Kitabı oku: «The Making of Bobby Burnit», sayfa 9
CHAPTER XV
A STRANGE CONNECTION DEVELOPS BETWEEN ELECTRICITY AND POLITICS
Chalmers, during Bobby’s absence, secured all the secret information that he could concerning the Brightlight Electric, but nothing to its detriment transpired in that investigation, and when he returned, Bobby, very sensibly as he thought, completed his investment. He paid his two hundred and fifty thousand dollars into the coffers of the company, and, at the first stock-holders’ meeting, voting this stock and the ten shares he had bought from Sharpe at a hundred and seventy-two, he elected his own board of directors, consisting of Chalmers, Johnson, Applerod, Biff Bates and himself, giving one share of stock to each of the other four gentlemen so that they would be eligible. The remaining two members whom he allowed to be elected were Sharpe and J. W. Williams, and the board of directors promptly elected Bobby president and treasurer, Johnson secretary and Chalmers vice-president – a result which gave Bobby great satisfaction. Once he had been frozen out of a stock company; this time he had absolute control, and he found great pleasure in exercising it, though against Chalmers’ protest. With swelling triumph he voted to himself, through his “dummy” directors, the salary of the former president – twelve thousand dollars a year – though he wondered a trifle that President Eastman submitted to his retirement with such equanimity, and after he walked away from that meeting he considered his business career as accomplished. He was settled for life if he wished to remain in the business, the salary added to the dividends on two hundred and sixty thousand dollars worth of stock bringing his own individual income up to a quite respectable figure. If there were no further revenue to be derived from the estate of John Burnit, he felt that he had a very fair prospect in life, indeed, and could, no doubt, make his way very nicely.
He had been unfortunate enough to find Agnes Elliston “not at home” upon the two occasions when he had called since their disagreement upon the subject of the Sharpes, but now he called her up by telephone precisely as if nothing had happened, and explained to her how good his prospects were; good enough, in fact, he added, that he could look matrimony very squarely in the eye.
“Allow me to congratulate you,” said Agnes sweetly. “I presume I’ll read presently about the divorce that precedes your marriage,” and she hung up the receiver; all of which, had Bobby but paused to reflect upon it, was a very fair indication that all he had to do was to jump in his automobile and call on Aunt Constance Elliston, force his way upon the attention of Agnes and browbeat that young lady into an immediate marriage. He chose, on the contrary, to take the matter more gloomily, and Johnson, after worrying about him for three dismal days, consulted Biff Bates. But Biff, when the problem was propounded to him, only laughed.
“His steady has lemoned him,” declared Biff. “Any time a guy’s making plenty of money and got good health and ain’t married, and goes around with an all-day grouch, you can play it for a one to a hundred favorite that his entry’s been scratched in the solitaire diamond stakes.”
“Uh-huh,” responded the taciturn Johnson, and stalked back with grim purpose to the Electric Company’s office, of which Bobby and Johnson and Applerod had taken immediate possession.
The next morning Johnson handed to Bobby one of the familiar gray envelopes, inscribed:
To My Son Upon the Occasion of His Having a Misunderstanding with Agnes Elliston
He submitted the envelope with many qualms and misgivings, though without apology, but one glance at Bobby’s face as that young gentleman read the inscription relieved him of all responsibility in the matter, for if ever a face showed guilt, that face was the face of Bobby Burnit. In the privacy of the president’s office Bobby read the briefest note of the many that his forethoughted father had left behind him in Johnson’s charge:
“You’re a blithering idiot!”
That was all. Somehow, that brief note seemed to lighten the gloom, to lift the weight, to remove some sort of a barrier, and he actually laughed. Immediately he called up the Ellistons. He received the information from the housekeeper that Agnes and Aunt Constance had gone to New York on an extended shopping trip, and thereby he lost his greatest and only opportunity to prove that he had at last been successful in business. That day, all the stock which Frank L. Sharpe had held began to come in for transfer, in small lots of from ten to twenty shares, and inside a week not a certificate stood in Sharpe’s name. All the stock held by Williams also came in for transfer. Bobby went immediately to see Sharpe, and, very much concerned, inquired into the meaning of this. Mr. Sharpe was as pleasant as Christmas morning.
