One afternoon Trabue, the unadvertised dictator of American Oil and Gas, sat with several of his close subordinates in a conference that had to do with Martin Harrison, the man he assumed to ignore.
“Unless some unforeseen thing sends oil soaring,” ventured Oliver Morris, “this fellow Spurrier is having his trouble for his pains. My idea is that he’s seeking to tease us into counter activity—and trail after us in the profits.”
“And if something should send oil soaring,” crisply countered Cosgrove, “he’d have us distanced with a runaway start.”
“Who is this man Spurrier?” demanded Trabue himself. “What does our research department report?”
“He’s a protégé of Martin Harrison’s.”
Trabue appeared to find the words illuminating, and a shrewd irony glinted in his brief smile.
“If he’s Harrison’s man, he’s out to knife me—and he has resources at his back. Tell me more about him.”
Cosgrove took from his portfolio a neatly typed memorandum, and read from it aloud:
Former army officer who gained the sobriquet of “Plunger” Spurrier: Court-martialed and convicted upon charge of 227 murder, and pardoned through efforts of Senator Beverly. Associated with various enterprises as a general investigator and initiative expert. Rumor has it that Harrison is grooming him as his own successor.
“If his reputation is that of a plunger,” argued Morris, “my guess is that he’s playing a long-shot bet for a killing.”