“And if I have?” Brayden queried, bucked up a bit by the change of attitude Garth exhibited, and the rich liquor he had swallowed.
“Well, in case things are too bad and I can’t cover for you,” Garth told him, “there might be a seizure of your books and records at once. Now, Sam, if you should have to stand a trial — it would be heavily expensive, you know — on a criminal charge, wouldn’t it be better to have me free to work in your behalf? I could aid you as Herbert T. Garth, respected financier, but couldn’t be anything but a curse to you as Bootan, the — well, the mining-syndicate swindler. Think that over, old timer.”
“I have thought it over,” Brayden assured him, his voice now calm. “And, take it as final, Garth, if I go down to-morrow you go with me. That’s all there is to that!”
Garth arose, his manner betraying nothing of the uneasiness he felt. It would never do to let Brayden suspect that he had him on the run, so to speak. It was not on record, that Garth knew of, that a mouse had ever bitten a cat — but this particular mouse had at least gone to the length of showing its teeth. No, Brayden must be dealt with in other ways than Garth had employed with any former victim, although the methods he must use were not at all clear just then. They would be, no doubt, by morning.
“Think things over, Sam,” he advised coolly, taking up hat and stick. “I’ll see you in the morning. Good night.”
“Go to hell!” snapped Brayden, reaching for the bottle.
Garth smiled his cold smile, and closed the door gently. “At that,” he reflected, sitting in his expensive hotel bedroom a bit later, “Sam would only have to tip off the Feds that I am Bootan — and all the fat would be in the fire. They’d uncover my trail clear back to the old days in Utah, careful though I have been to hide it. Yeah, I’m washed up if I’m fool enough to let Sam do it.”
As for the dam, Garth knew very well that those eagle-eyed men who were with him on the board would spot its defects, detect the paucity of cement in the structure, now that they had been pointed in that direction. There was no hope of covering up Sam Brayden’s crookedness — and if Sam’s crookedness came to light, Sam would talk.
When Garth eventually fell asleep, there was a troubled expression on his face, and he groaned at intervals throughout a restless night.
At breakfast next morning with the four other members of the board, Garth’s haggard face caused comment.
“They must have given you a corn-shuck mattress last night, Herb,” one member joked. “Or maybe the witches rode you?”
“A tooth that’s got to come out,” Garth explained, smiling, bringing his will to bear upon his overwrought nerves. “You know how it is. A chap will put off a trip to his dentist just as long as he can.”
The trouble with Garth was that the morning had brought him no nearer a solution of his difficulty than he had been the night before. Something had to be done to prevent Brayden from talking, as there was not the least hope that the inspection would fail to reveal the real condition of the dam. Brayden would be ruined before the day was at its close, and he’d ruin Garth as well.
“If there was just some way I could get him off in a quiet spot and fill his hide with lead,” Garth gritted to himself as the party took the road to Big Rock, forty miles distant, in two fast touring cars. “But there’s no chance for that, damn the luck!”
III
Arrived at the village of Big Rock, the two cars pulled up on the north bank of the river where the construction company’s offices stood. It was a Sunday, the inspection trip being purposely set for that day, when no work would be going on at the dam. Sam Brayden, attired in his service-worn corduroys, stood in the door of his office, absent-mindedly polishing a nickeled badge with his handkerchief.
Greetings over, Brayden ceased polishing the badge and pinned it to his jacket. It shone like a new mirror when the sun’s rays struck it. On a big job, such as the dam, heads of the various departments wore badges which indicated their particular office. Brayden’s was lettered:
Months before, he had been proud of that badge and what it stood for. Now... well, it was just another fake. When first he had pinned it to his coat it had been a badge of honor, honestly won. Now it was just a glittering lie. It should have read: Chief of Destruction — for that was precisely his status on the job. He had cheated the dam, knowing well that it might, when the waters came to flood tide in the river and great pressure was brought against it, spread ruin over the country below it.
Garth, uneasy though he was, smiled cheerfully when he and Brayden shook hands.
“Well, Brayden,” he said jovially, “you won’t have us pests bothering you for long. Just a matter of routine, you know, and we will run it off in time to return to Springfield to-night. When you are ready, we will proceed.”
Brayden was, Garth thought — and was puzzled thereat — strangely calm and dignified. The crisp, active, efficient engineer in his every word and movement. His brow was serene, manner composed. What the deuce could that mean?
“Resigned to the inevitable,” he concluded, eying the engineer narrowly. “Relieved, perhaps, that the showdown is at hand. Glad, too, that he will be able to strike at me. Yes, that’s what’s in his mind. Well, maybe — and, again, maybe not!”
They moved in a body to the north end of the dam. That end, as well as the south wing, had been completed, leaving only the central portion to finish.
The central portion stood at about half the required height, just a mass of rough concrete encompassed by wooden forms. The flow of the White, now rather low, had been carried through the race at the power house on the dam’s south end.
With Berry, the local inspector who had brought about the present activity, in the lead, they moved out on the broad top of the concrete structure in single file, Garth and Brayden bringing up the rear. When they had progressed halfway across the north wing, stopping frequently to observe certain aspects of the work which the young local man pointed out, it had become plain to Garth that his fellow inspectors were looking grave — ugly, even. He turned to Brayden and nodded for him to lag behind. Presently the two stood alone at quite a distance from the others, Garth pointing down toward something at the base of the dam, which, at that point, rose two hundred feet above the ground.
“You’re in for it,” he said to Brayden in undertones. “No hope, Sam. What you going to do?”
“Take it on the button — damn you!” Brayden snapped. “I’ve got it coming, and I’m going to take it. In fact, the mouse feels better this morning than it has since you crossed its path nearly a year ago — Mr. Cat.”
“That’s interesting,” Garth sneered.
“Very satisfactory to me,” Brayden said with a grim smile. “Do you know, I somehow feel like the mouse is going to manage to cheat the cat today, Bootan... er, Garth, I mean. Don’t know just how — but I have that feeling.”
“You damned nut!” Garth snarled. “Listen to reason! Take the fall alone, and I’ll swear to leave no stone unturned to get you safely off. There’s a cool hundred grand in it for you besides. You may get a short term in prison for falsifying your reports, cheating the dam, but you’ll be well heeled when you come out!”
“Still trying to skim off the cream for yourself, eh, Mr. Cat?” Brayden laughed, and there was actually merriment in his voice. “Well, if you manage to get it skimmed off into your little bowl, you’ll do it without my aid, Bootan. Pardon me,” he grinned ironically, “I mean Garth.”