The machinery was grinding again by this time and David Vallory stood aside while the railroad engineer went carefully over the job. The big, bearded inspector took nothing for granted. The “mix” was examined, samples of the cement were taken, a handful of the sand was put into a bottle with water, shaken, and allowed to settle to determine its purity. On the work itself nothing escaped him; he even counted the steel reinforcing bars whose ends stuck up out of the rising tide of soft concrete, checking the number against the figures in his field-notes.
“Something radically wrong here,” he grinned, when the final item had been checked. “It’s the first time I haven’t found Jimmy Crawford trying to put something over on me. What’s the matter, Jimmy—got religion?”
“Sure!” said Crawford, with a sly wink for his chief. “Didn’t you know Mr. Vallory holds revival meetings in his bunk car every little while? You ought to come up some night and we’ll convert you.”
“I’m going up, right now,” Strayer announced; and it was thus that David got a motor-car ride all the way to the Gap, the railroad watch-dog enlivening the journey with additional criticisms as they went along.
It was after they had reached the headquarters camp, and David had invited the railroad man into his office bunk car for an intermission smoke, that the bluff inspector dipped abruptly into the personalities.
“I like you, Vallory,” he said, “and I’ve been wondering for a solid month how you ever came to tie up with this Grillage outfit. Would you mind telling me?”
“Not in the least. Mr. Grillage and my father are old friends; they were schoolmates.”
“That stops me dead,” was Strayer’s rejoinder. “I shan’t say any of the things I was going to say.”
“It needn’t stop you,” was David’s surrejoinder.
“But it does. Under such conditions you have personal relations with Father Eben; you can’t help having them. And that reminds me, he is in Brewster now, on his way up here. Did you know he was coming?”