Bruce was not a fool but neither was he apt to be suspicious of a person he had no good reason to mistrust. He had made every allowance for Jennings’ slowness, but his bank account was rapidly reaching a stage where, even if he would, he could no longer humor Jennings’ mania for solidity. Something had to move, and, taking Jennings aside, Bruce told him so.
The look which darkened Jennings’s face when his instructions to Woods were countermanded surprised Bruce. It was more than chagrin, it was—ugly. It prejudiced Bruce against him as all his puttering had failed to do. The correctness or incorrectness of his contention concerning the cross-arm seemed of less importance than the fact that Bruce’s interference had impaired his dignity—belittled him in the eyes of the crew.
“Am I the constructin’ ingineer, or ain’t I? If I am, I’m entitled to some respect.” More than ever Jennings looked like a bear pouting in a trap.
“What’s your dignity got to do with it?” Bruce demanded. “I’m General Manager, when it comes to that, and I’ve been packing cross-arms like a mule. This is no time to talk about what’s due you—get results. This pay-roll can’t go on forever, Jennings. There’s an end. At this rate it’ll come quick. You know what the success of this proposition means to me—my first, and, I beg of you don’t putter any more; get busy and put up those machines. You say that 50 horse-power motor has got to be rewound—”
“One man can’t work on that alone,” Jennings interrupted in a surly tone. “I can’t do anything on it until that other electrician comes in.”
“Get Smaltz to help you.”
“Smaltz! What does he know. Him holding out for them four-be-five cross-arms shows what he knows.”
“Sometimes I think he knows a good deal more than he lets on.”
“Don’t you think it,” Jennings sneered. “He don’t know half as much as he lets on. Jest one of them rovin’ windjammers pickin’ up a little smatterin’ here and there. Run a power-house in the Coeur d’Alenes. Huh—what’s that! This here feller that I got comin’ is a ’lectrical genius. He’s worked with me on drudgers, and I know.”