"Then I should make every mother's son of them come across with the full amount of the bribe, on pain of an exposure which the dirtiest politician in this State couldn't afford to face. That would settle it. Hatch couldn't work the same game a second time."
Ripley let it go at that and spoke of something else.
"I suppose you have seen how our stock is climbing. Has the new situation here anything to do with it?"
Mr. Norcross said he thought not, and rather lamented that we didn't have better information about what was going on at the New York end of things. Also, he told Ripley something that I hadn't known; that he had wired Mr. Chadwick asking the wheat king to give him a line on what the stock-kiting meant. Then Ripley asked for orders.
"There is nothing to be done until Hatch begins to raise his prices," he was told. "But I wanted to have you here in case anything should break loose suddenly." And at that Ripley went away.
We were closing our desks to go to dinner when Fred May came in to say that a delegation of the pay-roll men was outside and wanting to have a word with the "Big Boss." Mr. Norcross stopped with his desk curtain half drawn down.
"What is it, Fred?" he asked.
"I don't know," said the Pittsburgher. "I should call it a grievance committee, if it wasn't so big. And they don't seem to be mad about anything. Bart Hoskins is doing the talking for them."
"Send them in," was the curt command, and a minute later the inner office was about three-fourths filled up with a shuffling crowd of P. S. L. men.
The chief looked the crowd over. There was a bunch of train- and engine-men, a squad from the shops, and a bigger one from the yards. Also, the wire service had turned out a gang of linemen and half a dozen operators.