh was lightly amused.
“If I were a girl, I’d lead him on a bit, myself,” he announced.
CHAPTER V
When Hastings had returned to the car the afternoon before, he told his uncle the story of his interview with the Carringtons quite simply. He was too wise to urge action upon a tired, out-of-temper man; nor did he wait for Mr. Wade’s comment. He shifted conversation to pleasanter things, and by the time Joseph had served them a nice little dinner Mr. Wade’s outer man bore the visible signs of gastronomic peace. A few games of cribbage, which he won, yet not too easily, were also a soothing influence. When Hastings said good-night, Mr. Wade opened the subject of his own accord.
“How did this claim of Carrington’s strike you, Laurence?”
“It struck me that we must satisfy ourselves about it as a matter of personal honor,” said Hastings, firmly. “Of course you will know better than I how and when to take the initiative.”
There was nothing that urged or insisted in his tone. It was quietly assured.
“Good-night, sir,” he smiled, and disappeared. Disappeared to dream that the car was a balloon, and that he was sailing swiftly through sunny skies to Elenore.
Mr. Livingstone Wade, over-fatigued, was jolted through dreamland by that unbridled nocturnal equine who bolts from one disaster to another.
The horror-stricken Mr. Wade found himself lunching at Sherry’s with the head waitress from Raegan’s. She had tied that knife-pleated apron around her neck, like a bib; and she told him things were “elegunt,” and he could call her Maggie.
She insisted on his drinking catsup instead of claret, and ordered the salad compounded with soft hematite instead of paprika.
All the directors of the bank were seated at a table near them; and they looked quite as appalled as Mr. Wade felt he would, had he seen any one of them in his place.
How he came to be in this awful predicament, he had no idea. He only knew that he was riveted to his chair, and that his face, in spite of his inward horror, would wear a pleased smile. And speech, though he strove desperately to articulate, was an impossibility.
Then Hastings appeared, and said seriously: “This, sir, is a matter that affects your personal honor.”
It was in a grim determination to escape from this purgatory at all hazards that Mr. Wade finally jumped himself awake; and though every muscle in his body ached throbbingly, he gave a sigh of contentment as he stirred his face on his pillow.
* * * * *
Trevanion, coming up to the house on a summons from John Carrington, found young Carrington coming down the steps, looking a bit more of a swashbuckling dandy than ever.
“Morning, Trevanion,” he greeted him, buoyantly.
Then he nodded toward the waiting trap.
“I’m going to pay a morning call on the owners of the Tray-Spot,” he announced, genially.
“Confound ’em!” muttered Trevanion.
The lad looked him straight in the eyes, in the way Trevanion found so remarkable.
“Oh, I think they’re square,” he said, lightly, “and that Richards’ day is about done. It will decide itself in a few days now, anyway.”
Trevanion watched him with a curious expression as he drove off.
* * * * *
Mr. Wade had wakened not only refreshed but in a mood which a certain irreverent clerk had once characterized as his “dusting off the earth day” and a good time to lie low. Hastings greeted the morning sun joyfully, because it shone on the little town where Elenore had spent her childhood.
Richards came in just as they were enjoying their after-breakfast cigars.
“Well,” he said, dropping into a chair without preliminary greetings, or waiting for Mr. Wade to request him to do so, “what’s the program for to-day?”
Then his eyes fell on Mr. Wade’s trouser legs.
“Told you it wouldn’t come off, didn’t I?” he laughed, boisterously.
Mr. Wade resented Richards’ unceremonious entrance, and resented still more this direct allusion to his sartorial disfigurement, which had resisted the most zealous efforts of Joseph. He considered that, under present circumstances, the legs should be considered as analogous to those of the Queen of Spain.
And that phrase of Hastings, “a matter of personal honor,” had hit the bull’s-eye.
Mr. Wade prided himself first that the family fortune had been made honestly, by the rise in Manhattan real estate; and last, that the Wade name stood in the business world to-day as a symbol of integrity that erred, if it erred at all, on the side of over-scrupulousness.
“Mr. Richards,” he said, a trifle stiffly, “when I inquired into the matter, you wrote me that Mr. Carrington’s grievance had no foundation in fact, did you not?”
The bluffness faded out of Richards’ face and left ugliness disclosed.
“He brought that old yarn back with him from Carrington’s yesterday, I suppose,” he sneered, jerking his head toward Hastings.
Hastings had that rare faculty of knowing when to let the game play itself.
“Very naturally, Mr. Richards,” said Mr. Wade, with dangerous smoothness; “but that is not the question.”
Richards’ face darkened.
“I’ll tell you what the question is, Mr. Wade, and you can settle it right now,” he snarled. “It’s whether you are going to take the word of the man who has made the mine, or the word of the man who’s trying to blackmail it, so’s he can buy it cheap.”
It was a good issue, so good that Richards himself was proud of it. He leaned back in his chair with something of a swagger.
