XVIA Friend at Need
WITH the object-lessons of the night of visitations to emphasize the need for vigilance, the two young men, discussing the situation in the gray dawn, agreed that the drilling plant must not be left unguarded during the Friday of enforced idleness, or at any other time. Accordingly, soon after sunrise, Carfax set out to walk down the mountain for the purpose of sending Tryon and a man or two of the track gang up to relieve Tregarvon.
This arrangement left the owner of the Ocoee to do sentry duty alone until Tryon should come—a duty which he scamped ingloriously by sitting upon the door-step of the tool-shack and promptly falling asleep.
It was a brusque “Hello!” that awakened him, and he sprang up with a start to find a round-faced, pursy little man in pepper-and-salt garmentings and mouse-colored driving-gloves standing before him. A horse and buggy motionless in the edge of the glade accountedfor the manner of the visitor’s coming, but not for its object. Tregarvon took a good look at the stranger before he committed himself, even to a greeting. The round face, with its twinkling eyes, double chin, and the little patches of closely cropped side-whisker, was altogether reassuring; it not only beamed good-nature, it fairly shone with an irresistible kindliness. Tregarvon, gathering his scattered wits as he could, said: “Good morning; it’s a fine morning for a drive through the woods.”
The little man added another layer of geniality to his smile.
“It’s a fine morning, also, for a nap in the sunshine,” he reciprocated. “Do you belong to the out-of-door sleepers—the ‘simple-lifers’—Mr. Tregarvon?”
“Not permanently,” laughed Tregarvon; “though I must confess that I am so simple as not to be able to recall your name.”
“Good, dev’lish good!” chuckled the visitor. “Couldn’t have turned it more neatly myself, ’pon my word! I’m Thaxter; Wilmerding’s bookkeeper at Whitlow. One of my fads is to take a drive before breakfast. Excellent habit, Mr. Tregarvon; I can recommend it most highly. Gives you an appetite like a coal-heaver. Speakingof coal—how are you getting along taking soundings on the old Ocoee? Have you hit it yet?”
“Not yet,” Tregarvon admitted, warming to the little man’s friendly interest. “But I am still living in hopes.”
Mr. Thaxter pursed his lips in a way to make them match the general effect of rotundity.
“Mighty mean thing to say to a man before breakfast—you haven’t breakfasted yet, I dare say—but you are butting your head against a stone wall, Mr. Tregarvon. Haven’t they told you that?”
“If your ‘they’ refers to the Coalville gossips, I have been duly warned. They told me, with all the variations, before I’d had time to climb the mountain on my first exploring expedition.”
“Just so; but not specifically, I suppose. You should have come to me. While I am an employee of the C. C. & I. Company, my pay-roll connection wouldn’t have kept me from doing you a good turn. And I could have given you chapter, page, and verse.”
For the moment Tregarvon lost sight of the fact that Wilmerding had reported his bookkeeper totally barren of Ocoee information. So he said: “Possibly you will do it now, Mr.Thaxter. We are mere babes in the wood, Carfax and I, needing a guardian angel pretty severely, if we are to believe what other people say of us.”
“You have certainly been needing a little friendly counsel from some one who was in a position to know what he was talking about. You’ll never find your coal up here, Mr. Tregarvon.”
“That is what they all say; but they don’t tell us precisely why we shan’t.”
“Ah,” said the kindly one, shaking his head in deprecation. “Human nature is the same everywhere. Tait could have told you, or Tryon, or Walters; all of them who have lived here long enough. But you had money and were willing to spend it. It would have been killing the golden-egged goose to have driven you away.”
Tregarvon grinned. “Thank you for trying to break it gently to me, Mr. Thaxter; but I am braced for it now. Hurl it in.”
“They could have told you that this test-boring experiment of yours has been tried before, all over the mountain top. I presume I could show you a dozen holes, if they are not all filled up with wash and hidden under the leaves.”
Tregarvon was thinking hard.
“Does Captain Duncan know this?” he asked.
“I should suppose so; he ought to know it. The testing was done by the New Ocoee Coal Company, and it may have timed itself during the summer that Duncan spent in the West. Come to think, I believe it did. You advised with him, of course; surely he didn’t encourage you to spend money on the property, did he?”
“No; I am obliged to confess that he did not. On the contrary, he advised me not to.”
The little man’s smile became benignantly tolerant. “You young men are like Mr. Kipling’s puppy at times; youwillchew soap, knowing perfectly well that it is soap.”
