Henry Blaine smiled.
“There won’t be any more of them,” he remarked quietly. “That strike will die down as quickly as it arose, Morrow; the whole thing was a plant, and the labor leaders and factory owners themselves were merely tools in the hands of the politicians. That strike was arranged by our friend Timothy Carlis, to get me away from Illington on a false mission.”
“You don’t think, sir, that they suspect––”
“No, but they are taking no chances on my getting into the game. They don’t suspect yet, but they will soon––because the time has come for us to get busy.”
CHAPTER VII
THE LETTER
The next morning, when Ramon Hamilton presented himself at Henry Blaine’s office in answer to the latter’s summons, he found the great detective in a mood more nearly bordering upon excitability than he could remember having witnessed before. Instead of being seated calmly at his desk, his thoughts masked with his usual inscrutable imperturbability, Blaine was pacing restlessly back and forth with the disquietude, not of agitation, but of concentrated, ebullient energy.
“I sent for you, Mr. Hamilton,” he began, after greeting his visitor cordially and waving him to a chair, “because we must proceed actively with the investigation into the alleged bankruptcy of Pennington Lawton. We have been passive long enough for me to have gathered some significant facts, but we now must make a salient move. The time hasn’t yet come for me to step out into the open. When I do, it will be a tooth-and-nail fight, and I must be equipped with facts, not theories. I want some particulars about Mr. Lawton’s insolvency, and there is no one who could more naturally inquire into this without arousing suspicion than you.”