Forsyth looked at his watch. “Will you take a partner? My rush won’t be on for a couple of hours yet.”
“I shall be glad to have you along, if you don’t mind going into the dog kennels. I can’t promise you a pleasure trip.”
“I’d like to go,” said the editor. “I suppose you share the opinion of the public, that all newspaper men are seasoned rounders; but it is a fiction in my own case—and in that of many others too, I think.”
They went down together, and in the street Forsyth asked if it would not be well to take an officer along. Whereat Brant laughed.
“You forget my errand, don’t you? We might as well look for these fellows with a file of soldiers at our backs as with a ‘Bobby’ for an escort. We shall get around all right by ourselves, and if we should happen to run afoul of trouble, you just stand from under while I cover the retreat.”
“Are you armed?” asked Forsyth.
“Assuredly.”
“Well, I am not, and I presume it is just as well. I can’t see four feet in front of me with or without glasses.”
“Can’t you? Then let me take your arm,” said Brant, with ready sympathy; and together they turned down Sixteenth Street to plunge presently into the depths of the underworld.
For reasons best known to himself, Brant made the search for the unknown conspirators a very thorough one. If, as he more than half suspected, one of the men should turn out to be Harding in disguise, the solution of the mystery would be reached at once. And in that case he knew his enemy well enough to be sure that nothing short of vigorous measures would serve to beat him off.