Drayton appeared to consider. “Well,” he said, “folks seem to regard you as a rising man with snap in him, and there’s a matter I might, perhaps, bring before you. Let me explain. I’ve taken an interest, outside my routine work in the lumber trade of this province and its subsidiary branches. I figured any knowledge I could pick up might stand me in some dollars some day. So far”—he smiled ruefully—“it hasn’t done so.”
“Go on,” said Vane, whose curiosity was aroused.
“Well, I think that pulping spruce—paper spruce—is likely to be scarce soon. The supply’s not unlimited and the world’s consumption is going up by jumps.”
“There’s a good deal of timber you could make pulp of in British Columbia alone,” Vane interposed.
“Sure. But there’s not a very great deal of spruce that could be milled into high-grade paper pulp; and it’s rapidly getting worked out in most other countries. Then, as a rule, it’s mixed up with the firs, cedars and cypresses; and that means the cutting of logging roads to each cluster of milling trees. There’s another point—a good deal of the spruce lies back from water or a railroad, and it would be costly to bring in milling plant or pack the pulp out.”
“That’s obvious,” said Vane: “for you might have to haul every pound of freight over a breakneck divide.”
Drayton leaned forward confidentially. “Then if one struck high-grade paper spruce—a valley full of it—with water power and easy access to the sea, there ought to be dollars in the thing?”
“Yes,” said Vane, with growing interest. “That is very probable.”
“I could put you on the track of such a valley,” Drayton replied.
“We had better understand each other. Do you want to sell me the information, and have you offered it to anyone else?”