Page:Harvey O'Higgins--Silent Sam and other stories.djvu/168

156 "The box went down. And the explosion wrecked the two lower sections of the caisson.

"'My fault, boys,' he said, as cheerful as a gambler. 'Do it your own way.' And with that apology, he left us to repair his blunder the best way we could.

"Now, I understood this attitude of mind. It 's the typical contractor's—the attitude of a man who sees in an engineering operation only the question of profit or loss, and who 's willing to stake everything with a chance of losing it. But I 'd seen Nolan succeed by means that most of your academic engineers would be afraid to use, and I was n't contemptuous of his failure with the dynamite. I looked around for Larsen.

"That was where I got my first light on Larsen. I found him scowling after the tug that was carrying Nolan back to the city. His big fists swung down at his thighs, like knotted clubs. 'What does he want to come here for—buttin' into this?' he said. 'We near had her! We near had her! He thinks because he owns this business—'

"And so forth.

"I could see that it was n't any personal feeling of loyalty to Nolan that had kept him faithful. I still had to find out whether it was his wages—or the prospect of better wages.

"Are you interested? Does this bore you?"

They answered, with various degrees of politeness: "Not at all. Go on. Go ahead, anyway."