“Was a simple test for nitro-glycerine, of course. You saw it blow up the test-tube, but even then only one of you,—Mr. Starbuck here,—suspected the truth. You did, didn’t you, Mr. Starbuck?”
“I had a guess comin’,” said the young mine owner quietly; adding: “That was why I took the trouble to hunt me up a pair of handcuffs when I went to get the train-orders.”
“But if there was nitro-glycerine in that tank, why didn’t it go off when the current was turned on?” queried Maxwell.
“For the very simple reason that Mr. Starbuck, at my direction, dumped a large dose of neutralizing chemical into it as we passed the tank on our way through the tunnel, and so saponified it. That was why I had the courage to hammer on the tank with my bolt, and why Stribling, not dreaming that his touchy explosive’s teeth had been drawn, nearly had a fit.”
“One other thing,” Maxwell put in. “You asked Stribling why he burned the telegraph wires out; how did you know they had been burned out?”
Sprague chuckled good-naturedly.
“I knew that at Little Butte; you might have known it if you hadn’t been so excited as to forget that you had a nose. That office, as well as the next one,—I’ve forgotten its name,—fairly reeked with the smell of burnt rubber and insulation, and I said to myself that there were only two torches in these mountains that could heat things hot enough to burn the instruments: namely, lightning and the high-voltage current from your plant in Lopez Canyon.”
Again a silence, broken only by the train clamor, settled down upon the three in the Pullman smoking-room. After a time Maxwell drew a long breath and said:
“It was a narrow squeak; a horribly narrow squeak, Calvin. We have a good deal to say nowadays about the lawlessness of the mob and the individual; but big money doesn’t seem to know that there are any such things as justice and equity and a square deal.”
Sprague sat up and methodically relighted his cigar.