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Updated: June 1, 2025
"The company can afford to pay its own bills," broke in Mr. Prenter, rather gruffly. "It's about time to turn in, isn't it?" asked Mr. Bascomb, striking a match and glancing at his watch. "I'm going to stay up a little longer, and talk with Reade about the dread mystery of our million dollar breakwater, if he'll let me," hinted Mr. Prenter. Mr. Bascomb rose as though to go into the house.
"Have you any notion of giving in to that extent?" asked Mr. Prenter. "Not an idea!" retorted Tom Reade promptly. "It wouldn't be my way to surrender to the Devil. I'll fight to the last ditch -unless your company really prefers to have Hazelton and myself cancel our contract and get out of this work. Do you?" "I don't want you to quit," replied Mr. Prenter positively.
"I guess you'd better go," called the president, rather shamefacedly, after his talk with Mr. Prenter. "I guess maybe Reade is right. At all events his contract places him in charge of this camp." "Humph, Evarts, a lot of good you can do us here, can't you?" sneered the sallow-faced fellow. Tom looked first at one, and then at the other of the pair.
"Let it go at that," smiled Mr. Prenter. "You may even, sometime, if it will please Mr. Bascomb, hand him your resignation. I will see to it that it doesn't get past the board of directors. Mr. Bascomb is irritable, and sometimes he is a downright crank, but he is valuable to us just the same.
"But don't order any electrical supplies until you've got an estimate of the cost and have it approved by me," hinted President Bascomb. This cautious direction made Mr. Prenter shrug his shoulders. Dinner finished, all hands went out to sit on the porch. Mr. Bascomb soon began to ask questions about the camp, the housing of the men, and about other details of the camp.
Bascomb gets a bit hard-headed, and he is inclined to give orders that others of us wouldn't approve. I judge that you and he were having some dispute when I happened along." "I didn't regard it as a dispute, sir," Reade rejoined. "In the first place, I had discharged, for incompetency and faithlessness, a foreman named Evarts. "And Evarts is a pet of Mr. Bascomb's," smiled Mr. Prenter.
Therefore, Evarts, you'll leave camp now, and you won't come back again under pain of being punished for trespass." "Oh, now see here, Reade " began Mr. Bascomb angrily, as he started forward. But Treasurer Prenter caught Bascomb by the arm, whispering in his ear. "Waiting for you, Mr. Bascomb," called Evarts.
"Of course we'll be eternally vigilant after this, but the trick was done last night so cleverly and mysteriously that we may be surprised again by the plotters. Speaking of mystery, could anything be stranger, or harder to explain, than what happened to poor Hazelton?" "There was mystery for you!" nodded Mr. Prenter. "Have you any ideas whatever on the subject of Hazelton's disappearance?"
Tom, Harry and Mr. Prenter jumped, landing safely aboard. "How did the enemy come to catch you napping, Corbett?" Tom inquired good-humoredly. "They didn't catch me napping, sir," protested Foreman Corbett. "It is the strangest thing, sir -that explosion. Why, I had had my light turned on that very part of the wall at least a dozen times in the last half-hour before the blow-out came.
"Bascomb," said the treasurer of the company, "Reade's advice was good, though wholly unnecessary. There is no need to tell the directors the story of your past misfortune. Most of them know it already." The president's face grew grayish as he listened in torment. "Moreover," Mr. Prenter continued, "most of us have known all about the matter since just before you were elected president."
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