"To Mr. Allsoner," Phil returned carelessly, keeping pace with him.
He made a clucking sound in his cheek.
"If yeh are after a job, yeh'd better carry your store clothes away along the shining homeward track right now," he said poetically. "Old Allsoner's hoppin' mad, and he'll have yer scalp before yeh could say Teddy."
"I don't want a job," was the irritating reply, and Phil grinned as he noted the other's mystification.
The office of Mr. Allsoner, general manager of Clode's Silver Bridge Reducing Company, Limited, was not an imposing structure. In fact, it might well have been taken for a stack of damaged firewood by the uninitiated, but Phil Clode did not make this mistake. Suddenly shouldering his way ahead of Idaho Bart, he entered the office at a run, and disappeared into the manager's private office—the most sacred spot in the whole townstead—with a coolness that left the two clerks in the outer department absolutely petrified.
Mr. Allsoner, however, was far from being petrified, and he had already used more adjectives than could be found in any dictionary before he looked up, started as though he could scarcely believe the evidence of his senses, and ejaculated:
"Phil Clode!"
"Yes, it's me," was the ungrammatical rejoinder. "Father's got to keep his eye on the market, or we'd go up in a balloon before an hour was through, and there was nobody else to come. Mr. Allsoner, there's treachery afloat."
The keen-eyed business man uttered an exclamation of wonderment, and then, rising, locked the door.
"Spit it out," he said tersely.