I told Mr. Norcross about the bulletins and was brash enough to add: "We're headed for the receivership all right, I guess; our stock has tumbled to twenty-nine, and there's a regular dog-fight going on over it at the railroad post in the Exchange. Wall Street's afire and burning up, so they say."
The chief hadn't eaten enough to keep a cat alive, but at that he pushed his chair back and reached for his hat.
"Come on, Jimmie," he snapped. "We've got to get busy. And there isn't going to be any receivership."
We reached the railroad headquarters—which were as dead and quiet as a graveyard—a little before Mr. Ripley and Billoughby got down. But Mr. Editor Cantrell was there, waiting to shoot an anxious question at the boss.
"Well, Norcross, are you ready to talk now?"
"Not just yet; to-morrow, maybe," was the good-natured rejoinder.
"All right; then perhaps you will tell me this: Do you, yourself, believe that four or five thousand railroad men have gone on strike out of sheer sympathy for a few hundred C. S. & W. employees, most of whom are merely common laborers?"
The boss spread his hands. "You have all the facts that anybody has, Cantrell."
"Can you look me in the eye and tell me that you haven't fomented this eruption on the quiet to get the better of the Red Tower crowd in some way?" demanded the editor.
"I can, indeed," was the smiling answer.