“The same,” said David.
“Did he know of your effort in this direction?”
“He did.”
“And yet he tried to warn you through the woman Fallon? What sort of a desperado is he, Mr. Vallory?”
“Really, I don’t know,” David confessed. “He is rather beyond me. Desperado is the word; he has a perfectly horrifying list of shootings to his credit, and is, generally, what is known west of civilization as a ‘bad man.’ And yet he agreed with me when I told him that his dives ought to be cleaned up, and that I was going to try to clean them up; adding that some day he might do it himself, if I didn’t beat him to it.”
“That would be a miracle, indeed,” said the railroad president.
“Yet it is one that is already wrought,” David put in. “Mr. Plegg—my assistant—assures me that the Powder Can saloons and gambling dens were all closed on the night of the tunnel explosion, and that Dargin had sent him word that they would not be reopened.”
Again the big-bodied president smiled. “We are living in an age of wonders, Mr. Vallory. This man Dargin’s action proves it, and, if you will permit me to say it, so does yours in asking for this conference. Do you know what has become of Lushing?”
“I do not. When it became known, as it was almost immediately, that the tunnel disaster was not an accident, Lushing disappeared, together with his accomplices. But, as I have pointed out, we have the evidence.”
“You could scarcely make a legal case against the railroad company,” said the president. “Lushing was acting entirely on his own responsibility when he stepped over into the criminal field to satisfy his grudge against you and Mr. Grillage. But I understand from what you have said that you have no intention of taking the matter into the courts.”