“Well, the man’s getting very hard to handle, and I’m afraid I shall have trouble with him. I wish I knew more about his dealings with Carden, and was sure about his right to control this process.”
“What’s the trouble?” enquired the doctor.
“Why, when I made my arrangement with Jordan, some ten years ago, he agreed to place a detailed description of the secret process in my keeping, as an evidence of good faith and to protect me if anything happened to him. One of his conditions was that he should have the sole right to furnish me with a certain chemical that is required to be mixed with the molten iron in the furnaces, and which gives to our steel that remarkable resiliency, or elasticity, which is among its strongest features. The contract allowed Jordan to supply this chemical at regular market prices, and he has always furnished it promptly, ordering it shipped directly to him in unmarked packages from a manufacturing chemist in the east. One day last week we ran short of this material for the first time, and without saying anything to Jordan I went to our local drug store and obtained enough of the chemical the process calls for to complete the batch of steel we had in preparation. Well, the stuff didn’t work, and the whole lot was ruined. Also the foreman declared the chemical I obtained was wholly unlike the chemical Mr. Jordan had always supplied, and that made me suspicious that something was wrong. When Jordan delivered the new lot I took a sample of it to the city, and had it examined by competent chemists. It wasn’t the stuff the written formula calls for, at all, so it is evident that Jordan had deceived me in this one important ingredient, which he called by a false name, and has given me a worthless document. It’s a criminal act, and leaves me at the man’s mercy. So long as I use the stuff he supplies me with, I turn out the finest steel in all the world; but without Jordan I couldn’t manufacture a pound of it, for he alone knows the secret.”
“This seems to be quite serious,” said the doctor, gravely. “If Mr. Jordan is capable of sharp practice in one way, he may be in another.”
“That’s it. That is why I suspect the story about his loaning John Carden money, and getting the secret of the process in payment of the debt.”
The doctor wrinkled his shaggy brows into a deep frown.
“It’s all a mystery,” he said. “I knew John Carden from his boyhood days up, and a more level-headed fellow never lived. He had plenty of money when first he began to figure on a new way to make steel, for the Cardens had been well-to-do for three generations. But while I knew the man well, I was never so close to him or so intimate with him as Jordan was. The bank clerk used to sit night after night in the steel factory watching Carden with his experiments, and I believe it was that interest in his work that won Carden’s heart.”
“Quite likely,” said Mr. Williams, nodding.
“There is no doubt that John Carden spent a tremendous lot of money on those experiments,” continued the doctor; “and he told me himself, before he went away, that while he had finally perfected a process that was worth millions, he had spent every cent he possessed in doing it. Yet he made no mention of Mr. Jordan’s having loaned him money, and it was only after Mr. Carden’s death that I learned from the man’s own lips that he had been obliged to take over the right to the process to cancel the debt.”
“I don’t believe a word of it,” declared the manufacturer, positively. “But, tell me, why did Mr. Carden go away just as he had perfected his invention?”