Carfax stopped abruptly and said no more.
Tregarvon had dropped into a chair beside the table, and was hiding his face in the crook of an elbow. Carfax stopped abruptly and said no more; and when he closed the door behind him it was done so gently that the latch made no sound.
XII
Dull Steel
RUCKER proved as good as his word in the matter of estimating the delay, two days sufficing for the work of restoration. Having made a test run in the evening after Tregarvon had gone down the mountain, the mechanician had the machinery whirling merrily to the chug chug of the drill by the time his two bosses came on the ground the following morning.
Among his better qualities Tregarvon was able to number a certain degree of resilience which, given time to take the full impact of a blow, could recover and rebound and make the best of the inevitable. Whatever might have come of the intimacy with Richardia Birrell—and he told himself that nothing could have come of it in any event—it was now an episode ended; and after a night of very much mingled emotions, he had risen up with the determination to play the man, for Carfax’s sake if not for his own, and to let the industrial battle fill all the horizons for one Vance Tregarvon. With this determination firmly seated in the saddle, he had constrained himself to meet Carfax at breakfast without bitterness; to motor with him up the mountain in terms of good-fellowship; and, upon their arrival, to shout cheerfully to Rucker.
“Got her going all right again, have you, Billy? Any more puzzle people come to see you last night?”
Rucker grinned sheepishly.
“I ain’t goin’ to lie about it, Mr. Tregarvon. What with pushin’ the job so bloomin’ hard yesterday, and losin’ so much sleep between whiles, I guess they might’ve come and lugged me off bodily without my knowin’ it.”
“And you didn’t find anything wrong this morning?”