“I hired him to keep him away from Pembroke. The judge was waiting when we got back to the garage. But he was too late. I had already taken Clancy into my employ at fifty dollars a month.”
“Didn’t the judge offer him what I was getting?”
“Yes,” chuckled Rockwell, “but the fellow has got peculiar ideas about business. He wouldn’t accept the judge’s offer of seventy-five a month when he had hired out to me for fifty.”
“I thought he was a fool!” grunted Hibbard.
“He’s easy. He wants to be straight and square, he says, and——”
“And work for you!” struck in the other significantly.
“No comments, Dirk. I do as legitimate a garage business as I can, but, with the commissions demanded by you drivers, I have to figure close and use tact in order to make a living. If chauffeurs would play fair, garage keepers wouldn’t have to scheme so confounded hard to make both ends meet.”
“Piffle!” sneered Hibbard. “Everybody knows you’re a skinner, Rocks, and if the drivers didn’t make you whack up with them you’d stuff all the ‘velvet’ into your own pocket.”
“That’s your way of looking at it,” Rockwell answered patiently, “but you’re wrong. That has nothing to do with this case, though.”