"Ah, but that's where you missed out!" cried Madeira, a great ring of triumph in his voice. He crossed his legs, leaned back in his chair, and pushed out his chest. "That's where you didn't know C. Madeira. Young man, I've been hammering at Bruce Grierson night and day ever since I got you interested in this scheme,"--Steering looked at Madeira with a little quick motion of inquiry, but Madeira's arrangement of subject and object was evidently advised; Madeira showed that it was by repeating, "ever since _I_ got _you_ interested, I've been trying to get Grierson interested. We couldn't move hand or foot without him, you know that. The land is his, you know, even though you are the heir apparent, and there was no use trying to do anything with the land without him. I had got you into it without much trouble,"--Madeira paused just long enough to take the cigar that Steering offered him. (Steering could always see better through smoke.) "Yes, I had got you!" cried Madeira, biting off the end of the cigar with a sharp snap of his teeth, "and having got you, the next thing was to get Grierson. Well, I got him, got him since you left New York." He chuckled his spill-over chuckle again, swung around to his desk and took from one of its pigeon-holes an envelope addressed to him in a deep-gouging hand. The expression of geniality lingered about the wings of his nose and the corners of his mouth, as though it had been moulded there by long habit, but his eyes narrowed and the play of light from them was by now like the whisk of a sharp knife through the air. "You know I chased that old fellow all over Colorado with my letters about my scheme to open up the Tigmores, until I got him mad," he said, holding the letter up to say it, as though the contents would be illumined by his saying it. Then he handed it to Steering, who took it from its cover, flapped it open, and read: "DEAR CRIT: "Use this power of attorney to open up hell if you want to, but don't you write to me. "Your obedient servant, "B. GRIERSON." It was the sort of letter to make a man laugh, and Steering laughed. Then the phrase "open up hell" caught his eye again, like a sign of sinister warning. "I've never been able to understand," he began with a questioning inflection in his voice, "what's the trouble with the scion of the house of Grierson. Why is he so indifferent to a project for the development of his property that may mean a million to him?" "Aw, you know he's cracked!" replied Madeira quickly and harshly. "No, I don't know him at all, you will remember. Never saw him, never had a line from him."