“To tell you the truth, Mr. Burnit,” said he, “there were several very good reasons. In the first place, I needed the money; in the second place, you were insistent upon control and abused it; in the third place, since the increased capitalization and change of management the quotations on Brightlight Electric dropped from one-seventy-two to one-sixty-five, and I got out before it could drop any lower. You will give me credit for selling the stock privately and in small lots where it could not break the price. However, Mr. Burnit, I don’t see where the sale of my stock affects you in any way. You have the Brightlight Electric now in good condition, and all it needs to remain a good investment is proper management.”
“I’m afraid it needs more than that,” retorted Bobby. “I’m afraid it needs to be in a position to make more money for other people than for myself;” through which remark it may be seen that, though perhaps a trifle slow, Bobby was learning.
Another lesson awaited him. On the following morning every paper in the city blazed with the disquieting information that the Consumers’ Electric Light and Power Company and the United Illuminating and Fuel Company were to be consolidated! Out of the two old concerns a fifty-million-dollar corporation was to be formed, and a certain portion of the stock was to be sold in small lots, as low, even, as one share each, so that the public should be given a chance to participate in this unparalleled investment. Oh, it was to be a tremendous boon to the city!
Bobby, much worried, went straight to Chalmers.
“So far as I can see you have all the best of the bargain,” Chalmers reassured him. “The Consumers’, already four times watered and quoted at about seventy, is to be increased from two to five million before the consolidation, so that it can be taken in at ten million. The Union, already watered from one to nine million in its few brief years, takes on another hydraulic spurt and will be bought for twenty million. Of the thirty million dollars which is to be paid for the old corporation, nineteen million represents new water, the most of which will be distributed among Stone and his henchmen. The other twenty million will go to the dear public, who will probably be given one share of common as a bonus with each share of preferred, and pay ten million sweaty dollars for it. Do you think this new company expects to pay dividends? On their plants, worth at a high valuation, five million dollars, and their new capital of ten million, a profit must be earned for fifty million dollars’ worth of stock, and it can not be done. Within a year I expect to see Consolidated Illuminating and Power Company stock quoted at around thirty. By that time, however, Stone and his crowd will have sold theirs, and will have cleaned up millions. Brightlight Electric was probably too small a factor to be considered in the consolidation. Did you pay off that mortgage? Then Stone has his hundred thousand dollars; the back salary list of Stone’s henchmen has been paid up with your money; Sharpe and Williams have converted their stock and Stone’s into cash at a fancy figure; Eastman is to be taken care of in the new company and they are satisfied. In my estimation you are well rid of the entire crowd, unless they have some neat little plan for squeezing you. But I’ll tell you what I would do. I would go direct to Stone, and see what he has to say.”
Bobby smiled ironically at himself as he climbed the dingy stairs up which it was said that every man of affairs in the city must sooner or later toil to bend the knee, but he was astonished when he walked into the office of Stone to find it a narrow, bare little room, with the door wide open to the hall. There was an old, empty desk in it – for Stone never kept nor wrote letters – and four common kitchen chairs for waiting callers. At the desk near the one window sat Stone, and over him bent a shabby-looking man, whispering. Stone, grunting occasionally, looked out of the window while he listened, and when the man was through gave him a ten-dollar bill.
“It’s all right,” Stone said gruffly. “I’ll be in court myself at ten o’clock to-morrow morning, and you may tell Billy that I’ll get him out of it.”
Another man, a flashily-dressed fellow, was ahead of Bobby, and he, too, now leaned over Stone and whispered.
“Nothing doing,” rumbled Stone.
The man, from his gestures, protested earnestly.
“Nix!” declared Stone loudly. “You threw me two years ago this fall, and you can’t come back till you’re on your uppers good and proper. I don’t want to see you nor hear of you for another year, and you needn’t send any one to me to fix it, because it can’t be fixed. Now beat it. I’m busy!”
The man, much crestfallen, “beat it.” Bobby was thankful that there was no one else waiting when it was his turn to approach the Mogul. Stone shook hands cordially enough.
“Mr. Stone,” inquired Bobby, “how does it come that the Brightlight Electric Company was not offered a chance to come into this new consolidation?”
“How should I know?” asked Stone in reply.
“It is popularly supposed,” suggested Bobby, smiling, “that you know a great deal about it.”
Mr. Stone ignored that supposition completely.
“Mr. Burnit, how much political influence do you think you could swing?”
“Frankly, I never thought of it,” said Bobby surprised.
