Out of the Primitive Part 26

"How about Ashton's contract?"

"He'll be satisfied with the glory. Reports will continue to name him as Resident Engineer. If he won't listen to reason, I'll ask his father to drop him a line. The young fool has had his allowance cut twice already. He'd consider his pay as engineer a bare pittance."

"Heir to the Ashton millions, eh?" croaked Griffith.

"If I know George Ashton, he has a good safe will drawn, providing that his fortune is to be held in trust. That fool boy won't have any chance to squander more than his allowance,--and he won't keep me now from paying off this obligation to Blake."

"Perhaps not. I'm not so sure, though, that Tom will--One thing's certain. He won't go up to Michamac right away."

"He won't? Why not? It's just the time for him to get the run of things, now while there's no work going on."

"He'd catch on quick enough. It's not that. Fact is, he's got hold of something a lot bigger, and I know he'll not quit till he has either won out or it has downed him. Never knew of but one thing that ever downed him."

Mr. Leslie glared at the engineer, his face reddening with rage.

"Something bigger!" he repeated. "So the fellow has bragged about it!"

Griffith stared back, perplexed by the other's sudden heat. "Guess we've got our wires crossed," he said. "I told him, of course. He didn't know anything about it."

"What you talking about?" demanded Mr. Leslie, puzzled in turn.

"The Zariba Dam."

"That!" exclaimed Mr. Leslie, and his face cleared. "H'm,--what about the dam?"

"I had about thrown it up. I'm giving Tom a go at it."

Mr. Leslie's eyebrows bristled in high curves.

"What! wasting time with a man like that? If _you've_ given it up, we'll try England or Europe."

"No use. Plenty of good men over there. They can give us pointers on some things. But if they've ever done anything just like this Zariba Dam, they've kept it out of print."

"But an unknown second-rate engineer!"

"That's what's said of every first-rater till he gets his chance."

"You're serious?"

"I don't guarantee he can do it. I do say, I won't be any too surprised if he pulls it off. It's a thing that calls for invention. He'll swear he hasn't an ounce of it in him--says he just happens to blunder on things, or applies what he has picked up. All gas! He once showed me some musty old drawings that made it look like one of his grandfathers ought to be credited with the basic inventions of a dozen machines that to-day are making the owners of the patent-rights rich. Guess some of that grandfather's b.u.mp can be located on Tom's head."

"Inventor--h'm--inventor!" muttered Mr. Leslie half to himself. "That puts rather a different face on that bridge matter."

"As how?" casually asked Griffith, beginning to sc.r.a.pe afresh at his pipe-bowl.

Mr. Leslie considered, and replied with another question: "At the time of the compet.i.tion in plans for the bridge, did you know that Blake was to be a contestant?"

"He writes letters about as often as a hen gets a tooth pulled. But I got a letter the time you mention,--a dozen lines or so, with another added, saying that he was in for a whirl at the Michamac cantilever."

"You've shown him Ashton's bridge plans?"

"Not yet. He's been too busy on the Zariba field books."

"You've seen his own plans for the bridge?"

"No. They were lost."

"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?"

"Um-m," grunted Griffith, his face as emotionless as a piece of crackled wood.

"Young Ashton was my secretary. He resigned the next day. Said he had been secretly working on plans for the Michamac cantilever; thought he had solved the problem of the central span; might go ahead and put in his plans if none of the compet.i.tors were awarded the bridge. Within a month he did put in plans."

"Well?" queried Griffith.

"Don't you make the connection?" demanded Mr. Leslie. "Blake handed his plans to Ashton, and took no receipt. The plans disappeared. Ashton leaves; comes back in a month with plans that he hasn't the skill to apply in the construction of the bridge--plans include an entirely new modification of bridge trusses--stroke of inventive genius, you called it."

Griffith's lean jaw dropped. "You--you don't mean to say he--the son of George Ashton--that he could--G.o.d A'mighty, he's heir to twenty millions!"

"You don't believe it? Suppose you knew he was about to be cut off without a cent? George had stood about all he could from the young fool. Those bridge plans came in just in time to prevent the drawing of a new will."

The hand in which Griffith held his pipe shook as if he had been seized with a fever chill, but his voice was dry and emotionless. "That accounts for those queer slips and errors in the plans. He couldn't even make an accurate copy, and was too much afraid of being found out to take time to check Tom's drawings. Jammed them into his fireplace soon's he'd finished. The thief!--the infernal thief!--the--!" Griffith spat out a curse that made even Mr. Leslie start.

"Good Lord, Griffith," he remonstrated. "That's the first time I ever heard you swear."

"I keep it for _dirt_! ... Well, what you going to do about it?"

"I am going to have you show Ashton's plans to Blake. If he recognizes them as a copy of his own--"

"Better get ready to ship Laffie out of the country. Once saw Tom manhandle a brute who was beating his wife--one of those husky saloon bouncers. The wife had a month's nursing to do. Tom will pound that--that sneak to pulp."