“Most certainly I shall come, as often as you can get me an invitation, and as my job on the Ocoee will permit. I don’t propose to lose my best cousin just because I happen to have lost a lot of other things.”
This was the key-note of the cheerful tone which he contrived to preserve throughout the leave-takings. But at the car boarding he let Carfax have the tonneau to himself, taking the seat beside Rucker for the better chance it offered for a needed interval in which to bind up the wounds of the pierced amour-propre.
XXIV
The Unknown Quantity
WHEN the yellow motor-car, driven by Rucker with his customary disregard for speed limitations, had crossed the mountain and was approaching Highmount and the forking of the wood road leading to the old negro burying-ground, Tregarvon told the mechanician to stop and let him out. To Carfax he made plausible excuse: Tryon was watching at the drilling plant and he might have something to report. It was still only mid-afternoon, and Tregarvon added that he would walk to Coalville by way of the tramhead and the short-cut path.
After the car had gone on, Tregarvon kept the first part of his promise, covering the half-mile briskly. Tryon was at his post, killing time with the aid of strong tobacco and a railroad man’s clay pipe. He had relieved Rucker at noon, in accordance with his orders; there had been no Sunday-afternoon visitors—nothing to disturb the peace of the day of rest.
Tregarvon listened perfunctorily to the foreman’s report. His object in delaying his return to Coalville had been only half formed at the moment of car stopping, but it had nothing to do with checking up the day-watchman. The talk with Elizabeth and its astounding revelations had opened new vistas. With Elizabeth calmly proposing to marry some one else, if the some one else should ask her, a full half of the spur which had been driving him to fight the Ocoee battle to a finish was gone.
Under the changed conditions the sensible thing to do, after all, might be to close with the coal trust’s offer. But before committing himself finally to this, he was inclined to go to Hartridge with a frank plea for a word of friendly advice. From what had transpired it was evident that the professor of mathematics knew much more about the Ocoee and its mysteries than he had as yet been willing to tell; and though the episode of the steel cubes seemed to array him definitely on the side of the enemy, his later warning in the matter of bargain and sale was unquestionably disinterested, if not actively amicable.
Tregarvon was still considering the half-formed resolve to appeal to Hartridge when Tryon fished in the pocket of his overalls and brought up three small cubes of metal, the exact counterparts of the one which Carfax had taken from the pocket of the schoolmaster’s overcoat.
“I been savin’ these to show you,” said the foreman, handing the bits of metal to Tregarvon. “What-all d’you reckon they’re meant for?”
Tregarvon permitted the query to go unanswered. “Where did you find them?” he asked.