Tregarvon’s answering laugh admitted the justness of the charge.
“Possibly some of us like the flavor of soap,” he retorted. “There is no accounting for the depravity of some tastes, you know.”
“Oh, well,” said the visitor, with the air of one who is far too wise to combat the vagaries of youth, “go on and have your fling. It is harmless enough. If you can afford to buy a little amusement in this way, why shouldn’t you do it? It won’t hurt you, and it is a Godsend to Tait and the poor devils on your pay-roll while it lasts.”
“But if I can’t afford it?” suggested Tregarvon.
“Ah; that is another matter. From what Wilmerding has let fall, I have been assuming that you and Mr. Carfax desired the experience and the fun of it rather than any possible money gain.”
“The money side of it may not appeal to Carfax; but it does to me, very forcibly.”
“Still, you are throwing good money after bad in putting down these test-holes.”
Tregarvon shrugged his shoulders. “What would you?” he asked. “I inherited the Ocoee, and it is up to me to make something out of it, if I can.”
The round-bodied bookkeeper laughed until he shook like a bowl of jelly.
“It is very evident, Mr. Tregarvon, that you were born in the purple. If you wish to make money out of the Ocoee, why don’t you sell it?”
“Because I should first have to find a purchaser, and before I could find a purchaser—I should think—it would be a condition precedent that I should find the coal. It resolves itself into the vicious circle, as you see.”
Mr. Thaxter smote his gloved hands together softly and appeared to be debating a nice pointwith himself. When he spoke again his manner had lost the touch of brisk impersonality.
“Pardon me if I seem to crowd the mourners,” he apologized, “but it strikes me that this is a matter in which the good-natured bystander may quite properly take a hand. Is it possible that you haven’t been told of the offer made by our people to your father?”
“It is more than possible; it is a fact.”
“I am truly astonished! Your lawyers must know of it.”
“There has never been any mention of it made to me. What was the offer?”
“If I remember correctly, it was one hundred thousand dollars for all the titles.”
“Thank you!” exclaimed Tregarvon triumphantly. “That is the best news I’ve heard in many a day. If your company ever made any such an offer as that, it proves conclusively that there is coal in the property, somewhere.”
The bookkeeper shook his round head in evident dismay.
“Dear, dear!” he lamented; “I was afraid you might jump at some such conclusion as that, and it puts me in a rather awkward position. As I have said, I am only a pay-roll man in Consolidated Coal; I’m not even one of its many superintendents.Yet, as man to man, perhaps I may venture to tell you just why the C. C. & I. might still be willing to pay you the price named, though in telling you I may be betraying an official secret. You probably know that your property line on the north abuts on the Whitlow lands about an eighth of a mile from your tramway?”
Tregarvon nodded.
“Very good. Now we have a vein of coal quite near this joint boundary; not a very thick vein, but one which could be made to pay for working if we could send the coal down over your tramway, and coke it in your old ovens at Coalville, but which would not pay if we should be obliged to build a new tramway to get at it. That is the whole thing in a nutshell.”
“You say that this offer of a hundred thousand for the Ocoee was once made to my father? It’s odd that I had never heard of it. Was it in any sense a standing offer?”
“It was at the time, and I think it still is, though there has been no talk of it latterly, so far as I know. But since the reasons for making it still exist, I should imagine that you would stand a good chance of reviving it if you should care to do so.”
“If I only had a little breakfast in me!” Tregarvonprotested half-jokingly. “I’m too hungry to talk hundred-thousand-dollar deals with you with any assurance that an empty stomach isn’t making me flighty, Mr. Thaxter.”
The bookkeeper laughed pleasantly.
“There are your men coming over from the tramhead,” he said. “Give them your orders, and then let me drive you down to Coalville to your breakfast. Perhaps you’ll be willing to give me a bite, too, and in that case I shall have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Carfax again. I didn’t more than half get acquainted with him the day he drove up to Whitlow.”
“You are certainly the jolliest lot of commercial pirates a man ever had to fight—you people up at the C. C. & I.,” said Tregarvon, after he had climbed into the buggy with Thaxter and the spirited black horse was flinging the soft sand of the wood road from his hoofs. “First, Wilmerding comes to the rescue; and now you are trying to give us a lift. It’s heart-warming.”
Thaxter’s rejoinder had just the requisite touch of friendly solicitude in it.