“You belong to the Idlers’ Club, you belong to the Traders’ Club, to the Fish and Game, the Brassie, the Gourmet, and the Thespian Clubs. You are a member of the board of governors in three of these clubs, and are very popular in all of them. A man like you, if he would get wise, could swing a strong following.”
“Possibly,” admitted Bobby dryly; “although I wouldn’t enjoy it.”
“One-third of the members of the Traders’ Club do not vote, more than half of the members of the Fish and Game and the Brassie do not vote, none of the members of the other clubs vote at all,” went on Mr. Stone. “They ain’t good citizens. If you’re the man that can stir them up the right way you’d find it worth while.”
“But just now,” evaded Bobby, “whom did you say I should see about this consolidation?”
“Sharpe,” snapped Stone. “Good day, Mr. Burnit.” And Bobby walked away rather belittled in his own estimation.
He had been offered an excellent chance to become one of Stone’s political lieutenants, had been given an opportunity to step up to the pie counter, to enjoy the very material benefits of the Stone style of municipal government; and in exchange for this he had only to sell his fellows. He knew now that his visit to Sharpe would be fruitless, that before he could arrive at Sharpe’s office that puppet would have had a telephone message from Stone; yet, his curiosity aroused, he saw the thing through. Mr. Sharpe, upon his visit, met Bobby as coldly as the January morning when the Christmas bills come in.
“We don’t really care for the Brightlight Electric in the combination at all,” said Mr. Sharpe, “but if you wish to come in at a valuation of five hundred thousand I guess we can find a place for you.”
“Let me understand,” said Bobby. “By a valuation of five hundred thousand dollars you mean that the Brightlight stock-holders can exchange each share of their stock for one share in the Consolidated?”
“That’s it, precisely,” said Mr. Sharpe without a smile.
“You’re joking,” objected Bobby. “My stock in the Brightlight is worth to-day one hundred and fifty dollars a share. My two hundred and sixty thousand dollars’ worth of stock in the Consolidated would not be worth par, even, to-day. Why do you make this discrimination when you are giving the stock-holders of the Consumers’ an exchange of five shares for one, and the stock-holders of the United an exchange of twenty shares for nine?”
“We need both those companies,” calmly explained Sharpe, “and we don’t need the Brightlight.”
“Is that figure the best you will do?”
“Under the circumstances, yes.”
“Very well then,” said Bobby; “good day.”
“By the way, Mr. Burnit,” Sharpe said to him with a return of the charming smile which had been conspicuously absent on this occasion, “we needn’t consider the talk entirely closed as yet. It might be possible that we would be able, between now and the first of the next month, when the consolidation is to be completed, to make you a much more liberal offer to come in with us; to be one of us, in fact.”
Bobby sat down again.
“How soon may I see you about it?” he asked.
“I’ll let you know when things are shaped up right. By the way, Mr. Burnit, you are a very young man yet, and just starting upon your career. Really you ought to look about you a bit and study what advantages you have in the way of personal influence and following.”
“I have never counted that I had a ‘following.’”
“I understand that you have a very strong one,” insisted Sharpe. “What you ought to do is to see Mr. Stone.”
“I have been to see him,” replied Bobby with a smile.
“So I understand,” said Sharpe dryly. “By the way, next Tuesday I am to be voted upon in the Idlers’. You are on the board of governors up there, I believe?”
“Yes,” said Bobby steadily.
Sharpe studied him for a moment.
“Well, come around and see me about this consolidation on Wednesday,” he suggested, “and in the meantime have another talk with Stone. By all means, go and see Stone.”
“Johnson,” asked Bobby, later, “what would you do if a man should ask you to sell him your personal influence, your self-respect and your immortal soul?”
“I’d ask his price,” interposed Applerod with a grin.
“You’d never get an offer,” snapped Johnson to Applerod, “for you haven’t any to sell. Why do you ask, Mr. Burnit?”
Bobby regarded Johnson thoughtfully for a moment.
“I know how to make the Brightlight Electric Company yield me two hundred per cent. dividends within a year or less,” he stated.
“Through Stone?” inquired Johnson.
“Through Stone,” admitted Bobby, smiling at Johnson’s penetration.
