"I'll tell you what Mr. North knows--which will be more to the purpose,
perhaps. For a year or more you have been figuring on some kind of a
scheme to pull the company's financial leg in behalf of your
good-for-nothing narrow gauge. A month ago, for example, you went all
over the old survey on the other side of the mountains and verified the
original S. L & W. preliminaries and rights-of-way on its proposed
extension."

Ford's eyes narrowed. He was thinking of the warning letter he would
have to write to Frisbie. But what he said was:

"I'd like to know how the dickens you guessed all that. But no matter;
supposing I did?"

"It's no good," said the auditor, shaking his head. "I'm talking as a
friend. North doesn't like you, personally; and if he did, you couldn't
persuade him to recommend anything in the way of an experiment on the
Plug Mountain. So far from extending your two-by-four branch--if that is
what you have in mind--he'd be much more likely to counsel its
abandonment, if the charter didn't require us to keep it going."

Ford found a cigar for the auditor, and lighted one for himself.

"From all of which I infer that the semiannual report of the Pacific
Southwestern is going to be a pretty bad one," he said, with carefully
assumed indifference.

Evans regarded him shrewdly.

"Are you guessing at that? Or is there a leak at our end of the line as