"I should like to send our shift boss, with your permission," said young Carrington, quietly, though inwardly he exulted. "I will have him meet you at your shaft house whenever you say."
"Mr. Wade," said Richards, and the effort he made to control himself made the veins in his face distend purplingly, "when Mr. John Carrington is well enough to go down our mine, I shall be glad"--how the word choked him--"to take him down myself; but Trevanion, their shift boss, is at the bottom of the trouble. He's tricky and dishonest. I'd rather resign than take him down the mine."
For in the time that would elapse before John Carrington was able to take such a jaunt much could be done.
There was a moment's pause, in which Richards' claim and Carrington's were equi-balanced. The very fact of Hastings' personal bias held him inactive.
"I will answer for Trevanion's honesty with my own," he said. There was an emotional note in the voice he tried to hold steady.
"Off the same piece, _I_ guess," sneered Richards, nastily.
The scales swayed down on the Carrington side.
Mr. Wade's code did not permit his guests to be insulted by his subordinates.
"My dear Mr. Carrington, you leave us no option when you take that stand," he said, suavely. "Whenever your man is ready, then."
"I think he is still at the house with my father," said young Carrington, unsteadily. "I can telephone from the station here."
Mr. Wade looked out of the window. Beside Carrington's trap stood the landau of yesterday. "If you will drive home and bring your man over, we will go directly to the mine with Mr. Richards," he said.
Young Carrington, bursting in upon his father and Trevanion, told it all in a breath.
"The sooner I'm there the better," he said, phlegmatically.
"It's queer business," said John Carrington, frowning. "Keep your eyes open. What do you think of it?"
"I'll tell you when I come up," said Trevanion. "If I don't come up, you'll look after my boy?"
"Keep close to young Hastings," he said, tersely. "Don't let Richards get behind you alone. I'm inclined to think, though, that the whole thing will be a farce. He'll take you into a few levels where there couldn't be any question, and that will be all. Wade and his nephew won't know. And that will be all there is to it."