A quarter after nine the next morning found Griffith at the door of Mr. Leslie's sanctum. He stuffed his gauntlet gloves into a pocket of his old fur coat, and entered the office, his worn, dark eyes vague with habitual abstraction.

Mr. Leslie was in the midst of his phonographic dictation. He abruptly stopped the machine and whirled about in his swivel-chair to face the engineer.

"Sit down," he said. "How's the Zariba Dam?"

"No progress," answered Griffith with terse precision. He sat down with an air of complete absorption in the act, drew out an old knife and his pipe, and observed: "You didn't send for me for that."

"How's the bridge?"

"Same," croaked the engineer, beginning to scrape out the bowl of his pipe with the one unbroken blade of his knife.

"That young fool still running around town?"

"Can't say. It'd be a good thing to have him do it all the time if work was going on. Had a letter from McGraw, that man I put in as general foreman. He says everything is frozen up tight; may keep so for two weeks or more."

"You've laid off most the force?"

"No, not even the Slovaks."

Mr. Leslie frowned. "Two or three weeks at full pay, and no work?
That's an item."

"Hard enough to hold together a competent force on such winter work as that," rejoined Griffith. "Almost impossible with your kid-glove Resident Engineer. I've said nothing all this time; but he's made some of my best men quit—bridge workers that've stayed by me for years. Said they couldn't stand for his damned swell-headedness, not even to oblige me."

"Well, well, I leave it to you. Do the best you can. It's a bad bargain, but we've got to go through with it. Only time the young fool ever showed a glimmer of sense was when he had his father's lawyers drew his contract with me. My lawyers can't find a flaw in it."

"Not even diamond cut diamond, eh?" cackled Griffith. He ceased scraping at his pipe to peer inquisitively into the bowl. "What I've never been able to figure out is how he happened to solve the problem of that central span. Don't think you've ever realized what a wonderful piece of work that was. It's something new. Must have been a happy accident—must have come to him in what I'd call a flash of intuition or genius. He sure hadn't it in him to work such a thing out in cold blood."

"Genius?—pah!" scoffed Mr. Leslie.

"Hey?" queried Griffith, glancing up sharply. "What else, then?"

"I've recently been given reason to suspect—" began Mr. Leslie. He paused, hesitated, and refrained. "But we'll talk of that later. First, my reason for sending for you. I understand that you know this man Blake, who, unfortunately, was the person that saved my daughter."

Griffith replied with rather more than his usual dryness. "If I've got a correct estimate of what Miss Leslie had to be pulled through, it's lucky that Tom Blake was the man."

"You've a higher opinion of him than I have."

"We've worked together."

"He's in your office now," snapped Mr. Leslie.

"Yes, and he stays there long as he wants," rejoined Griffith in a quiet matter-of-fact tone. "It's your privilege to hire another consulting engineer."

Mr. Leslie brought his shaggy eyebrows together in a perplexed frown. "Must say, I can't understand how the fellow makes such friends. Your case is hardly less puzzling than that of the Earl of Avondale."

"Hey? Oh, you mean young Scarbridge. He seems to be one of the right sort—even if he is the son of a duke. But if Tommy hadn't introduced him as a friend—"

"We're talking about Blake," interrupted Mr. Leslie. "I want your help."

"Well?" asked Griffith warily.

"He has put me under obligations, and refuses to accept any reward from me. It's intolerable!"

"Won't accept anything, eh? Well, if he says he won't, he won't. No use butting your head against a concrete wall."

"He's a fool!"

"I'd hardly agree as to that. He doesn't always do as people expect him to. Same time, he usually has a reason."

"But for him to refuse to take either cash or a position!"

"I notice, though, he drew his pay-check for the Q. T. survey. No;
Tommy isn't altogether a fool—not altogether."

"Twenty-five-thousand-dollar position!" rasped Mr. Leslie.

"Hey?"

"Offered him that, and—"

"You offered him—?" echoed Griffith, his lean, creased face almost grotesque with astonishment.

"Think I don't value my daughter's life?" snapped Mr. Leslie. "I was ready to do that and far more for him. He refused—not only refused but insulted me."

Griffith peered intently into the angry face of his employer. "Insulted you, eh? Guess you prodded him up first."

"I admit I had rather misjudged him in some respects."

"So you gave him the gaff, eh?—and got it back harder!" cackled
Griffith.

"He shall be compelled to accept what I owe him, indirectly, if not directly. You have given him work?"

"Yes."

"You've, of course, told him that I'm the Coville Construction Company."

"Not yet."

"What! You're certain of that?"

Griffith nodded. "He sailed into me, first thing, for taking work from you. To ease him off, I said the Coville Company had taken over the bridge from you. The matter hasn't happened to come up again since."

"You're certain he doesn't know I'm interested in the company?"

"Not unless somebody else has told him."

"Then—let's see— We'll appoint him Assistant Resident Engineer on the bridge."

"He'll not take it under young Ashton."

"Not if his salary is put at twenty-five thousand?"

