Griswold took up the letter from the railway people and read it again. When he faced it down on Raymer's desk, he had closed with the conclusion which had been thrusting itself upon him since the early morning hour when he had picked his way among the sidewalk pools from Mereside to upper Shawnee Street.
"You can still save yourself, Edward," he said, still with the colorless note in his voice. And he added: "You know the way."
Raymer jerked his head out of his desk and swung around in the pivot-chair.
"See here, Griswold; the less said about that at this stage of the game, the better it will be for both of us!" he exploded. "I'm going to do as I said I should, but not until this fight is settled, one way or the other!"
"The condition has already expired by limitation; the fight is as good as settled now," he said, placably. "We are only making a hopeless bluff. We can hold our forty or fifty tramp workmen just as long as we pay their board over in town, and don't ask them to report for work. But the day the shop whistle is blown, four out of every five will vanish. We both know that."
"Then there is nothing for it but a receivership," was Raymer's gloomy decision.
"Not without a miracle," Griswold admitted. "And the day of miracles is past."
Thus the idealist, out of a depth of wretchedness and self-exprobration hitherto unplumbed. But if he could have had even a momentary gift of telepathic vision he might have seen a miracle at that moment in the preliminary stage of its outworking.
The time was half-past nine; the place a grotto-like summer-house on the Mereside lawn. The miracle workers were two: Margery Grierson, radiant in the daintiest of morning house-gowns, and the man who had taken her retainer. Miss Grierson was curiously examining a photographic print: the pictured scene was a well-littered foundry yard with buildings forming an angle in the near background. Against the buildings a pile of shavings with kindlings showed quite clearly; and, stooping to ignite the pile, was a man who had evidently looked up at, or just before, the instant of camera-snapping. There was no mistaking the identity of the man. He had a round, pig-jowl face; his bristling mustaches stood out stiffly as if in sudden horror; and his hat was on the back of his head.