Besides keeping a brotherly watch over his chief, Plegg contrived to keep in touch with the Powder Can end of things. Lushing, he learned, had been laid up for a matter of two or three days as the result of the brief card-room battle, and he was still making his headquarters in the Powder Can tavern. Thus far he had not been visible on the work, though from the increased activities of his inspectors it was apparent that he was directing a searching campaign of investigation.
Vallory’s men were required to dig try-holes beside foundation walls of abutments and retaining masonry to prove that the foundations went deep enough. Test-borings were made in the fills to ascertain their density. The slopes of the hill cuttings were surveyed and re-surveyed to make sure that the angles agreed with the map notes. In one of the bridges, Strayer—this time with apologies to David Vallory—had holes drilled to verify the placing of the reinforcing steel. In uncounted ways the investigation was pushed; to the discomfort of all concerned—and also to the sharpening of the wits of those who had something to conceal.
Throughout this interval David Vallory gave an excellent imitation of a man hard at work, riding the line incessantly, encouraging, driving; plotting with his subordinates to outwit the inspectors, and keeping a vengeful eye out for Lushing. In due time it began to be whispered about that “the little big boss,” as he was affectionately called by the rank and file, not only “had it in” for Lushing, but that he had fairly bluffed the chief inspector off the job. It was known that he went armed; and on at least one occasion when he disappeared for an hour or so in Little Creek gorge, there was some one to report that he had spent the time practicing at a target with a “forty-five.”
Naturally, with so many working crises thickly bestudding the days, David had little time to climb the hill to the Inn; or, if he had the time, he seldom took it. Duty visits he paid, indeed, to his father and sister in the tree-sheltered cottage; but these were brief—crabbedly brief when Oswald chanced to be one of the cottage’s inmates. On all of these excursions he avoided the hotel, with morose offishness in the saddle. None the less, he now and then got a glimpse of Virginia—and chanced to see her always in company with one or both of the men upon whom the desirable moon—unattainable by those who cry for it—seemed now to be shining its brightest.
It was after one of these brief evening visits to the cottage under the pines that David found Plegg waiting for him at the foot of the ridge.
“Just to make sure you shouldn’t be taken off your guard,” said the first assistant; and without further preface: “Lushing is on his way up here with a bunch of men sworn in as deputies. Crawford has just ’phoned in from bridge Number One.”
“What’s the object?”
“Nobody seems to know, but I have a guess coming. Burford, the new transit-man working with Strayer, gave me a hint. He’s a soak, and yesterday, after he’d been hitting his pocket-bottle pretty freely, he let out a word or two about something sensational which was to follow this epidemic of inspection we’ve been having.”
“Didn’t describe it, did he?”
“No; he was so plainly ‘lit up’ that I didn’t pay much attention to him. But since, I’ve been piecing the odd bits together. This dead set that the railroad force has been making at us can have only one object—to get evidence of some sort against us that will hold in court.”