"As Assistant Engineer?" said Griffith, incredulous.

"You'll be too busy with my other projects to keep up these visits to Michamac. Besides, you said the bridge is coming to the crucial point of construction."

"That central span," confirmed Griffith.

"If you consider Blake sufficiently reliable, you can give him detailed instructions and send him up to take charge."

"How about Ashton's contract?"

"He'll be satisfied with the glory. Reports will continue to name him as Resident Engineer. If he won't listen to reason, I'll ask his father to drop him a line. The young fool has had his allowance cut twice already. He'd consider his pay as engineer a bare pittance."

"Heir to the Ashton millions, eh?" croaked Griffith.

"If I know George Ashton, he has a good safe will drawn, providing that his fortune is to be held in trust. That fool boy won't have any chance to squander more than his allowance,—and he won't keep me now from paying off this obligation to Blake."

"Perhaps not. I'm not so sure, though, that Tom will—One thing's certain. He won't go up to Michamac right away."

"He won't? Why not? It's just the time for him to get the run of things, now while there's no work going on."

"He'd catch on quick enough. It's not that. Fact is, he's got hold of something a lot bigger, and I know he'll not quit till he has either won out or it has downed him. Never knew of but one thing that ever downed him."

Mr. Leslie glared at the engineer, his face reddening with rage.

"Something bigger!" he repeated. "So the fellow has bragged about it!"

Griffith stared back, perplexed by the other's sudden heat. "Guess we've got our wires crossed," he said. "I told him, of course. He didn't know anything about it."

"What you talking about?" demanded Mr. Leslie, puzzled in turn.

"The Zariba Dam."

"That!" exclaimed Mr. Leslie, and his face cleared. "H'm,—what about the dam?"

"I had about thrown it up. I'm giving Tom a go at it."

Mr. Leslie's eyebrows bristled in high curves.

"What! wasting time with a man like that? If you've given it up, we'll try England or Europe."

"No use. Plenty of good men over there. They can give us pointers on some things. But if they've ever done anything just like this Zariba Dam, they've kept it out of print."

"But an unknown second-rate engineer!"

"That's what's said of every first-rater till he gets his chance."

"You're serious?"

"I don't guarantee he can do it. I do say, I won't be any too surprised if he pulls it off. It's a thing that calls for invention. He'll swear he hasn't an ounce of it in him—says he just happens to blunder on things, or applies what he has picked up. All gas! He once showed me some musty old drawings that made it look like one of his grandfathers ought to be credited with the basic inventions of a dozen machines that to-day are making the owners of the patent-rights rich. Guess some of that grandfather's bump can be located on Tom's head."

"Inventor—h'm—inventor!" muttered Mr. Leslie half to himself. "That puts rather a different face on that bridge matter."

"As how?" casually asked Griffith, beginning to scrape afresh at his pipe-bowl.

Mr. Leslie considered, and replied with another question: "At the time of the competition in plans for the bridge, did you know that Blake was to be a contestant?"

"He writes letters about as often as a hen gets a tooth pulled. But I got a letter the time you mention,—a dozen lines or so, with another added, saying that he was in for a whirl at the Michamac cantilever."

"You've shown him Ashton's bridge plans?"

"Not yet. He's been too busy on the Zariba field books."

"You've seen his own plans for the bridge?"

"No. They were lost."

"The originals, I mean—his preliminary copy. He must have kept something."

"Yes. But I guess they're pretty wet by now," replied Griffith, his face crackling with dry humor. "They're aboard that steamer, down on the African coast. If you want to see them, you might finance a wrecking expedition. But Tom says she went down mast-under, and there are plenty of sharks nosing along the coral reef."

Mr. Leslie winced at the word sharks, and reluctantly admitted: "I've had a long talk with my daughter. He played the part of a man. I acknowledge that I've held a strong prejudice against him. It seems, however, that in part I've been mistaken."

"Now you're talking, Mr. Leslie!"

"Only in part, I say—about his lost bridge plans. I had thought he was trying to blackmail me."

"More apt to be a black eye, if you let him know you thought that," was
Griffith's dry comment.

"He came near to resorting to violence. As I look at it now, I can't say I blame him. Those bridge plans, though—Knowing this about his inventiveness, has it not occurred to you that his plans may not have been lost, after all?"

"Look here, Mr. Leslie," said Griffith, rising with the angularity of a jumping-jack, "we've rubbed along pretty smooth since we got together last year; but Tom Blake is my friend."

"Sit down! sit down!" insisted Mr. Leslie. "You ought to see by this time that I'm trying to prove myself anything but an enemy to him."

Griffith sat down and began mechanically to load his pipe with the formidable Durham. Mr. Leslie put the tips of his fingers together, coughed, and went on in a lowered tone. "Those plans disappeared. His charge was preposterous, ridiculous—as against me. Yet if the plans were not lost, what became of them? He told me yesterday that he himself handed them to the person who was at that time acting as my secretary. You catch the point?"

