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Updated: June 29, 2025
Sprudell ostentatiously opened the telegram which was brought to him, secretly pleased at seeming to be thus pursued by the requirements of his large business interests; but his frown of importance and air of a man with weighty matters to decide was wasted upon Helen, who was watching a lively party of men making its way to a nearby table reserved for six.
His personal friends already had an outline of the proposition, with the promise that they should hear more, and now, after a dash through "Spurr's Geology Applied to Mining," he was prepared to tell them all that their restricted intelligences could comprehend. When the right moment arrived, Mr. Sprudell arose impressively.
Sprudell had not realized it before; but now he knew that always in the back of his head there had been a picture of an imposing cortège, blocks long, following a wreath-covered coffin in which he reposed.
He had an impulse to jump and slide for them but the waiter was ahead of him. Sprudell looked back impatiently. "Thank you so much." She smiled at the waiter-fellow and Bruce knew her. Slim's sister! There was no mistaking the sweetly serious eyes, the smiling lips with which he had grown familiar in the yellowish picture.
"I ran up to the city one day last week," the paragraph read, "and who do you suppose I saw with Winfield Harrah in the lobby of the Hotel Strathmore? You would never guess. None other than our versatile friend T. Victor Sprudell!" How did they meet? For what purpose had Sprudell sought Harrah's acquaintance?
In the unguarded moment Sprudell's passion for revenge was stamped upon his face like a brand. Helen had thought of him contemptuously as a bounder, a conceited ignoramus he was more than these things, he was a dangerous man. But why this intense antagonism? Why should they not speak? Sprudell had not told her of a quarrel.
Certainly a man of his mining experience knew better than to make locations in the snow and to pass assessment work which was obviously inadequate. From Sprudell, Bruce had heard nothing and engrossed in his new activities all but forgot him and his treachery, his insults and mysterious threats of vengeance.
In other words, by a certain amount of industry, T. Victor Sprudell had become a walking encyclopædia of misinformation with small danger of being found out so long as he stayed in Bartlesville.
Wiry and seasoned as he was, he was nearly exhausted by the extra steps he had taken and the effort he had put forth to coax and bully, somehow to drag Sprudell along. The situation was desperate. The bitter cold grew worse as night came on. He knew that they had worked their way down toward the river, but how far down? Was the deep cañon he had tried to follow the right one?
He was wrong in his suspicions, of course, but nevertheless, he was intensely irritated by the carelessness. He arose, and Sprudell did likewise. "You are going West from here?" Bruce answered shortly: "On the first train." Sprudell lowered his lids that Bruce should not see the satisfaction in his eyes. "Good luck to you, and once more, congratulations on your safe return."
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