“Naturally,” said Sprague coolly.
“Great Jehu! was that what you meant when you were making me dig this Mesquite project over for you the other day?”
“I didn’t want to drag you into it, and don’t yet,” said Sprague quietly. “You’ve had grief enough for one summer. But the detective half of me tells me that there is little doubt that this thing is another attempt on the part of the big-money crowd to side-swipe your railroad off the map. It can be done, and you have no preventive recourse; Stillings says you haven’t.”
“But, Calvin—something’s got to be done! Are we going to sit still and——”
“One kind of a something is doing itself, right now,” interrupted Sprague. “It’s your play, this time, to keep out of it, if you can. You’d say that the High Line people, J. Montague Smith and his crowd, inspired that blast in The Tribune this morning, wouldn’t you?”
“It looks that way, yes.”
“Well, let them stir up the mud and make the fight. You sit tight in the boat and say nothing. What kind of an agent or operator have you at Angels?”
“Disbrow?—he’s a good man; so good that I’m going to promote him to a better station next week.”
“Let that promotion wait a while. Give this good man instructions to watch every move that Jennings makes, and to report at once anything out of the ordinary that may happen. Do you get that?”
“I’ll do it. Anything else?”