“Ask Mr. Wading what he thinks of it?”

“I intended to, provided it had your approval, sir,” I replied.

“You have my approval, Mr. Paret,” he declared, rather cryptically, and with the slight German hardening of the v’s into which he relapsed at times.  “Bring it to the Works this afternoon.”

Mr. Wading agreed to the alteration.  He looked at me amusedly.

“Yes, I think that’s an improvement, Hugh,” he said.  I had a feeling that I had gained ground, and from this time on I thought I detected a change in his attitude toward me; there could be no doubt about the new attitude of Mr. Scherer, who would often greet me now with a smile and a joke, and sometimes went so far as to ask my opinions....  Then, about six months later, came the famous Ribblevale case that aroused the moral indignation of so many persons, among whom was Perry Blackwood.

“You know as well as I do, Hugh, how this thing is being manipulated,” he declared at Tom’s one Sunday evening; “there was nothing the matter with the Ribblevale Steel Company—­it was as right as rain before Leonard Dickinson and Grierson and Scherer and that crowd you train with began to talk it down at the Club.  Oh, they’re very compassionate.  I’ve heard ’em.  Dickinson, privately, doesn’t think much of Ribblevale paper, and Pugh” (the president of the Ribblevale) “seems worried and looks badly.  It’s all very clever, but I’d hate to tell you in plain words what I’d call it.”

“Go ahead,” I challenged him audaciously.  “You haven’t any proof that the Ribblevale wasn’t in trouble.”

“I heard Mr. Pugh tell my father the other day it was a d—­d outrage.  He couldn’t catch up with these rumours, and some of his stockholders were liquidating.”

“You, don’t suppose Pugh would want to admit his situation, do you?” I asked.

“Pugh’s a straight man,” retorted Perry.  “That’s more than I can say for any of the other gang, saving your presence.  The unpleasant truth is that Scherer and the Boyne people want the Ribblevale, and you ought to know it if you don’t.”  He looked at me very hard through the glasses he had lately taken to wearing.  Tom, who was lounging by the fire, shifted his position uneasily.  I smiled, and took another cigar.

“I believe Ralph is right, Perry, when he calls you a sentimentalist.  For you there’s a tragedy behind every ordinary business transaction.  The Ribblevale people are having a hard time to keep their heads above water, and immediately you smell conspiracy.  Dickinson and Scherer have been talking it down.  How about it, Tom?”

But Tom, in these debates, was inclined to be noncommittal, although it was clear they troubled him.

“Oh, don’t ask me, Hughie,” he said.

“I suppose I ought to cultivate the scientific point of view, and look with impartial interest at this industrial cannibalism,” returned Perry, sarcastically.  “Eat or be eaten that’s what enlightened self-interest has come to.  After all, Ralph would say, it is nature, the insect world over again, the victim duped and crippled before he is devoured, and the lawyer—­how shall I put it?—­facilitating the processes of swallowing and digesting....”