“There mustn’t be any bad breaks; that’s all there is to that part of it,” said David, with youthful dogmatism.
“That’s the talk. And more than that, we must shave all the foolish frills out of the specifications. You know how that goes, or, if you don’t, Matt Grimsby hasn’t done his duty by you. On a job like this the railroad engineers would have us gold-plate every spike we drive, if they could. You’ve been in the contracting business long enough now to know what I mean.”
David made the sign of assent without prejudice to any of the standards of uprightness and fair play, the undermining of which he was still far from suspecting in his own case.
“I shall be working for the Grillage Engineering Company, first, last and all the time,” he asserted. “The company’s business is my business, and I haven’t any other.”
At this, the contractor-king’s gruffness fell away from him as if it were a displaced mask.
“There spoke your father, David, and a better man never lived. I was only trying you out a while back when I said that you needn’t look for the plums just because you happen to be Adam Vallory’s son. After you get a little farther up the ladder and find that you have to depend on the man or men lower down, you’ll be willing to pay high for a little personal loyalty of the sort that looks an inch or two beyond the next pay-day. I’m putting you right where I’d put a son of my own, if I had one, out yonder in the Timanyoni country, boy—and for the same reason. I want to have somebody on the job that I can bank on and swear by.”
It was the one touch needed to put the fragrant flower of personal relationship upon the juggler-grown tree of promotion. David Vallory was still young enough to take the oath of allegiance without reservations to any master strong enough and generous enough to command his loyalty, and Eben Grillage could have found no surer way to light the fires of blind, unreckoning fealty.
“A little less than a year ago, Mr. Grillage, you loaded me with the heaviest obligation a man can carry. You are adding to it now by giving me a boost big enough to make a much older man light-headed. I’d be a mighty poor sort of a son to Dad if I didn’t——”
“Never mind the obligations,” the master broke in, with a return to the brittle abruptness. “There is an old saying that the quickest way to make an enemy of a man is to do him a favor. If it isn’t working out that way in your case, why, so much the better. Now you may go back to the dinner people, if you want to. I’ve got to dictate a bunch of letters.” And the king of the contractors jabbed his square-ended thumb on a push-button to summon his secretary.