Tregarvon’s ill temper vanished like the dew on a summer morning. “You are certainly an enemy of a hitherto unsuspected variety!” he declared. “We’ve been having a good bit of trouble, first and last; some of it bearing all the earmarks of design on somebody’s part. Do you know for a while I thought you might be inspiring it? That was before Carfax discovered you personally, of course.”
Wilmerding’s laugh was good-naturedly derisive.
“I hope you didn’t think so small of Consolidated Coal as to suspect it of popping at you with a boy’s whip!” he retorted. “By and by, when you find your coal and meet us in the open market, we may have to buy you or smash you. But it will be done in the good, old-fashioned commercial way.”
“We shall be there when you put up the large come-off-the-perch bluff,” Carfax thrust in gently. “But in the meantime, somebody is popping at us with the boy’s whip.”
“Who?—for a guess?” asked the Whitlow superintendent.
“Ah!” said Carfax, in the same gentle tone, “I have a thousand dollars somewhere about my belongings that would be delighted to blow itself against the real answer to that question.”
“And you have no clue?”
Carfax smiled. “A dozen of them, more or less. But they all have a way of coming out by the roots when we begin to pull on them ever so cautiously.”
“You are calling me the enemy, but that doesn’t count until the real fight opens up,” said Wilmerding. “If any suggestion of mine will help while you are clawing for a foothold.... By the way, that reminds me: I made an analysis of your coals the other day. Thaxter didn’t have one, didn’t seem to know anything definite about the Ocoee.”
“Well?” queried Tregarvon. “Do you agree with Captain Duncan?”