Following a preliminary conference, I'll
let you know whether you're going to get that franchise without
difficulty or whether somebody's itchy palm will have to be crossed
with silver first. Honest men never temporize. You know where they
stand, but a grafter temporizes and plays a waiting game, hoping to
wear your patience down to the point where you'll ask him bluntly to
name his figure. By the way, what do you know about your blighted old
city council, anyway?"
"Two of the five councilmen are for sale; two are honest men--and one
is an uncertain quantity. The mayor is a politician. I've known them
all since boyhood, and if I dared come out in the open, I think that
even the crooks have sentiment enough for what the Cardigans stand
for in this county to decline to hold me up."
"Then why not come out in the open and save trouble and expense?"
"I am not ready to have a lot of notes called on me," Bryce replied
dryly. "Neither am I desirous of having the Laguna Grande Lumber
Company start a riot in the redwood lumber market by cutting prices
to a point where I would have to sell my lumber at a loss in order to
get hold of a little ready money. Neither do I desire to have trees
felled across the right of way of Pennington's road after his
trainloads of logs have gone through and before mine have started
from the woods.
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