"The originals, I mean—his preliminary copy. He must have kept something."
"Yes. But I guess they're pretty wet by now," replied Griffith, his face crackling with dry humor. "They're aboard that steamer, down on the African coast. If you want to see them, you might finance a wrecking expedition. But Tom says she went down mast-under, and there are plenty of sharks nosing along the coral reef."
Mr. Leslie winced at the word sharks, and reluctantly admitted: "I've had a long talk with my daughter. He played the part of a man. I acknowledge that I've held a strong prejudice against him. It seems, however, that in part I've been mistaken."
"Now you're talking, Mr. Leslie!"
"Only in part, I say—about his lost bridge plans. I had thought he was trying to blackmail me."
"More apt to be a black eye, if you let him know you thought that," was
Griffith's dry comment.
"He came near to resorting to violence. As I look at it now, I can't say I blame him. Those bridge plans, though—Knowing this about his inventiveness, has it not occurred to you that his plans may not have been lost, after all?"
"Look here, Mr. Leslie," said Griffith, rising with the angularity of a jumping-jack, "we've rubbed along pretty smooth since we got together last year; but Tom Blake is my friend."
"Sit down! sit down!" insisted Mr. Leslie. "You ought to see by this time that I'm trying to prove myself anything but an enemy to him."
Griffith sat down and began mechanically to load his pipe with the formidable Durham. Mr. Leslie put the tips of his fingers together, coughed, and went on in a lowered tone. "Those plans disappeared. His charge was preposterous, ridiculous—as against me. Yet if the plans were not lost, what became of them? He told me yesterday that he himself handed them to the person who was at that time acting as my secretary. You catch the point?"