"It's a pretty dangerous thing to try to hold a man up unless you've got the drop on him, Brouillard," he said significantly. "I've got you covered from my pocket; I've had you covered that way ever since you began to buck and rear on me a couple of months ago. One little wire word to Washington fixes you for good and all. If I say the word, you'll stay on your job just as long as it will take another man to get here to supersede you."
Brouillard laughed.
"The pocket drop is never very safe, Mr. Cortwright. You are likely to lose too much time feeling for the proper range. Then, too, you can never be sure that you won't miss. Also, your assumption that I'm taking an unarmed man's chance is wrong. I can kill you before you can pull the trigger of the pocket gun you speak of—kill you so dead that you won't need anything but a coroner's jury and a coffin. How long would it take you to get action in the Washington matter, do you think?"
"I've told you; you'd have just about a week longer to live, at the furthest."
"I can better that," was the cool reply. "I have asked you to do a certain thing to-morrow night. If you don't do it, the Spot-Light will print, on the following morning, that letter I spoke of—the letter from my friend in the bureau of land statistics. When that letter is printed everybody in Mirapolis will know that you and your accomplices are plain swindlers, amenable to the criminal law, and from that moment there will never be another real-estate transfer in the Niquoia valley."
The promoter rose slowly out of his chair and stood leaning heavily with his fat hands, palms downward, on the flat-topped desk. His cheeks were puffed out and the bitten mustaches bristled like the whiskers of a gray old leader of the timber-wolves.
"Brouillard," he grated huskily, "does this mean that you're breaking with us, once for all?"
"It means more than that; it means that I have reached a point at which I am ashamed to admit that there was ever anything to break."
"Then listen: you've helped this thing along as much as, or more than, anybody else in this town; and there are men right here in Mirapolis—plenty of 'em—who will kill you like a rat in a hole if you go back on them as you are threatening to. Don't you know that?"
The younger man was balancing the paper-cutter across his finger.