Mr. Thaxter smote his gloved hands together softly and appeared to be debating a nice point with himself. When he spoke again his manner had lost the touch of brisk impersonality.
“Pardon me if I seem to crowd the mourners,” he apologized, “but it strikes me that this is a matter in which the good-natured bystander may quite properly take a hand. Is it possible that you haven’t been told of the offer made by our people to your father?”
“It is more than possible; it is a fact.”
“I am truly astonished! Your lawyers must know of it.”
“There has never been any mention of it made to me. What was the offer?”
“If I remember correctly, it was one hundred thousand dollars for all the titles.”
“Thank you!” exclaimed Tregarvon triumphantly. “That is the best news I’ve heard in many a day. If your company ever made any such an offer as that, it proves conclusively that there is coal in the property, somewhere.”
The bookkeeper shook his round head in evident dismay.
“Dear, dear!” he lamented; “I was afraid you might jump at some such conclusion as that, and it puts me in a rather awkward position. As I have said, I am only a pay-roll man in Consolidated Coal; I’m not even one of its many superintendents. Yet, as man to man, perhaps I may venture to tell you just why the C. C. & I. might still be willing to pay you the price named, though in telling you I may be betraying an official secret. You probably know that your property line on the north abuts on the Whitlow lands about an eighth of a mile from your tramway?”
Tregarvon nodded.