Part 13 (2/2)
”Crickey! You don't mean to say you--”
”Didn't get a chance to see him that time. Just sent in a polite note asking for my plans. He sent out word by his private-detective office-boy that if I called again he'd have me run in.”
”And now you come back with this dotty pipe-dream that he knows what became of your plans! Take my advice. Think it all you want, if that does you any good; but keep your head closed--keep it closed! First thing he'd do would be to look up the phone number of the nearest asylum.”
”I'd like to see him do it,” replied Blake. He shook his head dubiously. ”That's straight, Grif. I'd like to see him do it. I can't forget he's her father. If only I could be sure he hadn't a finger in the disappearance of those plans--Well, you can guess how I feel about it.”
”You're dotty to think it a minute. He's a money-grubber--as sharp as some others. But he wouldn't do a thing like that. Don't you believe it!”
”Wish I'd never thought of it--he's her father. But it's been growing on me. I handed them in to his secretary, that young dude, Ashton.”
”Ashton? There you've hit on a probability,” argued Griffith. ”Of all the heedless, inefficient papa's boys, he takes the cake! He wasn't H.
V.'s secretary except in name. Wine, women, sports, and gambling--nothing else under his hat. Always had a mess on his desk.
Ten to one, he got your package mixed in the litter, and shoved all together into his wastebasket.”
”I'll put it up to him!” growled Blake.
”What's the use? He couldn't remember a matter of business over night, to save him.”
”Lord! I sweat blood over those plans! It was hard enough to enter a compet.i.tion put up by H. V., but it was the chance of a lifetime for me. Why, if only I'd known in time that they were lost, I'd have put in my scratch drawings and won on _them_. I tell you, Grif, that truss was something new.”
”Oh, no, there's no inventiveness, no brains in your head, oh, no!”
rallied Griffith. ”Wait till you make good on this Zariba Dam.”
”You just bet I'll make a stagger at it!” cried Blake. His eyes shone bright with the joy of work,--and as suddenly clouded with renewed moroseness.
”I'll be working for you, though,” he qualified. ”I don't take any jobs from H. V. Leslie--not until that matter of the bridge plans is cleared up.”
CHAPTER VIII
FLINT AND STEEL
At three minutes to ten the following morning Blake entered the doorway of the mammoth International Industrial Company Building. At one minute to ten he was facing the outermost of the guards who fenced in the private office of H. V. Leslie, capitalist.
”Your business, sir? Mr. Leslie is very busy, sir.”
”He told me to call this morning,” explained Blake.
”Step in, sir, please.”
Blake entered, and found himself in a well-remembered waiting-room, in company with a dozen or more visitors. He swung leisurely across to the second uniformed doorkeeper.
”Business?” demanded this attendant with a brusqueness due perhaps to his closer proximity to the great man.
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