“I thought so. I guess your father has summed up, better than I could put it, all there is to be said upon that subject.” And from his index-file he produced one of the familiar gray envelopes, inscribed:
To My Son Robert Upon the Subject of Bribery
“When a man sells his independence and the faith of his friends he is bankrupt. Both the taker and the giver of a bribe, even when it is called ‘preferment,’ are like dogs with fleas; they yelp in their sleep; only the man gets callous after a while and the dog doesn’t. Whoever the fellow is that’s trying to buy your self-respect, go soak him in the eye, and pay your fine.”
“For once I agree most heartily with the governor,” said Bobby, and as a result he did not go to see Stone. Moreover, Frank L. Sharpe was blackballed at the Idlers’ Club with cheerful unanimity, and Bobby figuratively squared his shoulders to receive the blow that he was convinced must certainly fall.
CHAPTER XVI
AGNES APPEARS PUBLICLY WITH MRS. SHARPE AND BIFF BATES HAS A ONE-ROUND SCRAP
That night, though rather preoccupied by the grave consequences that might ensue on this flat-footed defiance of Stone and his crowd, Bobby went to the theater with Jack Starlett and Jack’s sister and mother. As they seated themselves he bowed gravely across the auditorium to Agnes and Aunt Constance Elliston, who, with Uncle Dan, were entertaining a young woman relative from Savannah. He did not know how the others accepted his greeting; he only saw Agnes, and she smiled quite placidly at him, which was far worse than if she had tilted her head. Through two dreary, interminable acts he sat looking at the stage, trying to talk small talk with the Starletts and remaining absolutely miserable; but shortly before the beginning of the last act he was able to take a quite new and gleeful interest in life, for the young woman from Savannah came fluttering into the Elliston box, bearing in tow the beautiful and vivacious Mrs. Frank L. Sharpe!
Bobby turned his opera-glasses at once upon that box, and pressed Jack Starlett into service. Being thus attracted, the ladies of the Starlett box, mystified and unable to extract any explanation from the two gleeful men, were compelled, by force of circumstances and curiosity, also to opera-glass and lorgnette the sufferers.
Like the general into which he was developing, Bobby managed to meet Agnes face to face in the foyer after the show. Tears of mortification were in her eyes, but still she was laughing when he strode up to her and with masterful authority drew her arm beneath his own.
“Your carriage is too small for four,” Bobby calmly told Mr. Elliston, and, excusing himself from the Starletts, deliberately conducted Agnes to a hansom. As they got well under way he observed:
“You will notice that I make no question of being seen in public with – ”
“Bobby!” she protested. “Violet did not know. The Sharpes visited in Savannah. His connections down there are quite respectable, and no doubt Mrs. Sharpe, who is really clever, held herself very circumspectly.”
“Fine!” said Bobby. “You will notice that I am quite willing to listen to you. Explain some more.”
“Bobby!” she protested again, and then suddenly she bent forward and pressed her handkerchief to her eyes.
Bobby was astounded. She was actually crying! In a moment he had her in his arms, was pressing her head upon his shoulder, was saying soothing things to her with perfectly idiotic volubility. For an infinitesimally brief space Agnes yielded to that embrace, and then suddenly she straightened up in dismay.
“Good gracious, Bobby!” she exclaimed. “This hansom is all glass!”
He looked out upon the brilliantly lighted street with a reflex of her own consternation, but quickly found consolation.
“Well, after all,” he reflected philosophically, “I don’t believe anybody who saw me would blame me.”
“You’re a perfectly incorrigible Bobby,” she laughed. “The only check possible to put upon you is to hold you rigidly to business. How are you coming out with the Brightlight Electric Company? I have been dying to ask you about it.”
“I have a telephone in my office,” he reminded her.
“I am completely ignoring that ungenerous suggestion,” she replied.
“It wasn’t sportsmanlike,” he penitently admitted. “Well, the Brightlight Electric is still making money, and Johnson has stopped leaks to the amount of at least twenty thousand dollars a year, which will permit us to keep up the ten per cent. dividends, even with our increased capitalization, and even without an increase of business.”
“Glorious!” she said with sparkling eyes.
“Too good to be true,” he assured her. “They’ll take it away from me.”
“How is it possible?” she asked.
“It isn’t; but it will happen, nevertheless,” he declared with conviction.
He had already begun to spend his days and nights in apprehension of this, and as the weeks went on and nothing happened his apprehension grew rather than diminished.
