"It ain't that, and you know it ain't. It's just the spirit of the thing. Now, I don't ask you to tell me why it is you feel this way. If you want to talk it out now, all right. If you don't, all right again. But if you ever think I'm not using you right, come to me and say so. Just look at what we've got to do here, Pete, before the first of January. Sometimes I think we can do it, and sometimes I think we can't, but we've got to anyway. If we don't, MacBride will just make up his mind we're no good. And unless we pull together, we're stuck for sure. It ain't a matter of work entirely. I want to feel that I've got you with me. Come around in the afternoon if you happen to be awake, and fuss around and tell me what I'm doing wrong. I want to consult you about a good many things in the course of a day." Pete's face was simply a lens through which one could see the feelings at work beneath, and Bannon knew that he had struck the right chord at last. "How is it? Does that go?" "Sure," said Pete. "I never knew you wanted to consult me about anything, or I'd have been around before." Friday afternoon Bannon received a note from Grady saying that if he had any regard for his own interests or for those of his employers, he would do well to meet the writer at ten o'clock Sunday morning at a certain downtown hotel. It closed with a postscript containing the disinterested suggestion that delays were dangerous, and a hint that the writer's time was valuable and he wished to be informed whether the appointment would be kept or not. Bannon ignored the note, and all day Monday expected Grady's appearance at the office. He did not come, but when Bannon reached his boarding-house about eight o'clock that evening, he found Grady in his room waiting for him. "I can't talk on an empty stomach," said the boss, cheerfully, as he was washing up. "Just wait till I get some supper." "I'll wait," said Grady, grimly. When Bannon came back to talk, he took off his coat and sat down astride a chair. "Well, Mr. Grady, when you came here before you said it was to warn me, but the next time you came you were going to begin to act. I'm all ready." "All right," said Grady, with a vicious grin. "Be as smart as you like. I'll be paid well for every word of it and for every minute you've kept me waiting yesterday and tonight. That was the most expensive supper you ever ate. I thought you had sense enough to come, Mr. Bannon. That's why I wasted a stamp on you. You made the biggest mistake of your life--" During the speech Bannon had sat like a man hesitating between two courses of action. At this point he interrupted:-- "Let's get to business, Mr. Grady." "I'll get to it fast enough. And when I do you'll see if you can safely insult the representative of the mighty power of the honest workingman of this vast land." "Well?" "I hear you folks are in a hurry, Mr. Bannon?" "Yes."