The man in the deep chair stopped short. The other made no move. His dark face with its leaden eyes and the heavy drooping mustaches was as impassive as the face of the Buddha. The lop-shouldered “mucker” seemed to be trying to read the Buddha face, and when he failed he gave a gulping swallow. “I--I reckon I’m talkin’ through my hat, Jack,” he wavered. “Grillage ain’t in the deal; I’m goin’ to sell my stock to you.” Plegg, looking on at a distance of not more than half the width of the room would have sworn that no man of Dargin’s build could have moved so swiftly. At one instant he was swaying gently in the tilted chair. At the next he was leaning across the table and thrusting the muzzle of a pistol against the shrinking body of the talebearer. When he spoke his voice was like the whistling of the north wind. “No, Simmy, you’re not going to sell it to me; you’re going to _give_ it to me, _now_!” For possibly five minutes, as if the pressing pistol muzzle were a magnet to electrify and hold him rigid, Simeon Backus, ex-cattle rustler, ex-yeggman, and now a manslayer hiding from justice, sat erect and motionless, pouring forth a stammering story. There was little in the story that was new to the listening ear at the window. Chiefly it was made up of the facts concerning the weak roof in the tunnel--facts still unknown to the railroad people; wherein lay their value to one who could trade upon them. Plegg heard Altman’s talk with Vallory repeated; then, almost word for word, his own talk with Vallory, with the emphasis laid upon the consequences which he, himself, had predicted would follow any leakage of the facts in Lushing’s direction. Plegg waited until he was measurably certain that he had heard all that Backus had to spill, and when there were signs that the talebearer was about to be released, he hastened to make his retreat, retracing his steps through the dark cross hall and locking the doors behind him with his skeleton key. Safely down the outside stair and afoot in the street he hesitated. The facts about the dangerous tunnel roof were no longer a secret to be carefully guarded by the Grillage staff. They were weapons in the hands of a man who would use them instantly in his own behalf. There were two ways in which they might be used. Dargin might go to Grillage and buy the immunity which the contractor-king would doubtless assure by laying positive orders upon Vallory to let the Powder Can man-traps alone. Or, if by some unheard-of chance, Virginia Grillage could succeed in swinging her father over to her side and Vallory’s, Dargin could use his information to make capital with Lushing, and at one stroke entrench himself with the railroad management and--through the loss which would be saddled upon the Grillage company--square his account with Vallory.