"I hope you're right"—Mudge's tone was doubtful—"but get it out of your head that he's an easy mark. I know that outfit; they're conservative as a country bank. Prescott didn't ask questions enough."
"Didn't ask questions enough? Lord amighty, he was cocked and primed."
Mudge smiled grimly.
"Not for Prescott. Besides, it's not like them to go into a proposition like this without further investigation. If they'd send an engineer back with you I'd begin to hope."
"Bosh!" Symes exclaimed impatiently. "My name counts for something in a game like this."
Mudge was unresponsive.
"Gentlemen understand each other," Symes went on complacently, "intuition—hunch—kind of a silent sympathy. I tell you, Mudge, I'm goin' to win a hat off you."
After leaving the office of Mudge, the promoter, J. Collins Prescott, sauntered into a secluded waiting room in a near-by hotel and sank into the depths of a huge leather chair. He took a voluminous type-written report from the pocket of his fashionable top-coat and fell to studying it with interest and care. He was engrossed in its contents for nearly an hour, and when he had finished he replaced it in his pocket. Then he sauntered to the telegrapher's station in the corner of the hotel office and wrote upon a blank with swift decision a telegram which seemed a trifle at variance with the almost foppish elegance of his appearance. The telegram read:
Crooked as a dog's hind leg. Buy.