In the meantime, the Consolidated Illuminating and Power Company went pompously on. The great combine was formed, the fifty million dollars’ worth of stock was opened for subscription, and the company gave a vastly expensive banquet in the convention hall of the Hotel Spender, at which a thousand of the city’s foremost men were entertained, and where the cleverest after-dinner speakers to be obtained talked in relays until long after midnight. Those who came to eat the rich food and drink the rare wine and lend their countenances to the stupendous local enterprise, being shrewd business graduates who had cut their eye-teeth in their cradles, smiled and went home without any thought of investing; but the hard-working, economical chaps of the offices and shops, men who felt elated if, after five years of slavery, they could show ten hundred dollars of savings, glanced in awe over this magnificent list of names in the next day’s papers. If the stock of the Consolidated Illuminating and Power Company was considered a good investment by these generals and captains and lieutenants of finance, who, of course, attended this Arabian Nights banquet as investors, it must certainly be a good investment for the corporals and privates.
Immediately vivid results were shown. Immense electric signs, furnished at less than cost and some of them as big as the buildings upon the roofs of which they were erected, began to make constellations in the city sky; buildings in the principal down-town squares were studded, for little or nothing, with outside incandescent lights as thickly as wall space could be found for them, and the men whose only automobiles are street-cars awoke to the fact that their city was becoming intensely metropolitan; that it was blazing with the blaze of Paris and London and New York; that all this glittering advancement was due to the great new Consolidated Illuminating and Power Company, and more applications for stock were made!
Every applicant was supplied, but the treasury stock of the company having been sold out, the scrip had to come from some place else, and it came through devious, secret ways from the holdings of such men as Stone and Garland and Sharpe.
During the grand orgie of illumination the election came on; the price of gas and electricity went gloriously and recklessly down, and the men who were identified with the triumphantly successful new illuminating company were the leading figures in the campaign. The puerile “reform party,” the blunders of whose incompetence had been ridiculous, was swept out of existence; Garland was elected mayor by the most overwhelming majority that had ever been known in the city, and with him was elected a council of the same political faith. Sam Stone, always in the background, always keeping his name out of the papers as much as possible, came once more to the throne, and owned the city and all its inhabitants and all its business enterprises and all its public utilities, body and soul.
One night, shortly after the new officials went into power, there was no light in the twelve blocks over which the Brightlight Company had exclusive control, nor any light in the outside districts it supplied. This was the first time in years that the company, equipped with an emergency battery of dynamos which now proved out of order, had ever failed for an instant of proper service. Candles, kerosene lamps and old gas fixtures, the rusty cocks of which had not been turned in a decade, were put hastily in use, while the streets were black with a blackness particularly Stygian, contrasted with the brilliantly illuminated squares supplied by the Consolidated Company. All night long the mechanical force, attended by the worried but painfully helpless Bobby, pounded and tapped and worked in the grime, but it was not until broad daylight that they were able to discover the cause of trouble. For two nights the lights ran steadily. On the third night, at about seven-thirty, they turned to a dull, red glow, and slowly died out. This time it was wire trouble, and through the long night as large a force of men as could be mustered were tracing it. Not until noon of the next day was the leak found.
It was a full week before that section of the city was for the third time in darkness, but when this occurred the business men of the district, who had been patient enough the first night and enduring enough the second, loosed their reins and became frantic.
At this happy juncture the Consolidated Company threw an army of canvassers into those twelve monopolized blocks, and the canvassers did not need to be men who could talk, for arguments were not necessary. The old, worn-out equipment of the Brightlight Electric, and the fact that it was managed and controlled by men who knew nothing whatever of the business, its very president a young fellow who had probably never seen a dynamo until he took charge, were enough.
Bobby, passing over Plum Street one morning, was surprised to see a large gang of men putting in new poles, and when he reached the office he asked Johnson about it. In two minutes he had definitely ascertained that no orders had been issued by the Brightlight Electric Company nor any one connected with it, and further inquiry revealed the fact that these poles were being put up by the Consolidated. He called up Chalmers at once.
“I knew I’d hear from you,” said Chalmers, “and I have already been at work on the thing. Of course, you saw what was in the papers.”
“No,” confessed Bobby. “Only the sporting pages.”
“You should read news, local and general, every morning,” scolded Chalmers. “The new city council, at their meeting last night, granted the Consolidated a franchise to put up poles and wires in this district for lighting.”
