The Winning of Barbara Worth eBook

When The King’s Basin man had placed the situation fairly before him and the old financier had asked a number of pertinent questions, he said:  “Mr. Worth, I understand that neither the value nor the safety of my investment is necessarily impaired because you have a situation on your hands demanding immediate relief.  I can see that the capital you ask me to put into your enterprise will relieve the situation at once and enable you to place the whole business upon a solid foundation.  If you fail to raise this money, or if you get it too late, you go to the wall and I lose a chance for what seems a profitable investment.  As I told you, legitimate promotion of actual development projects has always been attractive to me, but I want to examine into matters a little further before I give you my final answer.  Frankly I want to ask the opinion of Willard Holmes.  I would not place too much confidence in Mr. Greenfield’s judgment, or rather, I should say, in any advice that he would give me in this particular matter.  But I have known Willard from babyhood.  I knew his father and the whole family, and I would be guided by his opinion as an engineer of conditions in the new country in which you are all interested.  Fortunately Holmes is here in the hotel.  Let me have a little talk with him and I’ll give you my answer without delay.”

Writing a brief note asking the engineer to come to his room, he summoned a boy and directed him to deliver the message immediately.  A few minutes later Jefferson Worth, in the lobby, saw the boy approach Holmes, who was with Greenfield.  The engineer took the note from the boy, glanced at it and handed it to his companion.  For a moment they stood in earnest conversation; then the engineer turned and moved away.

Jefferson Worth saw him enter the elevator, saw the ornamented iron door close and the cage glide smoothly upward.

James Greenfield, confident, self-possessed, with the air of one whose position and future are secure, jovially greeted one of the New York party, who came up on Holmes’s departure, and the two stood laughing and chatting over their cigars.

Jefferson Worth sat alone in a secluded corner of the lobby.

CHAPTER XXVII.

ABE LEE’S RIDE TO SAVE JEFFERSON WORTH.

The evening that Jefferson Worth spent in the San Felipe hotel lobby, apparently absorbed in his paper while Greenfield, Holmes and Cartwright with their New York friends were enjoying their dinner, Barbara and her court had their anxious supper together in the Worth home.

The night that followed was one of wakeful readiness on the part of the men who guarded the Worth property.  But the strikers seemed content to curse and threaten.  Breakfast the next morning, in spite of Barbara’s efforts at cheerfulness, was a gloomy meal.  Worn with their anxious vigil the men ate in silence, save when they forced themselves to respond to their young hostess’s attempts at conversation.  They knew that another day of idleness would fit the striking laborers for reckless action.