Her friend had learned what she wanted to know, and the knowledge of it troubled her. She would have given a good deal to have been able to lift this sorrow from the girl riding beside her. For she was aware that Aline Harley might as well have reached for the moon as that toward which her untutored heart yearned. She had come to life late and traveled in it but a little way. Yet the tragedy of it was about to engulf her. No lifeboat was in sight. She must sink or swim alone. Virginia’s unspoiled heart went out to her with a rush of pity and sympathy. Almost the very words that Waring Ridgway had used came to her lips.
“You poor lamb! You poor, forsaken lamb!”
But she spoke instead with laughter and lightness, seeing nothing of the girl’s distress, at least, until after they separated at the door of the hotel.
CHAPTER XIII.
FIRST BLOOD
After Ridgway’s cavalier refusal to negotiate a peace treaty, Simon Harley and his body-guard walked back to the offices of the Consolidated, where they arrived at the same time as the news of the enemy’s first blow since the declaration of renewed war.
Hobart was at his desk with his ear to the telephone receiver when the great financier came into the inner office of the manager.
“Yes. When? Driven out, you say? Yes—yes. Anybody hurt? Followed our men through into our tunnel? No, don’t do anything till you hear from me. Send Rhys up at once. Let me know any further developments that occur.”
Hobart hung up the receiver and turned on his swivel-chair toward his chief. “Another outrage, sir, at the hands of Ridgway. It is in regard to those veins in the Copper King that he claims. Dalton, his superintendent of the Taurus, drove a tunnel across our lateral lines and began working them, though their own judge has not yet rendered a decision in their favor. Of course, I put a large force in them at once. To-day we tapped their workings at the twelfth level. Our foreman, Miles, has just telephoned me that Dalton turned the air pressure on our men, blew out their candles, and flung a mixture of lime and rocks at them. Several of the men are hurt, though none badly. It seems that Dalton has thrown a force into our tunnels and is holding the entrances against us at the point where the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth levels touch the cage. It means that he will work those veins, and probably others that are acknowledged to be ours, unless we drive them out, which would probably be a difficult matter.”
Harley listened patiently, eyes glittering and clean-shaven lips pressed tightly against his teeth. “What do you propose to do?”
“I haven’t decided yet. If we could get any justice from the courts, an injunction.”