“Now, here,” spoke up Wiley, “don’t go to slapping that dog. How much do you want for the bunch?”
“Four hundred dollars!” barked Charley, and stood watchful and expectant as Wiley sat deep in thought.
“All right,” he said, and as he wrote out the check Death Valley chuckled and leered at Heine.
106CHAPTER XII
The Expert
Like the way of an eagle in the air or the way of a man with a maid, the ways of a mining promoter must be shrouded in mystery and doubt. For when he wants to buy, no man will sell; and when he wants to sell, no man will buy; and when he will neither buy nor sell he is generally suspected of both. Wiley Holman had two fights and a charge of buckshot to prove that he wanted the Paymaster, and the fact that he had refused a half interest for nothing to prove that he did not want it. Also he had sold his tax-title to the property for the sum of one hundred dollars. What then did it signify when he bought Virginia’s despised stock for four hundred dollars, cash down? The man who could answer that could explain the way of a man with a maid.
Samuel J. Blount made the claim–and he had his pile to prove it–that he could think a little closer than most men. A little closer, and a little farther; but the Paymaster had been his downfall. He had played the long game to get possession of the mine, only to find he had bought a white 107elephant. Every day that he held it he had thrown good money after bad and he sent out a search party for Wiley Holman. Wiley had refused half the mine, but that only proved that half of the mine did not appeal to him–perhaps he would take it all. Samuel J. had been a student for a good many years in the school of predatory business and he had learned the rules of the game. He knew that the buyer always decried the goods and magnified each tiny defect, whereas the seller by as natural a process played up every virtue to the limit. But any man who inspected the goods was a potential buyer of the same, and Wiley had shown more than a passing interest in the fate of the unlucky Paymaster. And Wiley was a mining engineer.
They met in the glassed-in office of Blount in the ornate Bank of Vegas and for a half an hour or more Wiley sat tipped back in his chair while Blount talked of everything in general. It was a way he had, never to approach anything directly; but Wiley favored more direct methods.
“I understood,” he remarked, bringing his chair down with a bang, “that you wanted to see me on business?”
“Yes, yes, Wiley,” soothed Blount, “now please don’t rush off–I wanted to see you about the Paymaster.”