Michael's Crag Part 8

"But it can't be," Sir Edward answered, with brisk prompt.i.tude.

"Walker's a money-grubbing chap. If he sees a chance of making a few thousands more anywhere, depend upon it he'll make 'em. He's a martyr to money, he is. He toils and slaves for L. s. d. {money} all his life.

He has no other interests."

"What can he want with it?" Tyrrel exclaimed. "He's a bachelor, isn't he, without wife or child? What can a man like that want to pile up filthy lucre for?"

"Can't say, I'm sure," Sir Edward answered, good humoredly. "I have my quiver full of them myself, and every guinea I get I find three of my children are quarreling among themselves for ten and sixpence apiece of it. But what Walker can want with money heaven only knows. If _I_ were a bachelor, now, and had an estate of my own in Cornwall, say, or Devons.h.i.+re, I'm sure I don't know what I'd do with my income."

Tyrrel rose abruptly. The chance words had put an idea into his head.

"What's Walker's address?" he asked, in a very curt tone.

Sir Edward gave it him.

"You'll find him a tough nut, though," he added, with a smile, as he followed the enthusiastic young Cornishman to the door. "But I see you're in earnest. Good luck go with you!"

CHAPTER XII.

A HARD BARGAIN.

Tyrrel took a hansom, and tore round in hot haste to Erasmus Walker's house. He sent in his card. The famous engineer was happily at home.

Tyrrel, all on fire, found himself ushered into the great man's study.

Mr. Walker sat writing at a luxurious desk in a most luxurious room--writing, as if for dear life, in breathless haste and eagerness.

He simply paused for a second in the midst of a sentence, and looked up impatiently at the intruder on his desperate hurry. Then he motioned Tyrrel into a chair with an imperious wave of his ivory penholder.

After that, he went on writing for some moments in solemn silence. Only the sound of his steel nib, traveling fast as it could go over the foolscap sheet, broke for several seconds the embarra.s.sing stillness.

Walter Tyrrel, therefore, had ample time meanwhile to consider his host and to take in his peculiarities before Walker had come to the end of his paragraph. The great engineer was a big-built, bull-necked, bullet-headed sort of person, with the self-satisfied air of monetary success, but with that ominous hardness about the corners of the mouth which constantly betrays the lucky man of business. His abundant long hair was iron-gray and wiry--Erasmus Walker had seldom time to waste in getting it cut--his eyes were small and shrewd; his hand was firm, and gripped the pen in its grasp like a ponderous crowbar. His writing, Tyrrel could see, was thick, black, and decisive. Altogether the kind of man on whose brow it was written in legible characters that it's dogged as does it. The delicately organized Cornishman felt an instinctive dislike at once for this great coa.r.s.e mountain of a bullying Teuton. Yet for Cleer's sake he knew he mustn't rub him the wrong way. He must put up with Erasmus Walker and all his faults, and try to approach him by the most accessible side--if indeed any side were accessible at all, save the waistcoat pocket.

At last, however, the engineer paused a moment in his headlong course through sentence after sentence, held his pen half irresolute over a new blank sheet, and turning round to Tyrrel, without one word of apology, said, in a quick, decisive voice, "This is business, I suppose, business? for if not, I've no time. I'm very pressed this morning. Very pressed, indeed. Very pressed and occupied."

"Yes, it is business," Tyrrel answered, promptly, taking his cue with Celtic quickness. "Business that may be worth a good deal of money."

Erasmus Walker p.r.i.c.ked up his ears at that welcome sound, and let the pen drop quietly into the rack by his side. "Only I'm afraid I must ask for a quarter of an hour or so of your valuable time. You will not find it thrown away. You can name your own price for it."

"My dear sir," the engineer replied, taking up his visitor's card again and gazing at it hard with a certain inquiring scrutiny, "if it's business, and business of an important character, of course I need hardly say I'm very glad to attend to you. There are so many people who come bothering me for nothing, don't you know--charitable appeals or what not--that I'm obliged to make a hard and fast rule about interviews. But if it's business you mean, I'm your man at once. I live for public works. Go ahead. I'm all attention."

