He pulled a dirty note book from his hip-pocket.
“Wilkins,” Brainard answered quickly, “of Wilkins & Starbird, Mr. Krutzmacht’s New York attorneys.”
The reporter looked at Brainard and whistled, but he wrote down the name.
“You folks didn’t lose any time in getting busy! I s’pose there’ll be litigation and all that. Do you expect to save much from the wreck?”
“That’s what I am here for—to keep those pirates from making off with the stuff!” His eye fell upon his valise, and a sudden resolution came to him. “See here, Farson,” he said confidentially, laying a hand on the reporter’s pudgy thigh, “do you see that bag? The Pacific Northern that they’re after and the Shasta Company are right inside that bag, together with a lot of other valuable property. I’m going to take it where those pirates can’t lay a finger on it, in spite of all the courts in California!”
The reporter’s eyes grew round.
“You’ve got your nerve!” he said admiringly.
“You see, time’s money—big money. So I can’t stay here all night gassing with you. There is a train on the Santa Fé at ten, isn’t there?”
“Ten ten,” the reporter corrected.
“I must make that train, or—”