Laughlin glanced sharply at the speaker as if a new idea had struck him. “I don’t know about that,” he said; “I’m not through with the case yet. He’s going to take one of my furnaces, that will give him a dollar a week more; and perhaps by the end of another week we can find where the trouble lies.”
“But you want the dollar a week yourself, Dave,” cried Poole, indignantly. “That’s like you. You start out to discover how Ware and I can help White: the first day you give him some of your work, the second you’ll be doing your work and his too. Where do we come in, I’d like to know?”
“I’ll let you fellows know when there’s a chance for you,” said Laughlin, smiling. “At present I’m the whole team.”
“He’s scabbed our job,” said Ware, in disgust.
Two or three days after this Laughlin hunted up Poole and informed him that his time had come. Underfed, overworked, worried, White had at last given out, and he now lay in bed, feverish and weak, and desperate at the thought that a long illness might be before him. In his helpless state his lips had been unsealed and he had spoken freely and fully of his affairs. It was Marchmont’s long-continued delay in paying the debt that had forced him to these privations.
“The thief!” cried Poole. “Think of his borrowing money from a poor fellow when he was in debt to him already, and then coolly letting him starve! If that isn’t the lowest-down trick for a fellow of his front!”
“Here is where you come in,” said Laughlin. “I wanted him to let me go to Mr. Graham and get his help to collect it; but White wouldn’t hear of it—he thinks it wouldn’t be the right thing, you know. The only way to keep that fellow out of the hospital is to make Marchmont pay the bill, and you’re the man to do it.”
“No, I’m not,” replied Poole, slowly. “Marchmont wouldn’t do anything for me if he could help it, and I should be mad before I’d said ten words.”
“And I’m not, either,” sighed Laughlin. “I’ve never spoken to him a dozen times in my life, and yet he seems to hate me as if I were his worst enemy.”
A few minutes later Lindsay looked up in surprise to see Poole and Laughlin walk solemnly into his room. The former had made very infrequent visits of late; the latter had never appeared there before.