“Good!” Acey Smith’s approval came with a sardonic chuckle. “It is to be hoped the International Investment Corporation and the Kam City Pulp and Paper Mills Company make the same wild deductions that you do, Slack.”
Slack blanched under the rebuff. “Why, what do you mean?” he cried.
“Just this,” replied the other. “Do you think the North Star would allow this tremendous issue to depend on such an obvious and clumsy piece of trickery? Why, man, the Kam City Company would have legal redress whereby they could force us to settle the strike and live up to our delivery contract in less than a week’s time.”
“Then what on earth is the object of the strike?”
“One individual could answer that question—J.C.X.”
Slack was silent a moment, then he blurted rather than asked: “Tell me as man to man, Smith, are you J.C.X.?”
“I have wondered that you did not ask me that before,” returned the superintendent quietly. “I can inform you, as man to man, _I am not J.C.X._
“But come, Mr. Slack,” he urged next moment. “We’re wasting time, and I have yet some things to attend to before I catch the train east. What answer do I send from you to J.C.X. regarding those last instructions?”
“Tell him they will be carried out to the letter,” admonished the president.
Acey Smith extended his hand. “I congratulate you, J. J.,” he offered.
“Hold on, Smith,” called Slack as the other turned to leave. “Wait till I get my coat and hat, and I’ll be with you.”
He went to a locker for the articles of wear. “We’ll slip over to the club and have dinner together,” he suggested. “You’ll have lots of time to—”
There was an eerie emptiness to the ring of his voice in the room. He whirled with the sentence uncompleted.
Slack shrugged uncomfortably. “Vanished,” he muttered. “I can almost fancy a faint smell of brimstone fumes hangs about the place.”
CHAPTER XVI A HOAX THAT PROVED A BOOMERANG
“DON’T go away for a moment, Mr. Hammond.” Hammond watching the police with Rev. Nathan Stubbs as their captive disappeared up street, turned to see Martin Winch, the lawyer, hurry to his desk telephone.
“One—O—Two—Seven, North,” he called. “Bairdwell and Simms?—Could I speak to Mr. Simms?— Hello, Simms, Martin Winch of Winch, Stanton and Reid speaking— Simms, would you care to handle a police court case for us?— Yes, right away, if we can arrange the preliminary hearing for this afternoon— It’s a client of ours, Rev. Nathan Stubbs— Some trivial charge, yes— What we want is to get bail arranged, but there are reasons why we can’t very well be identified with the case just for the present— Will explain all that when I see you— Could you slip over to the district police court right now— Hold things until I get there with the bondsmen— That’s very decent of you, Simms, thank you.”
