"You're serious?"
"I don't guarantee he can do it. I do say, I won't be any too surprised if he pulls it off. It's a thing that calls for invention. He'll swear he hasn't an ounce of it in him—says he just happens to blunder on things, or applies what he has picked up. All gas! He once showed me some musty old drawings that made it look like one of his grandfathers ought to be credited with the basic inventions of a dozen machines that to-day are making the owners of the patent-rights rich. Guess some of that grandfather's bump can be located on Tom's head."
"Inventor—h'm—inventor!" muttered Mr. Leslie half to himself. "That puts rather a different face on that bridge matter."
"As how?" casually asked Griffith, beginning to scrape afresh at his pipe-bowl.
Mr. Leslie considered, and replied with another question: "At the time of the competition in plans for the bridge, did you know that Blake was to be a contestant?"
"He writes letters about as often as a hen gets a tooth pulled. But I got a letter the time you mention,—a dozen lines or so, with another added, saying that he was in for a whirl at the Michamac cantilever."
"You've shown him Ashton's bridge plans?"
"Not yet. He's been too busy on the Zariba field books."
"You've seen his own plans for the bridge?"
"No. They were lost."