“You meant to break them?”
“Sure! A man without money is pretty harmless; but wages are high here, and if they’d been left alone, they might have saved enough to give them a start. Now I don’t imagine the poor devils have ten dollars between them.”
“What’s your plan?”
“I don’t know yet. I thought of letting them find out the weakness of their position and then trying to buy them off; but if I’m not very careful that might give them a hold on me.”
Osborne looked thoughtful.
“I wonder whether the insurance people would consider an offer for the wreck? I wouldn’t mind putting up my share of the money.”
“It wouldn’t work,” Clay said firmly. “They’d smell a rat. I suppose you felt you’d like to give them their money back.”
“I have felt something of the kind.”
“Then why did you take the money in the first instance?”
“You ought to know. I had about two hundred dollars which you had paid me then, and I wanted to give my girl a fair start in life.”