Emerson's voice was sharp as he cried: "I understand all that; but am I to understand also that the directors of the N. A. P. A. instructed him to kill me?"
"Tut, tut! Don't talk nonsense. You admit that you have no proof of Willis' connection with the attempt upon your life. You put yourself in the way of danger when you hired scab labor to break that strike. I think you got off very easily."
"If Marsh was instructed to crush the independents, why has he centred all his efforts on me alone? Why has he spent this summer in Kalvik and not among the other stations to the south?"
"That is our business. Different methods are required in different localities."
"Then you have no criticism to make—you uphold him?" Boyd's indignation was getting beyond control.
"None whatever. I cannot agree that Marsh is even indirectly responsible for the collision of the scows, for the damage to your machinery, or for the fighting between the men. On the contrary, I know that he is doing his best to prevent violence, because it interferes with the catch. He hired your men because he needed them. Nobody knows who broke your machinery. As for your fish-trap, you are privileged to build another, or a dozen more, wherever you please. Willis has already told me everything that you have said, and it strikes me that you have simply been outgeneraled. Your complaints do not appeal to me. Even granting your absurd assumption that Marsh tried to put you out of the way, it seems to me that you have more than evened the score."
"How?"
"He is still wearing bandages over that knife-thrust you gave him."
Emerson leaped to his feet.
"He knows I didn't do that; everybody knows it!" he cried. "He lied to you."