unnecessary feat.

Bull was gazing in frank wonder on the engineer's completed work. It was
his first sight of it. The place had been long in building. But the
sight of it in full running, the sense of enormous power, the thought
and labour this new power-house represented, filled him with nothing but
admiration for the author of it all.

Bat hailed one of the electricians serving the machines.

"Where's Mr. Lawton?" he shouted.

"He went out. He ain't here," the man shouted back.

Bat regarded the man for a moment without favour. Then he turned away.
He beckoned Bull to follow, and moved over to the sound-proof door which
shut off the engineer's office. They passed to the quiet beyond it.

It was quite a small room without any elaborate pretensions. There was a
desk supporting a drawing board, with a chair set before it. There was
also a rocker-chair which accommodated the lean body of Skert Lawton at
such infrequent moments as it desired repose. Beyond that there was
little enough furniture. The place was mainly bare boards and bare
walls. Bat sat himself at the desk and left Bull the rocker-chair.

"I'd fixed it so Skert was to meet us here," he said. "All this is his
stuff. I couldn't tell you an' amp from a buck louse."

Bull nodded.

"That's all right," he said. "Maybe he's held up down at the mill. He'll
get--"

"Held up--nuthin'!"

The lumberman was angry. But his anger was not at the failure of his
arrangements. Back of his head he was wondering at the thing that
claimed the engineer. He felt that only real urgency would have kept him
from his appointment. And he knew that urgency just now had a more or
less ugly meaning.

"Lawton's a pretty bright boy--" Bull began. But the other caught him up
roughly.

"Bright? That don't say a thing," Bat cried. "Guess he's a whole darn
engineering college rolled into the worst shape of the ghost of a man
it's been my misfortune ever to locate. He's a highbrow of an elegant
natur'. He calls this thing 'co-ordination,' which is another way of
sayin' he's beat nigh a hundred thousand dollars out of our bank roll to
hand us more power than we could use if we took in Broadway, New York,
at night. But it's elegant plannin' and looks good to me. Your folks
over the water'll maybe see things in it, too. It's them blast furnaces
we set up for him last year made this play possible. Them, and the swell
outfit of machine shops he squeezed us for. He figgers to raise all