Promptly to the minute Dick reached the street door of the office building. Here he encountered Dave Darrin and Dalzell.
"You, too?" asked Dick.
"It looks as though all of Dick & Co. had been summoned," replied
Dave Darrin.
On entering the lawyer's office they found their other three chums there ahead of them. Tip Scammon was there, also, looking far from downcast.
Lawyer Ripley looked very grave. He looked, too, like a man who had a serious task to perform, and who meant to go about it courageously.
"Young gentlemen, I thank you all," said the lawyer slowly. "I am pursuing a matter in which I feel certain that I need your help. There has been some evil connection between Scammon and my son. What it is Scammon has refused to tell me. I will first of all tell you what I do know. I am telling you, of course, on the assumption that you are all young men of honor, and that you will treat a father's confidence as men of honor should do."
The boys bowed, wondering what was coming. Lawyer Ripley thereupon plunged into a narration of the happenings of the day before, telling it all with a lawyer's exactness of statement.
"And now I will ask you," wound up Mr. Ripley, "whether you can tell me anything about the hold that Scammon seems to have exercised over my son?"
"That's an embarrassing question, sir," Dick replied, after there had been a long pause.
"Do you know the nature of that hold?"