“Then you meant what you said a few moments ago, about the financial aspect of the—of your experiment? A hundred thousand dollars would be worth considering?”
“That amount would look as big as a hundred thousand cart-wheels to me, just now,” Tregarvon confided. “My father is dead, as I suppose you know, and there have been family misfortunes big enough to sink a ship. A hundred thousand would give us a fresh start in the world.”
“Then we must certainly try to get it for you,” was the affable rejoinder; and from this on, the spirited horse demanded Thaxter’s undivided attention, so pointedly that the bookkeeper did not even seem to see Professor Hartridge when the buggy whirled past that gentleman as he was returning from his morning walk down the pike.
Carfax was waiting breakfast on Tregarvon when the black horse came to a stand at the door of the Ocoee office-building. The young millionaire remembered Thaxter perfectly, and seemed to be glad to renew his acquaintance with the “Brother Cheeryble.” Yet it was Carfax’s judicious applying of the brakes at the breakfast-table conference of three that kept Tregarvon from committing himself too definitely in the matter of bargain and sale.
Nevertheless, the talk over the ham and eggs pushed the business affair considerably farther along on the road to a tentative conclusion. Before he took his leave to continue his return driveto Whitlow, Thaxter was authorized to communicate by wire with the New York headquarters of Consolidated Coal, and, without betraying any confidences, to ascertain if the offer of one hundred thousand dollars for the Ocoee properties still held good.
After Thaxter had taken his departure, and the two young experimenters had threshed the new prospect out to its final straw, the wakeful night came in for its revenges, and they slept through the forenoon. Rucker did not return from Whitlow with the car and the repointed drills until long after the noon meal; and when he came he found his two employers waiting impatiently for him—or rather for the car. The reason for the impatience was a note from Miss Richardia sent down by the college mail-carrier early in the afternoon; a brief message addressed to both, begging them to come to Highmount at the earliest possible moment: urgency only; no hint of what had happened or was due to happen.
They made the ascent of the mountain as rapidly as the big touring-car could measure the distance, and were met at the door of the administration building of the college, not by Miss Birrell, but by Professor Hartridge, who led them into the visitors’ parlor and calmly informed themthat Miss Richardia had driven to Westwood House with her father shortly after luncheon.
“By Jove, now!” lisped Carfax; “that’s rather curious, don’t you know!” And Tregarvon was quite speechless.
“Curious that Miss Birrell should ask you to come up here, and then run away?” said Hartridge. “It was a little ruse of mine, and Miss Richardia is altogether blameless. I wished very much to see you both, and I was afraid you might be foolish enough to disregard an invitation bearing my name. So I took Miss Richardia into my confidence, and she very obligingly wrote the note which, I assume, has brought you here.”
Carfax snapped his fingers and laughed softly.
“Upon what footing do we stand with you, Mr. Hartridge?—upon that of yesterday at dinner-time or upon that of a later hour, when I had the pleasure of helping you on with your overcoat?”
“I shouldn’t presume to say, Mr. Carfax; you must make your own attitude. But if that attitude should be inimical, I must still beg you to believe that I have decoyed you up here to do you a kindness.”
Carfax was still smiling affably. “Is it Virgil who puts it into the mouth of one of his charactersto say that we should beware of the Greeks bringing gifts, professor? You will pardon us if we seem a bit suspicious, won’t you? But this”—he held up the small cube of hardened steel which he happened to have in his pocket—“this is so completely convincing, you know.”
The mild-eyed mathematician waved the evidence aside as a thing of small moment.
“Now that you have had time to consider, I am sure you absolve me from the charge of having tampered with your drill-hole,” he deprecated.
“We do,” said Carfax. “All you did was to cover the retreat of the man who really did the tampering. But that is sufficient to make us—er—a bit cautious, as you might say.”
Hartridge smiled in his turn. “You are basing your caution upon a small specimen of the metal commercially known as steel which you chanced to find in my pocket,” he remarked. “Let us disregard the bit of steel for the time being, if you please. If you should happen to lose it, it could be very easily replaced; but”—he turned short upon Tregarvon—“you can’t replace the Ocoee if you allow Mr. Thaxter to persuade you to sell it to Consolidated Coal, Mr. Tregarvon.”
“What’s that?” exclaimed the Ocoee owner, starting from his chair; and Carfax fell back upon his strongest expletive, “By Jove!”