“That you are still in charge of the Tray-Spot is the best proof of my confidence in you,” Mr. Wade said, in a more gracious tone, “but I propose to place the Carringtons in a position where they will have to admit that they are in the wrong, as you say they are. We will tell them that they may send a representative through our mine at any time, and that he will be accorded every courtesy.”
“Not on your life, we won’t!” said Richards, fiercely.
“That,” said Mr. Wade, serenely, “is a matter where we differ.”
“Do you suppose,” Richards went on, working himself into a rage, “that anyone they sent down would come up and tell the truth? He’d say just what he was paid to say, and he’d find just what he was paid to find.”
Joseph entered with two cards, and thereby effected a diversion.
One of the cards bore the name of Mr. John Carrington and the other that of Mr. Edward Carrington.
The gods fought on the Carrington side.
“Show him in,” said Mr. Wade, suavely.
Young Carrington, debonair as a certain Monsieur Beaucaire, made his entrance with an easy grace. The delicate deference of his manner toward Mr. Wade, the pleasant camaraderie which he showed to Hastings, the impersonal politeness with which he recognized Richards’ existence, were all points in his favor.
So, too, were his punctiliousness in making his father’s excuses, and the quiet courtesy with which he placed his horses at Mr. Wade’s disposal.
His manner was so free from embarrassment or assertiveness, so evidently inspired by a nice sense of proprieties, that he might have been the ambassador of one king to another.
Richards, retiring to one of the car windows, his back toward them all, his fingers beating a nerve-racking tattoo upon the glass, was his direct antithesis.
“My nephew tells me you have distinct ability as an artist,” Mr. Wade said, when, the preliminary interchange of courtesies over, the three were comfortably seated. Mr. Wade thought it was likely, too.
“Then, I may tell you that we expect him to be one of our best architects,” young Carrington returned, gracefully.
“The rising architect of Yellow Dog,” Hastings said, with a wave of his hands. “I think I shall begin by building a little bungalow here for myself.”
“A very good idea,” said Mr. Wade, decisively.
Hastings’ first phrase had smitten him with a sudden contrition. He felt, too, that if he was going to come out to Yellow Dog himself, and if his nephew stayed there he should, of course, come out once a year, at least, a cozily built bungalow, where he might be made comfortable, was in the line of a necessity. “I should get about it at once,” he declared.
“Perhaps you would like to drive about this morning, and select your site for ‘A Bungalow for One,’” said young Carrington, laughingly. There was a slightly mocking emphasis on the last word.
“I shouldn’t have it too small,” said Mr. Wade, firmly.
Richards was whistling between his teeth now, a performance which always enraged Mr. Wade.
“But we will have to let the site go for this morning, at least;” and there was a precise distinctness about Mr. Wade’s words now. “Mr. Richards has just been arranging to take us down the mine this morning.”
Richards wheeled round, surprised.
Young Carrington rose with an unhurried ease.
“Then, I must not detain you,” he said, calmly.
“And why would it not be a good idea for you to send one of your men, in whom you have full confidence, down with us?” – Mr. Wade’s tone was entirely urbane. “He would, perhaps, be able not only to assure himself of actual conditions, but to explain your contention to us in the workings under discussion.”
Richards held himself tense.
“I should like to send our shift boss, with your permission,” said young Carrington, quietly, though inwardly he exulted. “I will have him meet you at your shaft house whenever you say.”
“Mr. Wade,” said Richards, and the effort he made to control himself made the veins in his face distend purplingly, “when Mr. John Carrington is well enough to go down our mine, I shall be glad” – how the word choked him – “to take him down myself; but Trevanion, their shift boss, is at the bottom of the trouble. He’s tricky and dishonest. I’d rather resign than take him down the mine.”
For in the time that would elapse before John Carrington was able to take such a jaunt much could be done.
There was a moment’s pause, in which Richards’ claim and Carrington’s were equi-balanced. The very fact of Hastings’ personal bias held him inactive.
Then young Carrington spoke.
“I will answer for Trevanion’s honesty with my own,” he said. There was an emotional note in the voice he tried to hold steady.
“Off the same piece, I guess,” sneered Richards, nastily.
The scales swayed down on the Carrington side.
Mr. Wade’s code did not permit his guests to be insulted by his subordinates.
“My dear Mr. Carrington, you leave us no option when you take that stand,” he said, suavely. “Whenever your man is ready, then.”
“I think he is still at the house with my father,” said young Carrington, unsteadily. “I can telephone from the station here.”
Mr. Wade looked out of the window. Beside Carrington’s trap stood the landau of yesterday. “If you will drive home and bring your man over, we will go directly to the mine with Mr. Richards,” he said.
* * * * *
Young Carrington, bursting in upon his father and Trevanion, told it all in a breath.
Trevanion rose with the last word.
“The sooner I’m there the better,” he said, phlegmatically.