"Isn't it the truth?" remarked the slender man sympathetically. "Still, we have to handle men as we find them, my friends. In my own case, I've been fighting the devil with a little of his own fire."
"Well, for instance, I went out to see if I couldn't land that little secret of the receiving motor myself, as I just told you. If International doesn't want to take me in, or if I can't break in, maybe there can be another company formed--there's considerable corporation room left in New Jersey. You folks on the International have been having your own troubles with labor, haven't you?"
"Well, rather!" growled Ackerman. "We put that up to old Colonel J. R. Bonehead, our president! He seems to have got in about as nearly wrong as any one could with our esteemed friends of the labor unions!"
"Naturally; well, I'll make a confession, since we're all friends together--I've had men conferring with your horny-handed citizens and suggesting that the International Power Company was 'unfair,' and a bad outfit to work for!"
"That was nice of you!" growled Ackerman, getting red in the face. "_Fine_ business, for you to come snooping around our works."
The slender man smiled at him pleasantly. "How else could I get information?" he inquired. "You must remember that I'm no longer on the board! But you must remember, also, that of late I have picked up an occasional dollar's worth of International. I wanted to know how about certain things!"
"Well, how about them, then?" demanded Standley fiercely. "Where do we stand?"
"Oh, fiddlesticks about incrimination! Cut out that part of it!"
"All right, I will," said the other grimly. "Well, then, I've tried my best to bribe your people, and I've got little out of it. I've tried the foreman, the night watchman, and everybody else. I've had a dozen of your workmen slugged for scabbing, and four or five of them shot, one or two at least, for a good, permanent funeral. And I paid the funeral expenses! You didn't know that? Well, that's the truth of it!"
"Well, _what_ do you know about that!" gasped Standley, aghast.
"I know a good deal about it, my Christian friend," said the slender man relentlessly. "I can tell you what you already know, that your motors are dismantled to-day. I can tell you also that there's a very good chance that the secret we've been after is in the hands of one man, and he's holding it up for some reason best known to himself. We've got nothing on him! I can also tell you that if he won't give up--though _why_ he won't, I can't imagine--it's possible we can work out a receiver of our own elsewhere, without him."