“I’m running the business end of this company’s affairs, Plegg, and when I want your help I’ll call on you. But since you’ve gone this far, I’ll tell you a thing or two. Lushing hasn’t been idle since he climbed over the fence into the railroad pasture. He’s been building prejudice against us to beat the band. If we’d make the break you suggest, I wouldn’t put it beyond him to claim that we’d shaken that roof up purposely with dynamite to get an excuse to run a force account job in on them. Such things have been done, on other jobs, and I shouldn’t wonder if Lushing had helped do some of ’em. No; our safe play is to let sleeping dogs lie.” “But if somebody should take the trouble to wake this particular dog?” Plegg put in quietly. “Put Lushing on?” queried the big man at the desk. “Yes.” “Who would do it?” “The bad roof is an open secret. The men in the tunnel shifts all know about it.” “But none of our men will go to Lushing. They hate him too well.” “There is one other man who knows about it, too.” “Who is that?” “Black Jack Dargin.” “Huh! How did he find out?” “That door is pretty wide open, isn’t it? A good many of the hard-rock men blow their money in Dargin’s dives.” “Are you sure he knows?” “Yes, quite sure.” “He’d sell the tip to Lushing?” Plegg shook his head. “No, I don’t believe he’d sell it. But he might give it.” “Spit it all out--don’t beat around the bush, Plegg! What’s the inside of the deal? You know more than you’re willing to tell, and that isn’t a safe play for you to make at me!” Plegg ignored the implication and the threat and answered only the direct question. “I don’t know the inside of the deal. But one man’s guess is as good as another’s. Lushing goes all the gaits in Powder Can; he did it while he was with us, and he does it now, when he’s here. I’ve thought, more than once, that he might have some sort of a stand-in with Dargin. As the matter stands now, Dargin can give us away any time he feels like it.” As was his habit when he was putting his back to the wall in any fight, Eben Grillage caught up the paper-knife from his desk and began to test the edge of it with a spatulate thumb. “I’m beginning to get at the inwards of this thing,” he said slowly. “David was saying something last night about wanting to clean out the Powder Can messes. Dargin is going to hold this tunnel business as a club. Vallory mustn’t meddle with the nuisances; you must see to it that he doesn’t.” “Vallory doesn’t take ‘seeing to’ very submissively.” “That’s all right; you keep him from meddling with Dargin’s affairs.” “You won’t consider my suggestion about making a clean breast of the tunnel situation to Mr. Ford? As I’ve said, I am firmly convinced that the stuff in the crevice will come down, sooner or later. If it slides while we are still driving the heading, no man who happens to be behind it will get out alive.” “I don’t want your suggestion--or your convictions either, for that matter.”