Part 23 (2/2)

Wingfield would, gladly. He confessed shamelessly to a habit of smoking his after-luncheon pipe on his back. There was a home-made divan in the office quarters, with cus.h.i.+ons and blanket coverings, and Ballard found the tobacco-jar and a clean pipe; a long-stemmed ”churchwarden,” dear to the heart of a lazy man.

”Now this is what I call solid comfort,” said the playwright, stretching his long legs luxuriously on the divan. ”A man's den that is a den, and not a bric-a-brac shop masquerading under the name, a good pipe, good tobacco, and good company. You fellows have us world-people faded to a shadow when it comes to the real thing. I've felt it in my bones all along that I was missing the best part of this trip by not getting in with you down here. But every time I've tried to break away, something else has turned up.”

Ballard was ready with his bucket of cold water.

”You haven't missed anything. There isn't much in a construction camp to invite the literary mind, I should say.” And he tried to make the saying sound not too inhospitable.

”Oh, you're off wrong, there,” argued the playwright, with cheerful arrogance. ”You probably haven't a sense of the literary values; a good many people haven't--born blind on that side, you know. Now, Miss Van Bryck has the seeing eye, to an educated finish. She tells me you have a dramatic situation down here every little so-while. She told me that story of yours about the stone smas.h.i.+ng into your office in the middle of the night. That's simply ripping good stuff--worlds of possibilities in a thing like that, don't you know? By the way, this is the room, isn't it? Does that patch in the ceiling cover the hole?”

Ballard admitted the fact, and strove manfully to throw the switch ahead of the querist to the end that the talk might be shunted to some less dangerous topic.

”Hang the tobacco!” snapped the guest irritably, retorting upon Ballard's remark about the quality of his pet smoking mixture. ”You and Miss Craigmiles seem to be bitten with the same exasperating mania for subject-changing. I'd like to hear that rock-throwing story at first hands, if you don't mind.”

Having no good reason for refusing point-blank, Ballard told the story, carefully divesting it of all the little mystery thrills which he had included for Miss Dosia's benefit.

”Um!” commented Wingfield, at the close of the bald narration. ”It would seem to have lost a good bit in the way of human interest since Miss Van Bryck repeated it to me. Did you embroider it for her? or did she put in the little hemst.i.tchings for me?”

Ballard laughed.

”I am sorry if I have spoiled it for you. But you couldn't make a dramatic situation out of a careless quarryman's overloading of a shot-hole.”

”Oh, no,” said the playwright, apparently giving it up. And he smoked his pipe out in silence.

Ballard thought the incident was comfortably dead and buried, but he did not know his man. Long after Wingfield might be supposed to have forgotten all about the stone catapulting, he sat up suddenly and broke out again.

”Say! you explained to Miss Dosia that the stone couldn't possibly have come from the quarry without knocking the science of artillery into a c.o.c.ked hat. She made a point of that.”

”Oh, hold on!” protested the Kentuckian. ”You mustn't hold me responsible for a bit of dinner-table talk with a very charming young woman. Perhaps Miss Dosia wished to be mystified. I put it to you as man to man; would you have disappointed her?”

The playwright's laugh showed his fine teeth.

”They tell me you are at the top of the heap in your profession, Mr.

Ballard, and I can easily believe it. But I have a specialty, too, and I'm no slouch in it. My little stunt is prying into the inner consciousness of things. Obviously, there is a mystery--a real mystery--about this stone-throwing episode, and for some reason you are trying to keep me from dipping into it. Conversely, I'd like to get to the bottom of it. Tell me frankly, is there any good reason why I shouldn't?”

Ballard's salvation for this time personified itself in the figure of Contractor Fitzpatrick darkening the door of the office to ask a ”question of information,” as he phrased it. Hence there was an excuse for a break and a return to the sun-kissed stone yard.

The engineer purposefully prolonged the talk with Fitzpatrick until the scattered sight-seers had gathered for a descent, under Jerry Blacklock's lead, to the great ravine below the dam where the river thundered out of the cut-off tunnel. But when he saw that Miss Craigmiles had elected to stay behind, and that Wingfield had attached himself to the younger Miss Cantrell, he gave the contractor his information boiled down into a curt sentence or two, and hastened to join the stay-behind.

”You'll melt, out here in the sun,” he said, overtaking her as she stood looking down into the whirling vortex made by the torrent's plunge into the entrance of the cut-off tunnel.

She ignored the care-taking phrase as if she had not heard it.

”Mr. Wingfield?--you have kept him from getting interested in the--in the----”

Ballard nodded.

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