“To begin with, he got me fired. It was a thing I took my chances of and wouldn’t have blamed him for; but I reckon now your father’s cement wasn’t all he was after. He wanted a pull on me.”
“I haven’t got that quite clear, but I’m an American and could do things he couldn’t, without being suspected.”
“Go on,” said Jake, in a thoughtful tone.
“Well, for a clever man, he made a very poor defense when your partner spotted his game; seemed to say if they reckoned he’d been stealing, he’d let it go at that. Then, when he’d got me and found I wasn’t the man he wanted, he turned me down. Left me to live with breeds and niggers!”
“What do you mean by your not being the man he wanted?”
Payne smiled in a deprecatory way. “I allow that I was willing to make a few dollars on the cement, but working against white men in a dago plot is a different thing.”
“Then there is a plot?”
“Well,” said Payne quietly, “I don’t know much about it, but something’s going on.”
Jake lighted a cigarette while he pondered. He was not surprised that Payne should talk to him with confidential familiarity, because the situation warranted it, and the American workman is not, as a rule, deferential to his employer. The fellow might be mistaken, but he believed that Oliva had schemed to get him into his power and work upon his wish for revenge. Jake could understand Oliva’s error. Payne’s moral code was rudimentary, but he had some racial pride and would not act like a treacherous renegade.