“Come on,” he insisted. “There’s no time to lose. We can talk as we walk along. I don’t want to bother you with my family troubles, Fairbanks, but I need a reliable friend.”
“I am certainly at your service.”
“Thanks. It’s your way, you can’t help it,” commented the erratic operator. “Here’s the situation: I have a brother in business at Derby.”
“That’s seventy-five miles down the line.”
“Exactly. It seems that he owns a new mill. I don’t know exactly what he does, but it’s in the metal manufacturing line. He has invented a process for making a substitute for Babbitt metal.”
“They use some of it at the shops, I remember,” said Ralph.
“A man named Dorsett, who was his partner, started in the same line after selling out and contracting not to do so. His process is no good, and he wants to get my brother to a point where he will treat with him.”
“I see,” nodded Ralph, much interested.
“It seems that my brother in starting in for himself had to run in debt for his principal machinery. His old partner managed somehow to buy the debt from the machinery people. He has put the screws to my brother, got out an execution for four thousand dollars against him, and unless that amount and the costs of the judgment are paid by tomorrow, he takes possession, and my brother loses everything.”
“There’s lots of mean work in the world, and this is one of the hard cases,” observed Ralph.