Eben Grillage’s answer to this was brutally direct.
“I’m running the business end of this company’s affairs, Plegg, and when I want your help I’ll call on you. But since you’ve gone this far, I’ll tell you a thing or two. Lushing hasn’t been idle since he climbed over the fence into the railroad pasture. He’s been building prejudice against us to beat the band. If we’d make the break you suggest, I wouldn’t put it beyond him to claim that we’d shaken that roof up purposely with dynamite to get an excuse to run a force account job in on them. Such things have been done, on other jobs, and I shouldn’t wonder if Lushing had helped do some of ’em. No; our safe play is to let sleeping dogs lie.”
“But if somebody should take the trouble to wake this particular dog?” Plegg put in quietly.
“Put Lushing on?” queried the big man at the desk.
“Yes.”
“Who would do it?”
“The bad roof is an open secret. The men in the tunnel shifts all know about it.”
“But none of our men will go to Lushing. They hate him too well.”
“There is one other man who knows about it, too.”
“Who is that?”