“I didn’t know when they was goin’ to be ready until yestiddy. Soon’s I found out I sent off a wire right off. Anyhow, you’re here, ain’t you?”
“Yes,” said the man, in a kind of a grunt. “What d’you s’pose is inside the thing?”
“Hain’t got no idee. What are you so all-fired int’rested in it for? You don’t reckon this coot of a Tidd has up and invented somethin’, do you?”
“You can never tell, my friend,” said the man; and all at once I recognized his voice. It was the same man that we saw on the depot platform and that tried to get Mr. Tidd to show him his drawings and patterns and things last fall—the fellow that worked for some machinery company in Pittsburg.
“Confound it,” he went on, snappishly, “he’s got it all covered up with casing so’s you can’t see into it at all. Wonder what his idea is. Can’t we pry into it and see?”
I calculated it was about time to do something, so I stuck my head in the window and hollered, like I’d just got there, “Hey, Mr. Willis”—which was the engineer’s name—“open the door, will you please? Mr. Tidd’ll be here in a minute, and we want to git in.”
I saw the stranger kick the floor like he was mighty mad, but there wasn’t anything Mr. Willis could do but let us in, so he didn’t get to see into the engine that time. When we got inside the stranger was gone.
“Somebody with you, wasn’t there?” I asked Mr. Willis.
He grunted out a yes, and then jerked his head back through the engine-room. “Feller tryin’ to sell oil. He just went out the other way.”
“Oh,” I says; but I didn’t believe he was selling oil or that he was gone very far away. You don’t telegraph men to come and try to sell you things.