“I have intended speaking to you about one or two matters. Since Walsh left I’ve been going over all our affairs.”
Colonel Craighill stared at his son in frank surprise.
“You have been checking over the securities? If you had asked me I could have saved you a good deal of bother. I have them all tabulated so that their salient features can be seen at a glance of the eye.”
“Yes; I have a copy of your synopsis and have been checking it.”
“I have had that done from time to time so that it has been kept up to date. I’m glad, however, that you are taking an interest in these matters.”
“The whole story is not told in your list,” said Wayne, ignoring his father’s approval.
“Very likely; only the more important items are noted.”
“In the case of that Gregory property you put into the Sand Creek combination, Gregory maintains that he has a claim—I don’t quite understand what it is. He’s a hard one to get anything out of.”
“I don’t recall just the terms of that arrangement, but the old fellow’s become a great nuisance. The whole Sand Creek field used to be covered with shafts sunk by small operators who were killing each other by preposterous competition. When we organized the Sand Creek Company and took them all over, we were obliged to shut down two-thirds of the old shafts to make anything out of any of them. As I remember, I made the deal with Gregory myself, more out of kindness to him than anything else. I had known him many years and he had been unfortunate. It has always been my policy to deal generously with such cases. The vein through his acreage is poor, the coal inferior and with many ugly faults in it.”
“But there’s a lower vein that is all right. I found the engineer’s report with an estimate of the amount of coal in his hundred acres.”