His clerk heard him, and dared not interrupt him for small matters; the routine business of the morning was easily discharged. But about noon came a deputation from the street-railway employees, asking to see Mr. Ellis.
The secretary listened at the door; Ellis was still pacing the room, yet the matter was important. The secretary knocked.
"Men from the union to see you," he said through the door.
"Tell them to come again," answered Ellis.
The secretary went with this answer to the deputation. The spokesman answered: "We have wasted enough time. We must see him now or not at all."
The secretary knocked again at Ellis's door. "They say they must see you now, sir," he said.
"Send them to the devil," Ellis replied. The secretary, without thought of the irony of his interpretation of the order, asked the men to wait. They consulted among themselves and went away.
That morning the cars on the streets had run as usual, but the delegates of the union, returning angrily from Ellis's office, gave the order for the men to strike. As each car returned to the barn its crew left; by one o'clock almost all the cars were housed. Then the supporters of Ellis began to gather in his outer office. Price was there, Daggett was there, a dozen others as well; they consulted anxiously. Not one of them had expected that Ellis would let the trouble go so far.
At last, with pale face and fierce eye, he appeared among them. "Ha," he said sardonically when he saw so many of them. "What has frightened you all?"