Then he read it again to himself. At last he said, "I confess I don't see anything so very mysterious in that. We've lost a contract, I suppose; but that must have happened lots of times before, hasn't it?"
"It's happened twice before, this fall," returned Mr. Wheatcroft, fiercely, "after our bid had been practically accepted and just before the signing of the final contract!"
"Let me explain, Wheatcroft," interrupted the elder Whittier, gently. "You must not expect my son to understand the ins and outs of this business as we do. Besides, he has only been in the office ten days."
"I don't expect him to understand," growled Wheatcroft. "How could he? I don't understand it myself!"
"Close that door, Paul," said Mr. Whittier. "I don't want any of the clerks to know what we are talking about. Here are the facts in the case, and I think you will admit that they are certainly curious: Twice this fall, and now a third time, we have been the lowest bidders for important orders, and yet, just before our bid was formally accepted, somebody has cut under us by a fraction of a cent and got the job. First we thought we were going to get the building of the Barataria Central's bridge over the Little Makintosh River, but in the end it was the Tuxedo Steel Company that got the contract. Then there was the order for the fifty thousand miles of wire for the Trans-continental Telegraph; we made an extraordinarily low estimate on that. We wanted the contract, and we threw off, not only our profit, but even allowances for office expenses; and yet five minutes before the last bid had to be in, the Tuxedo Company put in an offer only a hundred and twenty-five dollars less than ours. Now comes the telegram to-day. The Methuselah Life Insurance Company is going to put up a big building; we were asked to estimate on the steel framework. We wanted that work—times are hard and there is little doing, as you know, and we must get work for our men if we can. We meant to have this contract if we could. We offered to do it at what was really actual cost of manufacture—without profit, first of all, and then without any charge at all for office expenses, for interest on capital, for depreciation of plant. The vice-president of the Methuselah, the one who attends to all their real estate, is Mr. Carkendale. He told me yesterday that our bid was very low, and that we were certain to get the contract. And now he sends me this." Mr. Whittier picked up the telegram again.
"But if we were going to do it at actual cost of manufacture," said the young man, "and somebody else underbids us, isn't somebody else losing money on the job?"
"That's no sort of satisfaction to our men," retorted Mr. Wheatcroft, cooking himself before the fire. "Somebody else—confound him!—will be able to keep his men together and to give them the wages we want for our men. Do you think somebody else is the Tuxedo Company again?"
"What of it?" asked Mr. Whittier. "Surely you don't suppose——"
"Yes, I do," interrupted Mr. Wheatcroft, swiftly. "I do, indeed. I haven't been in this business thirty years for nothing. I know how hungry we get at all times for a big, fat contract; and I know we would any of us give a hundred dollars to the man who could tell us what our chief rival has bid. It would be the cheapest purchase of the year, too."
"Come, come, Wheatcroft," said the elder Whittier; "you know we've never done anything of that sort yet, and I think you and I are too old to be tempted now."