“But how could they?” expostulated Bobby. “Our contract with the city has several years to run yet, and guarantees us exclusive privilege to supply light, both to the city and to private individuals, in those twelve blocks.”
“That cleverly unobtrusive joker clause about ‘reasonably satisfactory service,’” replied Chalmers angrily. “By the way, have you investigated the cause of those accidents very thoroughly? Whether there was anything malicious about them?”
Bobby confessed that he had not thought of the possibility.
“I think it would pay you to do so. I am delving into this thing as deeply as I can, and with your permission I am going to call your father’s old attorney, Mr. Barrister, into consultation.”
“Go ahead, by all means,” said Bobby, worried beyond measure.
At five o’clock that evening Con Ripley came jauntily to the plant of the Brightlight Electric Company. Con was the engineer, and the world was a very good joke to him, although not such a joke that he ever overlooked his own interests. He spruced up considerably outside of working hours, did Con, and, although he was nearing forty, considered himself very much a ladies’ man, also an accomplished athlete, and positively the last word in electrical knowledge. He was donning his working garments in very leisurely fashion when a short, broad-shouldered, thickset young man came back toward him from the office.
“You’re Con Ripley?” said the new-comer by way of introduction.
“Maybe,” agreed Con. “Who are you?”
“I’m the Assistant Works,” observed Professor Henry H. Bates.
“Oh!” said Mr. Ripley in some wonder, looking from the soft cap of Mr. Bates to the broad, thick tan shoes of Mr. Bates, and then back up to the wide-set eyes. “I hadn’t heard about it.”
“No?” responded Mr. Bates. “Well, I came in to tell you. I don’t know enough about electricity to say whether you feed it with a spoon or from a bottle, but I’m here, just the same, to notice that the juice slips through the wires all right to-night, all right.”
“The hell you are!” exclaimed Mr. Ripley, taking sudden umbrage at both tone and words, and also at the physical attitude of Mr. Bates, which had grown somewhat threatening. “All right, Mr. Works,” and Mr. Ripley began to step out of his overalls; “jump right in and push juice till you get black in the face, while I take a little vacation. I’ve been wanting a lay-off for a long time.”
“You’ll lay on, Bo,” dissented Mr. Bates. “Nix on the vacation. That’s just the point. You’re going to stick on the job, and I’m going to stick within four feet of you till old Jim-jams Jones shakes along to get his morning’s morning; and it will be a sign of awful bad luck for you if the lights in this end of town flicker a single flick any time to-night.”
“Is that it?” Mr. Ripley wanted to know. “And if they should happen to flicker some what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know yet,” said Biff. “I’ll knock your block off first and think about it afterward!”
Mr. Ripley hastily drew his overalls back on and slipped the straps over his shoulders with a snap.
“You’ll tell me when you’re going to do it, won’t you?” he asked banteringly, and, a full head taller than Mr. Bates, glared down at him a moment in contempt. Then he laughed. “I’ll give you ten to one the lights will flicker,” he offered to bet. “I wouldn’t stop such a cunning chance for exercise for real money,” and, whirling upon his heel, Mr. Ripley started upon his usual preliminary examination of dynamos and engines and boilers.
Quite nonchalantly Mr. Bates, puffing at a particularly villainous stogie and with his hands resting idly in his pockets, swung after Mr. Ripley, keeping within almost precisely four feet of him. In the boiler-room, Ripley, finding Biff still at his heels, said to the fireman, with a jerk of his thumb over his shoulder:
“Rocksey, be sure you keep a good head of steam on to-night if you’re a friend of mine. This is Mr. Assistant Works back here, and he’s come in to knock my block off if the lights flicker.”
“Rocksey,” a lean man with gray beard-bristles like pins and with muscles in astounding lumps upon his grimy arms, surveyed Mr. Bates with a grin which meant volumes.
“Ring a bell when it starts, will you, Con?” he requested.
To this Biff paid not the slightest attention, gazing stolidly at the red fire where it shone through the holes of the furnace doors; but when Mr. Ripley moved away Biff moved also. Ripley introduced Biff in much the same terms to a tall man who was oiling the big, old-fashioned Corliss, and a sudden gleam came into the tall man’s eyes as he recognized Mr. Bates, but he turned back to his oiling without smile or comment. Ripley eyed him sharply.
