Smaltz wheeled and came back a step.

"Oh, you would, would you? Say, you fakir, I'm glad you spoke. I almost
forgot you." There was sneering, utter contempt in Smaltz's voice.
"_Fakir_," he reiterated, "you get that, do you, for I'm pickin' my
words and not callin' names by chance. You're the worst that ever come
off the Pacific coast--and that's goin' _some_."

He turned sharply to Bruce.

"You know even a liar sometimes tells the truth and I'm goin' to give it
to you straight now. I've nothin' to win or lose. _This machinery never
will run._ The plant was a failure before it was put up. And," he nodded
contemptuously at Banule, "nobody knew it better than that dub."

"Jennings," he went on "advised this old-fashioned type of machinery
because it was the only kind he understood and he wanted the job of
putting it up, honestly believin' at the time that he could. When he
realized that he couldn't, he sent for Banule to pull him through.

"Jennings failed because of his ignorance but this feller _knows_, and
whatever he's done he has done knowin' that his work couldn't by any
chance last. All he's thought of was gettin' the plant up somehow so it
would run temporarily--any old way to get through--get his money, and
get out. He's experimented continually at your expense; he's bungled the
job from beginning to end with his carelessness--his 'good enough' work.

"You were queered from the start with them armatures he wound back there
on the Coast. He and Jennings took an old fifty horse-power motor and
tried to wind it for seventy-five. There wasn't room for the copper so
they hammered in the coils. They ruptured the insulation in the armature
and that's why it's always short-circuited and sparked. He rated it at
seventy-five and it's never registered but fifty at its best. He rated
the small motor at fifty and it developed thirty--no more. The blue
print calls for 1500 revolutions on the big pump and the speed indicator
shows 900. Even if the motors were all right, the vibration from that
bum foundation that he told you was 'good enough' would throw them out,
in time.

"All through he's lied and bluffed, and faked. He has yet to put up his
first successful plant. Look up his record if you think it ain't the
truth. What's happened here is only a repetition of what's happened
everywhere he's ever been. It would be a fortune if 'twas figured what
his carelessness has cost the men for whom he's worked.

"In the ey