He wheeled round in his revolving chair, and faced Tyrrel in an att.i.tude of sharp practical eagerness. His eye was all alert. It was clear, the man was keen on every pa.s.sing chance of a stray hundred or two extra. His keenness disconcerted the conscientious and idealistic Cornishman. For a second or two Tyrrel debated how to open fire upon so unwonted an enemy. At last he began, stammering, "I've a friend who has made a design for the Wharfedale Viaduct."

"Exactly," Erasmus Walker answered, pouncing down upon him like a hawk.

"And I've made one too. And as mine's in the field, why, your friend's is waste paper."

His sharpness half silenced Tyrrel. But with an effort the younger man went on, in spite of interruption. "That's precisely what I've come about," he said; "I know that already. If only you'll have patience and hear me out while I unfold my plan, you'll find what I have to propose is all to your own interest. I'm prepared to pay well for the arrangement I ask. Will you name your own price for half an hour's conversation, and then listen to me straight on and without further interruption?"

Erasmus Walker glanced back at him with those keen ferret-like eyes of his. "Why, certainly," he answered; "I'll listen if you wish. We'll treat it as a consultation. My fees for consultation depend, of course, upon the nature of the subject on which advice is asked. But you'll pay well, you say, for the scheme you propose. Now, this is business.

Therefore, we must be business-like. So first, what guarantee have I of your means and solvency? I don't deal with men of straw. Are you known in the City?" He jerked out his sentences as if words were extorted from him at so much per thousand.

"I am not," Tyrrel answered, quietly; "but I gave you my card, and you can see from it who I am--Walter Tyrrel of Penmorgan Manor. I'm a landed proprietor, with a good estate in Cornwall. And I'm prepared to risk--well, a large part of my property in the business I propose to you, without any corresponding risk on your part. In plain words, I'm prepared to pay you money down, if you will accede to my wish, on a pure matter of sentiment."

"Sentiment?" Mr. Walker replied, bringing his jaw down like a rat-trap, and gazing across at him, dubiously. "I don't deal in sentiment."

"No; probably not," Tyrrel answered. "But I said sentiment, Mr. Walker, and I'm willing to pay for it. I know very well it's an article at a discount in the City. Still, to me, it means money's worth, and I'm prepared to give money down to a good tune to humor it. Let me explain the situation. I'll do so as briefly and as simply as I can, if only you'll listen to me. A friend of mine, as I said, one Eustace Le Neve, who has been constructing engineer of the Rosario and Santa Fe, in the Argentine Confederacy, has made a design for the Wharfedale Viaduct.

It's a very good design, and a practical design; and Sir Edward Jones, who has seen it, entirely approves of it."

"Jones is a good man," Mr. Walker murmured, nodding his head in acquiescence. "No dashed nonsense about Jones. Head screwed on the right way. Jones is a good man and knows what he's talking about."

"Well, Jones says it's a good design," Tyrrel went on, breathing freer as he gauged his man more completely. "And the facts are just these: My friend's engaged to a young lady up in town here, in whom I take a deep interest--" Mr. Walker whistled low to himself, but didn't interrupt him--"a deep FRIENDLY interest," Tyrrel corrected, growing hot in the face at the man's evident insolent misconstruction of his motives; "and the long and the short of it is, his chance of marrying her depends very much upon whether or not he can get this design of his accepted by the directors."

"He can't," Mr. Walker said, promptly, "unless he buys me out. That's pat and flat. He can't, for mine's in; and mine's sure to be taken."

"So I understand," Tyrrel went on. "Your name, I'm told, carries everything before it. But what I want to suggest now is simply this--How much will you take, money down on the nail, this minute, to withdraw your own design from the informal compet.i.tion?"