"Um-m," grunted Griffith, his face as emotionless as a piece of crackled wood.

"Young Ashton was my secretary. He resigned the next day. Said he had been secretly working on plans for the Michamac cantilever; thought he had solved the problem of the central span; might go ahead and put in his plans if none of the competitors were awarded the bridge. Within a month he did put in plans."

"Well?" queried Griffith.

"Don't you make the connection?" demanded Mr. Leslie. "Blake handed his plans to Ashton, and took no receipt. The plans disappeared. Ashton leaves; comes back in a month with plans that he hasn't the skill to apply in the construction of the bridge—plans include an entirely new modification of bridge trusses—stroke of inventive genius, you called it."

Griffith's lean jaw dropped. "You—you don't mean to say he—the son of George Ashton—that he could—God A'mighty, he's heir to twenty millions!"

"You don't believe it? Suppose you knew he was about to be cut off without a cent? George had stood about all he could from the young fool. Those bridge plans came in just in time to prevent the drawing of a new will."

The hand in which Griffith held his pipe shook as if he had been seized with a fever chill, but his voice was dry and emotionless. "That accounts for those queer slips and errors in the plans. He couldn't even make an accurate copy, and was too much afraid of being found out to take time to check Tom's drawings. Jammed them into his fireplace soon's he'd finished. The thief!—the infernal thief!—the—!" Griffith spat out a curse that made even Mr. Leslie start.

"Good Lord, Griffith," he remonstrated. "That's the first time I ever heard you swear."

"I keep it for dirt! … Well, what you going to do about it?"

"I am going to have you show Ashton's plans to Blake. If he recognizes them as a copy of his own—"

"Better get ready to ship Laffie out of the country. Once saw Tom manhandle a brute who was beating his wife—one of those husky saloon bouncers. The wife had a month's nursing to do. Tom will pound that—that sneak to pulp."

"Show him the plans. If he recognizes them, I'll let the thief know he has been found out. He'll run, and we'll be rid of him without any scandal. We'll arrange for Blake to get the credit for the bridge, after a time. George Ashton and I are rather close together. I don't want him to be hit harder than's necessary."

"Say, Mr. Leslie, I don't mind admitting you are square!" exclaimed
Griffith. "You don't like Tom, and you know he hasn't a line of proof.
It would be only his word against Laffie's. Unknown engineer trying to
blackmail the son of George Ashton. You know what would be said."

"I told you, I owe him a debt. I intend to pay it in full."

"One thing though," cautioned Griffith. "Even a cornered rat will fight. There's the chance that Laffie may not run. He'd be a drivelling idiot if he did, with his father's millions at stake. Don't forget we've no proof. It won't look even possible to outsiders. Suppose I hold off showing Tom those plans till we see if he can make it on the Zariba Dam? If he pulls that off, no engineer in the U. S. will doubt his claims to the bridge."

"That means a delay," said Mr. Leslie irritably. "My first plan was to send Blake to Michamac at once."

"Lord! With one cantilever finished and the other out to the central span—if it's Tom's bridge, he'd recognize it as quick as his plans. And if he did—well, I'd not answer for what would happen to that damn thief."

"H'm—perhaps you're right," considered Mr. Leslie. He thought a moment, and added with quick decision, "Very well. Keep him on at the dam. What are you paying him?"

"Two hundred."

"Double it."

"No go. He'd suspect something."

"Suspect, would he? H'm—several expert engineers have failed on that dam. If it can be put through, the project will net me a half-million. Ten per cent of my profits might stimulate you engineers. I offer fifty thousand dollars as reward to the man who solves the problem of the Zariba Dam."

"Say, that's going some!" commented Griffith.

"Plain business proposition. If I can't get it done for wages, it is cheaper to pay a bonus than to have the project fail."

"Good way to put it," admitted Griffith. "Don't just know, though, what
I'll do with all that money."

"You? Thought you said that Blake—"

"D'you suppose he'd take a cent of it? He's working for me."

"But if he does the work?"

"He might accept the credit. The cash would come to me, if he had to cram it down my throat. He won't touch your money."

"Crazy fool!" rasped Mr. Leslie. Again he paused to consider, and again he spoke with quick decision. "The Coville Company takes over the project. I don't believe the dam can be built; I'm tired of the whole thing. So I unload on the Coville Company. You see? The company offers the fifty thousand bonus as a last hope. It hires Blake direct on some of its routine work. You insist that he try for the dam, between times."

"That's the ticket!" said Griffith. "We'll try it on him."

"Then call by the Coville office. I'll phone over for them to have the transfer made and a letter waiting for you," said Mr. Leslie, and he jerked out his watch.

Griffith rose at the signal. He fumbled for a moment with his hat and gloves, and spoke with a queer catch in his voice. "I'd like to—let you know how I—appreciate—"

"No call for it! no call for it!" broke in Mr. Leslie. "Good-day!"

He whirled about to his desk and caught up the receiver of one of his private-line telephones.