Hartridge appeared to be entirely at ease now. He seated himself and crossed his long legs comfortably.
“You are puzzled to account for my friendly interest?—after last night?” he inquired. “I don’t blame you, and I am only sorry that I cannot explain more fully. But I may say this: if you part with the Ocoee properties for any such sum as Mr. Thaxter has doubtless offered you, you will regret it as long as you live.”
Carfax got his breath sufficiently after a time to say: “May—may we venture to ask how you know what Mr. Thaxter has offered?”
“Certainly. The offer of one hundred thousand dollars for the lands, titles, and mineral rights of the property is no secret—or at least it was not during Mr. Tregarvon’s father’s lifetime. I am merely assuming that Thaxter has not increased it; and I am also assuming that a renewal of the offer was the reason for his early morning drive with Mr. Tregarvon.”
“And you say Vance will be sorry if he accepts the offer?”
“I do; most decidedly.”
Carfax leaned forward and held up an accusing finger.
“Then you know, of your own knowledge, that there is a workable vein of coal on the property, Mr. Hartridge,” he snapped.
“That, my dear sir, is an assumption which I must decline to confirm.”
“Nevertheless, it is true. And here is another to go with it:you know where that vein can be found!”
Hartridge smiled again.
“You are, constructively at least, my guest, Mr. Carfax; I should be unpardonably rude if I were to contradict you.”
Carfax glanced aside at Tregarvon, and Tregarvon returned the glance as one who sees the shore from the crest of a tossing wave, but has no hope of reaching it. After a little pause Carfax renewed the attack.
“This is a most extraordinary situation, don’t you think, Mr. Hartridge?” he began mildly. “Would a definite quantity of the thing known commercially as money tend to relieve it in any way?”
The professor’s answer was prompt and decisive. “You are assuming that I have information to sell? I have not.”
Carfax countered, quickly.
“Then why have you just given us this pointer on Consolidated Coal? You profess to be willing to help us and you refuse to help us in one and the same breath.”
“Oh, if you are going into motives, my dear sir, that is, indeed, a very deep subject. It would hardly be profitable to discuss it, even academically. Life, the really human variety of life, is full of paradoxes. You are wondering why the man from whom, a few hours ago, you took that small cube of steel, is now apparently trying to save you from loss. Call it one of the human paradoxes, if you will; only don’t sell to Consolidated Coal for a paltry hundred thousand dollars a property upon which more than three or four times that amount has been spent. This is what I enticed you up here to say to you; and having said it——”
“Hold on,” Carfax interposed. “We have met some curious varieties of the genus enemy in this forgotten corner of the world, and you will pardon me if I say that you are not the least remarkable specimen, Mr. Hartridge. We are thankful for the pointer, and much more thankful for the assurance you have given us that we are not fishing in a barren pond. We——”
The professor had risen and was moving toward the door.
“I have given you no such specific assurance,” he denied.
“No,” said Tregarvon, getting upon his feet and putting in a word for himself. “You may congratulate yourself upon your discretion. None the less, we shall continue to work on our problem, Mr. Hartridge, until we have found the value of ‘pi’.”
It was a centre shot, visibly and palpably piercing the bull’s-eye. A blow would scarcely have disconcerted the schoolmaster more effectively. Yet he recovered instantly, had blandly excused himself upon the plea of pressing laboratory work, and was bowing himself out at the door, when he fired the return shot.
“You have set yourselves an impossible task, gentlemen,” he offered mildly. “You forget that the value of ‘pi’ has never yet been exactly ascertained.”
“Well, what do you make of it all?” Tregarvon asked, when the yellow car was rolling smoothly down the mountain pike on the return to Coalville.
“Nothing; except a disappointment for Mr. Thaxter,” was Carfax’s reply.
“Thaxter; yes. Do you know, Poictiers, I’m beginning to smell brimstone inhisclothes, now. Wilmerding told us definitely, if you remember, that Thaxter gave him to understand that he didn’t have any data on the Ocoee; didn’t know anything remotely concerning it. There is a lie out, somewhere.”
“Which doesn’t matter now, thanks to Mr. William Wilberforce Hartridge, the man of mixed motives,” said Carfax definitively.
“You think, on the strength of Hartridge’s warning, that I shouldn’t sell to Consolidated Coal?”
Carfax was driving the car and he let the brakes out until the machine was dropping down the grade like a stone falling from a height.
“Not in a thousand years!” he said.