Whereupon he, too, forgot Miss Jocelyn and Billy, and launched into further explanation.  At six o’clock Billy Jordan covered his typewriter and put on his coat and hat.  He came over to the table and leaned his elbow on it, waiting for Garton to finish something that he was saying.

“I’m going around to Truxton’s a little while this evening,” he said, trying to speak as a man of the world should, but flushing up under Garton’s twinkling eyes.  “If you find time dragging on your hands you might come along, Mr. Conniston.  Miss Jocelyn”—­he hesitated a moment—­“Miss Jocelyn said I might bring you around.”

Conniston thanked him and asked him to thank Miss Jocelyn, but assured him that instead of having time lagging for him he had more to do than he could manage.  So Billy went on his way alone.  Nor did he seem disappointed at Conniston’s refusal to accompany him.  It was only when it began to grow dusk and the boy brought Garton’s supper that Conniston got up and went down the street to his own solitary evening meal at the lunch-counter.

It was after nine o’clock, and Conniston was lying on his cot in the little rear room of the office-building listening to Tommy Garton talk about reclamation—­it seemed the only thing in the world he cared to talk about during working-hours or after—­when the outside door was flung open and a man’s heavy tread came through the office and to their sleeping-room.

“That’ll be Truxton,” Garton said.  “Wants to see you, I guess.”

The heavy tread came on through the office, and the door to Garton’s room was flung open with as little ceremony as the front door had been.  In the light of a kerosene-lamp upon the chair near his cot Conniston saw a short, squat, heavy-set man of perhaps forty-five, very broad across the forehead, very salient-jawed, his mustache short-cropped and grizzled, his mouth large and firm-lipped, his eyes steady and keen as they turned swiftly upon Conniston from under shaggy, tangled, iron-gray brows.  The man had nodded curtly toward Tommy Garton, and then stood still in the doorway regarding young Conniston intently.

“You’re Conniston.”

It was a positive statement rather than a question, but Conniston answered as he sat up on the edge of his cot: 

“Yes.  I’m Conniston.”

“All right.”  Truxton removed the lamp from the one chair in the room, placed it upon the window-sill, and sat down, pulling the chair around so that he faced Conniston.  “You’re goin’ to work with me in the mornin’.  Now, what do you know?”

His manner was abrupt, his voice curt.  Conniston felt a trifle ill at ease under the man’s piercing gaze, which seemed to be measuring him.

“Not a great deal, I’m afraid.  You see, I—­”

“I thought you were an engineer?”

“I am—­after a fashion.  Graduate of Yale—­”

“Ever had any actual, practical experience?”

“Only field work in college.”