Erasmus Walker gasped hard, drew a long breath, and stared at him. "How much will I take," he repeated, slowly; "how--much--will--I--take--to withdraw my design? Well, that IS remarkable!"

"I mean it," Tyrrel repeated, with a very serious face. "This is to me, I will confess, a matter of life and death. I want to see my friend Le Neve in a good position in the world, such as his talents ent.i.tle him to. I don't care how much I spend in order to insure it. So what I want to know is just this and nothing else--how much will you take to withdraw from the compet.i.tion?"

Erasmus Walker laid his two hands on his fat knees, with his legs wide open, and stared long and hard at his incomprehensible visitor. So strange a request stunned for a moment even that sound business head. A minute or two he paused. Then, with a violent effort, he pulled himself together. "Come, come," he said, "Mr. Tyrrel; let's be practical and above-board. I don't want to rob you. I don't want to plunder you. I see you mean business. But how do you know, suppose even you buy me out, this young fellow's design has any chance of being accepted? What reason have you to think the Great North Midland people are likely to give such a job to an unknown beginner?"

"Sir Edward Jones says it's admirable," Tyrrel ventured, dubiously.

"Sir Edward Jones says it's admirable! Well, that's good, as far as it goes. Jones knows what he's talking about. Head's screwed on the right way. But has your friend any interest with the directors--that's the question? Have you reason to think, if he sends it in, and I hold back mine, his is the plan they'd be likely to pitch upon?"

"I go upon its merits," Walter Tyrrel said, quietly.

"The very worst thing on earth any man can ever possibly go upon," the man of business retorted, with cynical confidence. "If that's all you've got to say, my dear sir, it wouldn't be fair of me to make money terms with you. I won't discuss my price in the matter till I've some reason to believe this idea of yours is workable."

"I have the designs here all ready," Walter Tyrrel replied, holding them out. "Plans, elevations, specifications, estimates, sections, figures, everything. Will you do me the favor to look at them? Then, perhaps, you'll be able to see whether or not the offer's genuine."

The great engineer took the roll with a smile. He opened it hastily, in a most skeptical humor. Walter Tyrrel leant over him, and tried just at first to put in a word or two of explanation, such as Le Neve had made to himself; but an occasionally testy "Yes, yes; I see," was all the thanks he got for his pains and trouble. After a minute or two he found out it was better to let the engineer alone. That practiced eye picked out in a moment the strong and weak points of the whole conception.

Gradually, however, as Walker went on, Walter Tyrrel could see he paid more and more attention to every tiny detail. His whole manner altered.

The skeptical smile faded away, little by little, from those thick, sensuous lips, and a look of keen interest took its place by degrees on the man's eager features. "That's good!" he murmured more than once, as he examined more closely some section or enlargement. "That's good!

very good! knows what he's about, this Eustace Le Neve man!" Now and again he turned back, to re-examine some special point. "Clever dodge!"

he murmured, half to himself. "Clever dodge, undoubtedly. Make an engineer in time--no doubt at all about that--if only they'll give him his head, and not try to thwart him."

Tyrrel waited till he'd finished. Then he leant forward once more.

"Well, what do you think of it now?" he asked, flus.h.i.+ng hot. "Is this business--or otherwise?"

"Oh, business, business," the great engineer murmured, musically, regarding the papers before him with a certain professional affection.

"It's a devilish clever plan--I won't deny that--and it's devilish well carried out in every detail."

Tyrrel seized his opportunity. "And if you were to withdraw your own design," he asked, somewhat nervously, hardly knowing how best to frame his delicate question, "do you think ... the directors ... would be likely to accept this one?"

Erasmus Walker hummed and hawed. He twirled his fat thumbs round one another in doubt. Then he answered oracularly, "They might, of course; and yet, again, they mightn't."

"Upon whom would the decision rest?" Tyrrel inquired, looking hard at him.

"Upon me, almost entirely," the great engineer responded at once, with cheerful frankness. "To say the plain truth, they've no minds of their own, these men. They'd ask my advice, and accept it implicitly."