"You? Did YOU draw the plans we--we've been working on?" asked
Coffee.
"Yes, I did," answered Neale, slowly. It struck him that Blake had
paled slightly. Neale sustained a slight shock of surprise and
antagonism. He bent over his note-book, opening it to a clean page.
Fighting his first impressions, he decided they had arisen from the
manifest dismay of the engineers and their consciousness of a
blunder.
"Let's get down to notes," Neale went on, taking up his pencil.
"You've been here three months?"
"Yes."
"With what force?"
"Two hundred men on and off."
"Who's the gang boss?"
"Colohan. He's had some of the biggest contracts along the line."
Neale was about to inquire the name of the contractor, but he
refrained, governed by one of his peculiar impulses.
"Anybody working when you got here?" he went on.
"Yes. Masons had been cutting stone for six weeks."
"What's been done?"
Coffee laughed harshly. "We got the three piers in--good and solid
on dry bottom. Then along comes the rain--and our work melts into
the quicksand. Since then we've been trying to do it over."
"But why did this happen in the first place?"
Coffee spread wide his arms. "Ask me something easy. Why was the
bottom dry and solid? Why did it rain? Why did solid earth turn into
quicksand?"
Neale slapped the note-book shut and rose to his feet.
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