"I'd like to see Mr. Hallo," said Dick.
"Right in here," said the other boy. "He's not busy just now."
"He will be, when he sees me," said Dick, and walked in.
Hallo was sitting at a table, looking over some papers. At the sound of Dick's entrance he looked up, and for just a moment Dick saw the same look of mingled fear and hatred in his eyes that he had caught when he had seen him driving. But then that look vanished, and Hallo, with an obvious effort, greeted Dick with the bluff heartiness that Dick remembered so well as his customary manner in the days before his father's death.
"Well, well, Dick Warner! My old friend's son! I am glad to see you, Dick! What brings you here, so far from New York?"
"Business, Mr. Hallo."
"You are starting young, Dick! May I ask what sort of business? And can I help you, or is this just a friendly visit to a man who held you on his knee when you were a baby back in New York?"
"Oh, cut that out, Mr. Hallo!" said Dick, disgusted. "You know mighty well why I'm here. I want to know what you're going to do about the way you cheated my mother. You told her the business in New York had failed, and she believed you. Now are you going to do the right thing?"
"I don't understand, Dick," said Hallo. Plainly he was trying to be very patient, and his whole manner was that of a kindly, genial man assailed by a bad little boy, but determined not to lose his temper. "Your father's estate was settled in the regular way. No one regretted his death more than I. The way things went afterward proved how important he was to the business. I lost a great deal of money in the failure, you know."
"You didn't!" said Dick. "Oh, we've got the goods on you, Mike Hallo! And I'll tell you something, too. Maybe there's nothing I can do to you here. I don't know yet—not until I've hired a lawyer who knows all about the sort of law you have here. But I know this much. You'll be wanting to come back to America sometime—you'll have to, on account of your business. And we've found out enough to fix it so that you'll be arrested the minute you step off the steamer on to American soil!"