“About keeping that tunnel situation dark, Plegg: I’ve been thinking that some of our men might take me too literally—that possibly you did,” was the way the modifying clause was introduced. “I was pretty savage that night. I told you that Lushing shot at me, but let you infer that he missed. It was a miss, but it wouldn’t have been if my field-note book hadn’t turned the bullet.”
“I saw the hole in your coat afterwards,” said Plegg quietly.
“Yes; the shock stopped the clock for me, and the gambling house people carried me out for dead—thought I was dead. Naturally, when the clock got to running again, I was hot; was still pretty warm when I talked with you at Brady’s. Of course, I didn’t mean to convey the idea that Lushing, or any member of his staff, was to be massacred out of hand.”
“Of course not,” the first assistant agreed, readily enough. “But we are not to let them find out about the ‘fault,’ are we?”
“Not if we can help it without going to extremes. Mr. Grillage will be back before long, and I’m going to put that tunnel-roof question up to him again good and hard. I know what it will mean to us if we have to dig that hollow tooth out and fill it, but just the same, the responsibility is getting too heavy for me, Plegg. It’s got so I wake up in the night to think about it, and that’s bad medicine.”
Plegg offered no comment on this, but he made haste to pass the word to Regnier that guile, and not violence, was henceforth to be used in preserving the secret of the bad roof. Shortly after the word-passing Regnier had a deduction of his own to proffer. It was to be inferred that the secret had finally escaped, through the man Backus, or otherwise, and that Strayer’s accident had been taken as a warning. None of the railroad inspectors were venturing into the tunnel since Strayer had been injured, Regnier reported.
Beyond this, there was a plot of some sort afoot, so Regnier told Plegg. An attempt had been made to bribe one of the portal watchmen posted to keep unauthorized visitors out of the tunnel, and the briber was one of the Powder Can dive-keepers—not Dargin, but one of his concessionaries, who was also known as “Black Jack.” The watchman had proved incorruptible, and had reported the attempt to Regnier. His story was that he had been offered a certain sum of money if he would find out when Vallory was to be in the tunnel at any shift-changing time, and would use the working telephone to notify the briber beforehand.
Plegg said nothing of this to his chief, but it made him doubly watchful. Also, it made him fertile in excuses to keep Vallory from making any but strictly unannounced visits to Heading Number One. Time was all the first assistant hoped to gain. It was reported that Mr. Grillage’s private car was on its way back from Red Butte, and there was the slender chance that, with the president on the ground again, something might be done to clear the air and quiet the various gathering menaces.
This was the situation at the close of the day when the private Pullman Athenia came in and was shunted to its former position on the spur track. At the moment of its arrival David Vallory was making a tour of the lower camps. Plegg was in the construction yard, and he saw Eben Grillage and his fishing companion leave the car and go up to the Inn together. And after dinner he saw the king of the contractors come back to the car alone. Later still, the first assistant, smoking his pipe on the platform of the office bunk car, saw a woman descending the path from the hotel. Recognizing the big boss’s daughter, Plegg dutifully went across the yard tracks to meet her.
“Thank you, Mr. Plegg,” she said, as he came up. “I imagine I was just about to lose myself. Whereabouts is the Athenia?”