When, about an hour after his conversation with Grady, he started down
to the elevator to take command, he knew he ought to tell Bannon of his
conversation with Grady, and he fully intended doing so. But his
determination oozed away as he neared the office, and when he finally
saw Bannon he decided to say nothing about it whatever. He decided thus
partly because he wished to make his conversation with Bannon as short
as possible, partly because he had not made up his mind what
significance, if any, the incident had, and (more than either of these
reasons) because ever since Grady had repeated the phrase: "He don't
care what it costs him," Peterson had been uneasily aware that he had
talked too much.

CHAPTER X

Grady's affairs were prospering beyond his expectations, confident
though he had been. Away back in the summer, when the work was in its
early stages, his eye had been upon it; he had bided his time in the
somewhat indefinite hope that something would turn up. But he went away
jubilant from his conversation with Peterson, for it seemed that all the
cards were in his hands.

Just as a man running for a car is the safest mark for a gamin's
snowball, so Calumet K, through being a rush job as well as a rich one,
offered a particularly advantageous field for Grady's endeavors. Men who
were trying to accomplish the impossible feat of completing, at any
cost, the great hulk on the river front before the first of January,
would not be likely to stop to quibble at paying the five thousand
dollars or so that Grady, who, as the business agent of his union was
simply in masquerade, would like to extort.

He had heard that Peterson was somewhat disaffected to Bannon's
authority, but had not expected him to make so frank an avowal of it.
That was almost as much in his favor as the necessity for hurry. These,
with the hoist accident to give a color of respectability to the
operation, ought to make it simple enough. He had wit enough to see that
Bannon was a much harder man to handle than Peterson, and that with
Peterson restored to full authority, the only element of uncertainty
would be removed. And he thought that if he could get Peterson to help
him it might be possible to secure Bannon's recall. If the scheme
failed, he had still another shot in his locker, but this one was worth
a trial, anyway.

One afternoon in the next week he went around to Peterson's
boarding-house and sent up his card with as much cer