“Quite. I saw him in the yard, moving about among the men. He was in a business suit, but he didn’t seem afraid to get his hands dirty. I saw him lifting some black timbers out of the way when he wanted to get to another part of the yard, and he helped some men to shove a truck along the rails when it got stalled.”
“Well, Potter is a well-built, powerful fellow,” observed Nick. “And we know he can jump. The way he went across that alley on the roofs would have stamped him an athlete without anything else.”
“He’ll need to be an athlete up there at Partrom’s,” put in Patsy. “I heard that a lot of the men are down on a certain foreman up there, and that Potter is taking his side against the others. That generally means a fight with a rough set of men like those at Partrom’s.”
“I suppose Potter works only in the daytime?” asked Nick.
“No. He’s on the night shift. You could get at him right now if you wanted to go up there.”
“I do want to go up there, and now,” interrupted the chief. “We’ll use the big car. Telephone the chauffeur to bring it around right away.”
While Patsy telephoned the chauffeur to come around with the big racing car that Nick used when he was in a great hurry to get anywhere, the detective put away his papers and got up, ready to go.
He wore the cap he had on when he went to the café after Andrew Lampton, but not the raincoat. He had given Lampton back his pistol, but he had his own in his pocket, although he did not expect to have to use it. But, then, he never did expect to use a weapon when he went out. If there were a fight, it was pretty sure to start up all in a hurry, without preliminaries.
The big car took them up to within four blocks of Partrom’s big steel mill and then Nick told his assistants to get out and walk the remainder of the distance with him.
“Stay here till we come back,” he directed his chauffeur.