"You seemed so," commented Glover, rather grimly. "Very well, if you want him taken aback, I will take him aback, even if I have to resort to force." He withdrew his right arm from its sling and began unwrapping the bandages and throwing the splints Into the fire. "What in the world are you doing?" asked Gertrude, in consternation. "There's no use carrying these things any longer. My right arm is just as strong as it ever was--and to tell the truth----" "Now keep your distance, if you please." "To tell the truth, I never could play ball left-handed, anyway, Gertrude. Now, let's begin easy. Just shake hands with me." "I'll do nothing of the sort. It's bad form, anyway. You may just shake hands with yourself. All things considered, I think you have good reason to." "I understand you were chief engineer of this system at one time," began Mr. Brock, at the very outset of the dreaded interview. "I was," answered Glover. "And that you resigned voluntarily to take an inferior position on the Mountain Division?" "That is true." "Railroad men with ambition," commented Mr. Brock, dryly, "don't usually turn their faces from responsibility in that way. They look higher, and not lower." "I thought I was looking higher when I came to the mountains." "That may do for a joke, but I am talking business." "I, too; and since I am, let me explain to you why I resigned a higher position for a lower one. The fact is well known; the reason isn't. I came to this road at the call of your second vice-president, Mr. Bucks. I have always enjoyed a large measure of his confidence. We saw some years ago that a reorganization was inevitable, and spent many nights discussing the different features of it. This is what we determined: That the key to this whole system with its eight thousand miles of main line and branches is this Mountain Division. To operate the system economically and successfully means that the grades must be reduced and the curvature reduced on this division. Surely, with you, I need not dwell on the A B C's of twentieth century railroading. It is the road that can handle the tonnage cheapest that will survive. All this we knew, and I told him to put me out on this division. It was during the receivership and there was no room for frills. "I have worked here on a small salary and done everything but maul spikes to keep down expenses on the division, because we had to make some showing to whoever wanted to buy our junk. In this way I took a roving commission and packed my bag from an office where I could acquire nothing I did not already know to a position where I could get hold of the problem of mountain transportation and cut the coal bills of the road in two." "Have you done it?" "Have I cut the coal bills in two? No; but I have learned how. It will cost money to do that----" "How much money?" "Thirty millions of dollars." "A good deal of money." "No." "No?"