“Great guns!” exclaimed the superintendent; “how in the name of common-sense was anybody going to suspect that you needed to know? That summer colony is as old as Brewster. But go ahead and tell me more. I’m interested, if I don’t look it.”
“There isn’t much to tell. I found her; met her. She is stopping with an aunt of hers, and by chance—good luck you’d say—I have something a little better than a speaking acquaintance with the aunt—through some common friends in New York. There’s nothing to it, Richard. The girl can have her pick—she has already turned down a couple of English titles—and she isn’t going to pick any such overgrown slob of a man as your humble. Let’s talk about something else.”
“If I branch off, it will be into my own grief,” said Maxwell half-reluctantly. “I had another wire from Ford this afternoon. The big-money people are getting ready to swat us again, and Ford admits that he can’t find out where it is to come from, or what it is to be. If it wasn’t for the name of the thing, and what I owe Ford, I’d be about ready to throw up my job, Calvin. I have money enough to live on, and this business of dragging along from day to day with the feeling that any minute you may get the knife between your ribs isn’t very exhilarating.”
“You say Ford can’t give you any hint of what is coming next?”
“Not the slightest. But there is something in the wind. You know Kinzie, the president of the Brewster National Bank? He cornered me last night at the club and asked a lot of queer questions that didn’t seem to have any particular bearing on anything.”
“What kind of questions?” inquired the expert.
“Oh, about our right-of-way through the town of Copah, and about our outstanding floating debts, and finally about a ridiculous damage suit that has been dragging its way through the courts.”
Sprague sat up and relighted his fat, black cigar.
“What about the damage suit?” he asked.
“It’s a piker’s graft,” was the half-impatient rejoinder. “We have a little branch line over to the bauxite mines in the western edge of the county. The telegraph company doesn’t maintain an office, and our agent is authorized to handle what few commercial telegrams there are. It seems that one came for a man named Hixon, a prospector whose exact whereabouts could not be ascertained at the moment. The message was three days old when it was delivered, and Hixon sued for ten thousand dollars damages; said he’d lost the sale of a mine by the delay.”