“No,” the more biting tones of Henderson made response. “No time for that now. Let it wait until to-night.”
“Well, what then?” Cheadle was evidently impatient. “I’m tired o’ being a door-mat, Henderson. I want to know how the big stroke is comin’, and why; and about this poor boob—what’s going to happen to him and us. No more obeying orders till I know why, boss.”
The ugly note in that voice was manifest even to Bowen. Henderson replied quickly.
“Him? Oh, leave him till to-night. I’m not going to hurt him any more; just let him know he mustn’t butt into my games after this. We’ll scatter some whisky on his clothes and take him over to the Mission and leave him. He isn’t the sort of fool who spills all he knows to the police; he’s too wise to buy chips in a stacked game! He’ll take his lesson.
“And now come along and we’ll sit in at the big game.”
Footsteps and silence. Then the two voices again, less clear this time, but quite intelligible, and a scrape of chairs.
Bowen opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor of a disordered bedroom, lighted by a dingy window. Three feet from him a curtain closed an old-style double doorway; the doors were not pulled to, and in the other room were Henderson and Cheadle. The former telephoned to some unknown “Charley,” and gave orders to be kept in touch with every move of Apex Crown. Then he and Cheadle fell into conversation, earnest and low-voiced.
Though he caught only scraps of that conversation, Bowen listened in astounded incredulity. Before him the two speakers unfolded a deeper and craftier knavery than he had ever dreamed; schooled as he was in the tricky mining game, the former agent of Dickover was now springing something unrivaled in his experience for audacity and duplicity! From the muttered voices Bowen was enabled to piece together the following scheme of things:
Cheadle was the superintendent in charge of the Apex Crown development.
Two months previously, Dickover had received private information that a chemical process for treating zinc-silver ore economically was being perfected. He had at once sent Henderson on a private trip to pick up low-grade silver properties and form a gigantic combination; for as soon as news of the chemical process reached the market, low-grade silver would soar. Henderson had found from Cheadle that the Apex Crown was petering out. The vein had been worked to death, and there was no promise of picking up anything beyond. Whereupon Henderson had conceived a plan amazingly bold and clever, Cheadle being his accessory and abettor.