“I see I’ve got you guessing,” laughed the colonel gently. “This is how that private report came to be made out—that private report on which your misguided friend has built such a fabric of unjust suspicions. The men I had frozen out of the company began to threaten legal proceedings. The proceedings wouldn’t have amounted to that”—and the colonel snapped his fingers—“for those fellows hadn’t a leg to stand on; but do you know what they could have done? Why, they’d have tied up the mine for a year or two and prevented the sale to the syndicate. In order to get around that I hired Levitt to make out that fake report, and leave it where those soreheads could see it. Now my hands are free. The sale can be made to the syndicate, and we’ll all win a fortune—providing your misguided friend doesn’t take that cock-and-bull story of his to the meeting to-night.“
“Couldn’t you explain the matter to the syndicate, colonel, just as you have to me?” asked the cowboy.
“I could, yes; but they’d shy off. A little thing like that sometimes knocks a big deal galley-west. It’s best not to let any intimation of that fake report reach the ears of the syndicate until we have the syndicate’s money safely in our clothes. Young King means well—I’ll give him credit for that—but he’s shy a couple of chips this hand, and if he butts in we’re going to be left out in the cold. That’s all there is to it.”
“Why didn’t you explain this to Matt?”
“The explanation is for our own stockholders, and not for outsiders. A word, a whisper might leak through and reach the fellows who could block the deal. We mustn’t allow that. My boy, my boy”—and here the colonel became very gentle, very fatherly—“I’m doing the best I can for you. I’m trying to hand you a fortune, and you’ve got to help me—in spite of Pard Matt. It’s your duty to help me. You’ll never have such a chance to pick out a brownstone front on Easy Street, and you mustn’t let the opportunity slip through your fingers.”
To say that Joe McGlory was not influenced by the colonel’s words would be to say that he was not human. The cowboy wanted money, not for its own sake, but for the great things he felt he could do with it. Not the least of the cowboy’s desires was to help Matt in some of his far-reaching aims in the motor field. He accepted Billings’ story, and he reached out and gripped his hand heartily.
“I’m with you, chaps, taps, and latigoes!” he exclaimed. “But say, can’t I tell Pard Matt? If he knew——”
But the colonel was afraid of “Pard Matt.” The king of the motor boys had a brain altogether too keen.
“Not a word, not a syllable,” adjured Billings. “All that I have said, Joe, you must keep under your hat—until after the meeting to-night and until after the ‘Dream’ is sold. You must buckle in and help me and let Matt think what he will. Afterward, when the money is divided, you can show Pard Matt where he was wrong, and he’ll be glad to think that he did not interfere with us in our work.”
“But he’s going to interfere,” murmured McGlory. “Whenever Matt King sets out to do a thing he does it. That’s his style. He’s got the fake report, and he’ll use it at the meeting to-night—thinking he’s doing me a good turn.”