“Mr. Plegg doubtless did his best, and it wasn’t good enough. David is a graduate engineer and a grown man. He would be singularly stupid if he could be your chief of construction and not know what was going on right under his eyes. But that is not the point now. Are you, or are you not, going to give David authority to do what he, and Mr. Plegg, and every member of your own engineering staff, know ought to be done to that dangerous place in the tunnel—a thing that is endangering the lives of the men every day? That is what I came to ask.”
It was a rare thing for Eben Grillage to refuse his daughter’s demands, even when they were unreasonable; but the habits of a ruthless life-time were too strong to be set aside, even at the bidding of indulgent fatherly affection.
“You are my daughter, Vinnie, but you are just like other women when you get your head set on anything. If I should let you run my business for me, there wouldn’t be any business left after a little while, and we’d both join the bread line. If you’ve made up your mind that David is the man you want, just say so and I’ll take him off the job and set him up in any kind of business you pick out—if you can pick one that measures up to your Utopian notions of honesty. That’s fair, isn’t it?”
She did not answer the question. There was one more arrow in her quiver and she fitted it to the string and drew the bow.
“The tunnel isn’t the only thing, as you know. James Lushing makes it an open boast that he will break you, and you know best what reasons he may have for thinking such a thing possible. Beyond that, David has met him and they have quarreled—fought. I have been told that Lushing’s first blow will be struck at David, to get him out of the way.”
“Who told you any such thing as that?”
“No matter; I have heard it, and I have no reason to doubt the truth of the report. David is so loyal to you that he is the biggest obstacle in Lushing’s way. Everybody knows that Lushing can command the help of any number of desperate characters in Powder Can. It wouldn’t be beyond him to——”
—“To have David killed off out of the way?” supplied the big man, with another chuckle. “If you go much deeper, you’ll be telling me that David is the man, after all. But don’t you worry. When you marry David Vallory, Vinnie, you’ll marry a man. If he is half the scrapper I take him to be, he’ll be well able to take care of himself in any mix-up with Jim Lushing—or with any of Lushing’s paid blacklegs.”
The special pleader’s eyes grew suddenly weary.
“Then you will do nothing about the tunnel?” she asked patiently.