LITMIR.BIZ

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with engineers and foremen in charge. Light was breaking in the sky before he stepped from the cage of the Jack Pot and boarded a street-car for his rooms. Cornishmen and Hungarians and Americans, going with their dinner-buckets to work, met him and received each a nod or a word of greeting from this splendidly built young Hermes in miners' slops, who was to many of them, in their fancy, a deliverer from the slavery which the Consolidated was ready to force upon them.

      Once at his rooms, Ridgway took a cold bath, dressed carefully, breakfasted, and was ready to plunge into the mass of work which had accumulated during his absence at the mining camp of Alpine and the subsequent period while he was snowbound. These his keen, practical mind grasped and disposed of in crisp sentences. To his private secretary he rapped out order sharply and decisively.

      "Phone Ballard and Dalton I want to see them at once. Tell Murphy I won't talk with him. What I said before I left was final. Write Cadwallader we can't do business on the terms he proposes, but add that I'm willing to continue his Mary Kinney lease. Dictate a letter to Riley's lawyer, telling him I can't afford to put a premium on incompetence and negligence; that if his client was injured in the Jack Pot explosion, he has nobody but himself to blame for it. Otherwise, of course, I should be glad to pension him. Let me see the letter before you send it. I don't want anything said that will offend the union. Have two tons of good coal sent up to Riley's house, and notify his grocer that all bills for the next three months may be charged to me. And, Smythe, ask Mr. Eaton to step this way."

      Stephen Eaton, an alert, clear-eyed young fellow who served as fidus Achates to Ridgway, and was the secretary and treasurer of the Mesa Ore-producing Company, took the seat Smythe had vacated. He was good-looking, after a boyish, undistinguished fashion, but one disposed to be critical might have voted the chin not quite definite enough. He had been a clerk of the Consolidated, working for one hundred dollars a month, when Ridgway picked him out and set his feet in the way of fortune. He had done this out of personal liking, and, in return, the subordinate was frankly devoted to his chief.

      "Steve, my opinion is that Alpine is a false alarm. Unless I guess wrong, it is merely a surface proposition and low-grade at that."

      "Miller says—"

      "Yes, I know what Miller says. He's wrong. I don't care if he is the biggest copper expert in the country."

      "Then you won't invest?"

      "I have invested—bought the whole outfit, lock, stock and barrel."

      "But why? What do you want with it if the property is no good?" asked Eaton in surprise.

      Ridgway laughed shortly. "I don't want it, but the Consolidated does. Two of their experts were up at Alpine last week, and both of them reported favorably. I've let it leak out to their lawyer, O'Malley, that Miller thought well of it; in fact, I arranged to let one of their spies steal a copy of his report to us."

      "But when they know you have bought it?"

      "They won't know till too late. I bought through a dummy. It seemed a pity not to let then have the property since they wanted it so badly, so this morning he sold out for me to the Consolidated at a profit of a hundred and fifty thousand."

      Eaton grinned appreciatively. It was in startling finesse of this sort his chief excelled, and Stephen was always ready with applause.

      "I notice that Hobart slipped out of town last night. That is where he must have been going. He'll be sick when he learns how you did him."

      Ridgway permitted himself an answering smile. "I suppose it will irritate him a trifle, but that can't be helped. I needed that money to get clear on that last payment for the Sherman Bell."

      "Yes, I was worried about that. Notes have been piling up against us that must be met. There's the Ransom note, too. It's for a hundred thousand."

      "He'll extend it," said the chief confidently.

      "He told me he would have to have his money when it came due. I've noticed he has been pretty close to Mott lately. I expect he has an arrangement with the Consolidated to push us."

      "I'm watching him, Steve. Don't worry about that. He did arrange to sell the note to Mott, but I stopped that little game."

      "How?"

      "For a year I've had all the evidence of that big government timber steal of his in a safety-deposit vault. Before he sold, I had a few words with him. He changed his mind and decided he preferred to hold the notes. More, he is willing to let us have another hundred thousand if we have to have it."

      Eaton's delight bubbled out of him in boyish laughter. "You're a wonder, Waring. There's nobody like you. Can't any of them touch you—not Harley himself, by Jove."

      "We'll have a chance to find that out soon, Steve."

      "Yes, they say he's coming out in person to run the fight against you. I hope not."

      "It isn't a matter of hoping any longer. He's here," calmly announced his leader.

      "Here! On the ground?"

      "Yes."

      "But—he can't be here without us knowing it."

      "I'm telling you that I do know it."

      "Have you seen him yourself?" demanded the treasurer incredulously.

      "Seen him, talked with him, cursed him and cuffed him," announced Ridgway with a reminiscent gleam in his eye.

      "Er—what's that you say?" gasped the astounded Eaton.

      "Merely that I have already met Simon Harley."

      "But you said—"

      "—that I had cursed and cuffed him. That's all right. I have."

      The president of the Mesa Ore-producing Company leaned back with his thumbs in the armholes of his fancy waistcoat and smiled debonairly at his associate's perplexed amazement.

      "Did you say—CUFFED him?"

      "That's what I meant to say. I roughed him around quite a bit—manhandled him in general. But all FOR HIS GOOD, you know."

      "For his good?" Eaton's dazed brain tried to conceive the situation of a billionaire being mauled for his good, and gave it up in despair. If Steve Eaton worshipped anything, it was wealth. He was a born sycophant, and it was partly because his naive unstinted admiration had contributed to satisfy his chief's vanity that the latter had made of him a confidant. Now he sat dumb before the lese-majeste of laying forcible hands upon the richest man in the world.

      "But, of course, you're only joking," he finally decided.

      "You haven't been back twelve hours. Where COULD you have seen him?"

      "Nevertheless I have met him and been properly introduced by his wife."

      "His wife?"

      "Yes, I picked her out of a snow-drift."

      "Is this a riddle?"

      "If it is, I don't know the answer, Steve. But it is a true one, anyhow, not made to order merely to astonish you."

      "True that you picked Simon Harley's wife out of a snow-drift and kicked him around?"

      "I didn't say kicked, did I?" inquired the other, judicially. "But I rather think I did knee him some."

      "Of course, I read all about his marriage two weeks ago to Miss Aline Hope. Did he bring her out here with him for the honeymoon?"

      "If he did, I euchred him out of it. She spent it with me alone in a miner's cabin," the other cried, malevolence riding triumph on his face.

      "Whenever you're ready to explain," suggested Eaton helplessly. "You've piled up too many miracles for me even to begin guessing them."

      "You know I was snow-bound, but you did not know my only companion was this Aline Hope you speak of. I found her in the blizzard, and took her to an empty cabin near. She and her husband were motoring from Avalanche to Mesa, and the machine had broken down. Harley had gone for help and left her there alone when the

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