The other man smiled. "That won't go very far. Well, we can consider ourselves a quorum, and Mr. Jordan will go ahead."
"One moment," said Forster. "Mr. Leeson, Jimmy. Help yourself—you see the cigars."
Jimmy sat down, and glanced at the gentleman who had previously addressed him. He fancied he had heard Jordan mention him as one interested in the then somewhat decadent sealing industry, but there was not very much to be gathered from his appearance. He was plainly dressed, and elderly, and had a lean, expressionless face. It was seamed with little wrinkles, his figure was spare, and he leaned forward with an elbow on the table as if it were too much trouble to hold himself upright. In the meanwhile Jordan recommenced.
"I'll be quite frank with you as to how I'm fixed, because it will help you to understand how I got on the track of the notion," he said. "Merril has now a controlling interest in the coast mill, and I walked out because I couldn't agree with him. Well, I have some money laid by as well as my royalties, and I'm undertaking a few machinery agencies, and starting as mill expert in Vancouver. In fact, I'll sell you an American stump-puller, Mr. Forster, that will save you about half you're spending on grubbing out those fir-roots by hand labor."
"Another time!" said Leeson, with an appreciative grin. "Keep to the shipping business."
Jordan made a little gesture of resignation. "Well, as I told you already, there's a good deal of odd freight to be moved up and down this coast, and there would be more if there were better facilities. I hear of ships held up because the salmon-packers can't get their cases down, and men in Vancouver Island feeding fruit to hogs, and cutting good oats for green fodder because they couldn't put them on the market if they thrashed them. What's more, Mr. Merril has heard about it, too, and he's an enterprising man. Ran me out of that West Coast mill because I wouldn't come down on my royalties—him!"
"Off the track again!" said Leeson. "Merril has bounced a good many men out of things, but if I'm to put any money into this venture, I must have a better reason than that you want to get even."
"You'll get it," and Jordan's dark eyes snapped while his face grew animated. "What Merril thinks safe is good enough for us. He has been working up a notion of a coast shipping combine, one that's to be all Merril's, and he has two or three schooners and a big unhandy lump of a coal-eating steamer. He got her cheap, like the rest of them. Some of us know how he did it."
He glanced at Jimmy sharply before he went on again. "Now, I've been considering his programme, and he's taking hold the wrong way—screwing top freights out of everybody for a bad service, cutting down wages, and running his boats with cheap men who are going to learn to hate him. Well, with a little handy steamboat that would crawl in wherever there was a beach the ranchers could haul their stuff down to, and a policy of general conciliation, one could cut the ground right from under him."
"Quite sure of that?" said Leeson. "Without his finding it out?"