“Didn’t he tell you why he drew Walton’s pay?”
“Not a word. Said he’d explain accounts when he got here, but that sort of thing takes a lot of explaining.”
“Well,” said the judge, “I can tell you. Walton’s pay went to his widow, through me. I’ve been doing some puzzling on this case already. Now will you tell me how Alan got the money without drawing on you?”
“Oh, there was plenty of money lying around. The job cost ten per cent. less than Walton’s estimate. If he’d come back, we’d have hauled him over the coals for that blunder. There was the usual reserve for work in inaccessible regions, and then the people we did the job for paid ten days’ bonus for finishing that much ahead of contract time.”
The judge mused.
“Was the job satisfactory to the people out there?” he asked.
“Yes, it was,” said McDale, bluntly; “most satisfactory. But there was a funny thing there, too. They wrote that while they did not approve of Mr. Wayne’s time-saving methods, the finished work had their absolute acceptance.”
The judge was silent for a moment.
“You want my advice?” he asked.
“Yes; not for our own sake, but for Wayne’s.”