She pressed the button that swung aside a section of filled book- shelves and revealed the tiny spiral of steel steps that led up to Dick's work room. At the top, a similar pivoting section of shelves swung obediently to her press of button and let her noiselessly into his room. A shade of vexation passed across her face as she recognized Jeremy Braxton's voice. She paused in indecision, neither seeing nor being seen.
"If we flood we flood," the mine superintendent was saying. "It will cost a mint--yes, half a dozen mints--to pump out again. And it's a damned shame to drown the old Harvest that way."
"But for this last year the books show that we've worked at a positive loss," Paula heard Dick take up. "Every petty bandit from Huerta down to the last peon who's stolen a horse has gouged us. It's getting too stiff--taxes extraordinary--bandits, revolutionists, and federals. We could survive it, if only the end were in sight; but we have no guarantee that this disorder may not last a dozen or twenty years."
"Just the same, the old Harvest--think of flooding her!" the superintendent protested.
"And think of Villa," Dick replied, with a sharp laugh the bitterness of which did not escape Paula. "If he wins he says he's going to divide all the land among the peons. The next logical step will be the mines. How much do you think we've coughed up to the constitutionalists in the past twelvemonth?"
"Over a hundred and twenty thousand," Braxton answered promptly. "Not counting that fifty thousand cold bullion to Torenas before he retreated. He jumped his army at Guaymas and headed for Europe with it--I wrote you all that."
"If we keep the workings afloat, Jeremy, they'll go on gouging, gouge without end, Amen. I think we'd better flood. If we can make wealth more efficiently than those rapscallions, let us show them that we can destroy wealth with the same facility."
"That's what I tell them. And they smile and repeat that such and such a free will offering, under exigent circumstances, would be very acceptable to the revolutionary chiefs--meaning themselves. The big chiefs never finger one peso in ten of it. Good Lord! I show them what we've done. Steady work for five thousand peons. Wages raised from ten centavos a day to a hundred and ten. I show them peons--ten-centavo men when we took them, and five-peso men when I showed them. And the same old smile and the same old itching palm, and the same old acceptability of a free will offering from us to the sacred cause of the revolution. By God! Old Diaz was a robber, but he was a decent robber. I said to Arranzo: 'If we shut down, here's five thousand Mexicans out of a job--what'll you do with them?' And Arranzo smiled and answered me pat. 'Do with them?' he said. 'Why, put guns in their hands and march 'em down to take Mexico City.'"