A glimmer of Bruce's purpose came to Smaltz at last.
"What--you tryin'--to do?" he panted.
Bruce panted back: "I'm going to kill you! Do you hear?" His eyes were bloodshot, more than ever he looked like some battle-crazed grizzly seeing his victim through a blur or rage and pain. "If I can--throw you--across those commutators--before the fireworks stop--I'm goin' to give you fifteen hundred volts!"
A wild fright came in Smaltz's eyes.
"Let me up!" he begged.
For answer Bruce shoved him closer to the dynamo. He fought with fresh desperation.
"Don't do that, Burt! My God--Don't do that!"
"Then talk--talk! She's going fast. You've got to tell the truth before she stops! Why did you burn out this plant?"
Smaltz would not answer. Bruce lifted him bodily from the floor. In the struggle he threw out a hand to save himself and his finger touched the spring that held the carbons. He screamed with the shock, but the blue flashes were close to his face blinding him before he suddenly relaxed: "I'm all in. I'll tell."
Bruce let him drop back hard upon the floor and thrust a knee into his chest.
"Goon, then--talk!"
The words came with an effort; he seemed afraid of their effect upon Bruce, then, uncertainly: "I--was paid."
For the fraction of a second Bruce stared into Smaltz's scared face. "You were paid," he repeated slowly. "Who--" and then the word came rapier-like as had the thought--"Sprudell!"
"He told me to see that you didn't start. He left the rest to me." With sullen satisfaction: "And it's cost him plenty--you bet--"
Inexplicable things suddenly grew clear to Bruce.
"You turned the boat loose in Meadows--"
"Yes."
"You wrecked it on that rock--"
"Yes."
"You fouled the mercury in the boxes?"
"Yes."
"And Toy!" The look of murder came back into Bruce's face, his hand crept toward Smaltz's throat. "Don't lie! What did you do to Toy?"
Smaltz whispered--he could barely speak--"I'm tellin' the truth--it was an accident. He jumped me--I threw him off and he fell in the sluice-box--backward--I tried to save him--I did--that's straight." Smaltz kept rolling his head back and forth in an oil-soaked spot where a grease cup leaked. Bruce's knee was grinding into his ribs and chest and his fingers were tightening on his throat.
Bruce raised himself a little and looked down at Smaltz. As he stared at the smudged, bleeding face and into the yellow-brown eyes with their dilated pupils, the rage in his own gave place to a kind of intense curiosity, the scrutiny one gives to a repulsive and venomous insect or reptile he has captured. He was trying to impress upon his own mind the incredible fact that this human being, lying helpless beneath him, watching him with questioning fear, had ruined him without the least personal malice--had robbed him of all he had strained, and worked, and fought for, for pay! It seemed like a preposterous, illogical dream; yet there he lay, alive, real, his face less than two feet from his own.