“Now for the needful bit of juggling,” was Grimsby’s comment. “The railroad people have us by the neck because we have to ship everything in over their line. But we’ll fool ’em, Vallory. Luckily, the cement mill isn’t on their line. We’ll send the condemned shipment out to-night, as if we were returning it to the mill. To-morrow morning you can slip out on the passenger train and overtake the freight, say at Little River, on the F. S. & A., where we are building the power dam for the paper mill.”
David Vallory was staring out of the office window with a small frown wrinkling between his honest gray eyes. He could forecast what was coming, and while the cause seemed to be righteous enough, the expedient to which he was to resort bore all the earmarks of crookedness.
“And then?” he queried.
“Then you can take a few laborers off the dam—I’ll give you an order to Bullock authorizing it—shift the cement into other cars, and fire it back here. When it comes in, it’ll figure as a new shipment, and you’ll have to doctor the railroad way-bills a bit to make them fit.”
It was the first time in his working experience that David had been asked to carry out a piece of deliberate trickery, though there had been other occasions when he had helped to throw dust into the eyes of the too-critical railroad inspectors. Quite naturally, his point of view in these smaller deceptions had been that of the men who figured with him as Eben Grillage’s paid henchmen; but this cement “juggling,” as Grimsby had baldly named it, had all the characteristics of a crime.
“It’s a rotten shame that we have to get down to such methods!” he protested. “Let me go to Mr. Esher with the result of these university tests and Professor Luthe’s letter. Taking them together they ought to convince him that we’re not trying to put a spoiled batch of cement across on him.”
Grimsby’s smile was too well guarded to betray his real meaning.
“Esher would turn you down cold. It’s his business to stand by his own laboratory, of course, and he’ll do it. I didn’t ask you to get this college analysis with any hope of convincing Esher with it; I merely wanted you to be satisfied in your own mind. You see what we’re up against. If we have to throw away that shipment of Portland, it will mean a good chunk of loss for the Grillage Engineering Company. You said you owed the big boss something; now’s the time to prove that you weren’t talking through your hat.”
Thus appealed to, David stifled his qualms; and the next day he carried out his instructions faithfully and to the letter. The condemned material was overhauled at Little River and was shunted into the Engineering Company’s own construction yard at the dam. Here it was shifted to other cars by Bullock’s laborers, and the juggling process was brought into play. To the F. S. & A. agent at Little River, David merely stated a fact. He was shipping three car-loads of cement from the company’s yard at the dam to the bridge at Coulee du Sac. Would the agent way-bill them accordingly?
“Ship cement in one day and out the next, do you?” grinned the railroad man. “Didn’t I see the yard crew shoving these three cars over to the dam yesterday?”