It was merely what Lockwood had been certain of all along, but he felt that the matter was now clinched. He planned to take the midnight train back to Bay Minette. He returned to his hotel, and, to his extreme surprise, was handed a note which Harding had sent over by messenger an hour before. He had located the Pascagoula Oil Company, Harding said; if Lockwood would call again in the Maury Building the next morning he would receive the information he wanted.
Of course Harding could very well have put the address in his note, but he evidently had planned some move, and Lockwood was sufficiently curious to wait over. He spent another night at the hotel, and it was with the expectation of an extremely curious and interesting conversation that he opened the door of office No. 24 the next morning. Harding was not there, but Hanna sat looking across the desk at his entrance.
Lockwood paused, bewildered, and then remembered the long-distance telephone. Undoubtedly Harding had sent a hurry call. Hanna had had just time to motor to the railway and catch the Mobile train.
The nerves thrilled down his spine. It was going to come to a show-down at last. He felt the pressure of the little automatic at his hip—not that this office building was the place for pistols, with the click of typewriters, the coming and going of people in the adjoining rooms.
“Well!” said Hanna curtly. “Have a chair. So you’ve been looking into oil stocks.”
“I didn’t need to look much,” Lockwood returned, without sitting down. “I got my material for a report without much trouble.”
“And you’re fixing to make a report?”
“I surely am.”
“What do you expect to get out of it?”
“I get you, out of it, Hanna.”