“I see, I see,” reiterated Slack, “and, by virtue of that rider in the government contract, the limits would be returned to us on the terms of our old tender with an extension of time for the completion of our mill. Great Scott, that would mean too that the Kam City people would have a useless mill on their hands they’d be forced to turn over to the North Star at its own price. That’s strategy for you, with a vengeance!”
“Good!” Acey Smith’s approval came with a sardonic chuckle. “It is to be hoped the International Investment Corporation and the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills Company make the same wild deductions that you do, Slack.”
Slack blanched under the rebuff. “Why, what do you mean?” he cried.
“Just this,” replied the other. “Do you think the North Star would allow this tremendous issue to depend on such an obvious and clumsy piece of trickery? Why, man, the Kam City Company would have legal redress whereby they could force us to settle the strike and live up to our delivery contract in less than a week’s time.”
“Then what on earth is the object of the strike?”
“It’s a blind—to hide the real coup.”
“And the real coup?”
“One individual could answer that question—J.C.X.”
Slack was silent a moment, then he blurted rather than asked: “Tell me as man to man, Smith, are you J.C.X.?”
“I have wondered that you did not ask me that before,” returned the superintendent quietly. “I can inform you, as man to man, I am not J.C.X.