"
"I should think it would!" scoffed the traffic manager. "What you don't
know about the making of freight tariffs would sink a ship, Evan. These
things can't be done while you wait!"
"But they must be, in this instance," Blount insisted. "If you won't
withdraw the preferentials given to the corporations, you must do the
other thing. Post your legal notice of a reduction of the rates on the
commodities upon which you are now allowing rebates, and I'll fight
straight through on the line I've been taking all along."
"And if we don't?" queried Gantry.
"What is the use of making me say it for the hundredth time, Dick? If
you don't do one or the other, there will be an explosion, just as I've
told you. Of course, you know that my safe was broken open last
night--wrecked with dynamite?"
"Yes."
"Well, unluckily for you, the packet of papers which might otherwise
have been taken or destroyed, didn't happen to be in the safe. The
documents are still where they can be used at an hour's notice. And, by
heaven, Dick, I'll use them if you don't play fair!"
Gantry, long-suffering and patient to a fault in a business affair, was
not altogether superhuman.
"Evan, you are a frost--a black frost! You harp on one string until you
wear it to frazzles! Don't you know that the Transcontinental is big
enough and strong enough to chivvy you from one end of this country to
the other, if you turn traitor? I love a fighting man, but by God, I
haven't any use for a fool!"
Blount laughed.
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