“Well?” he said.

Mr. Hendrick’s face became serious and very thoughtful.  “I don’t know that I have ever made it clear to you, Cameron,” he said, “but I’ve got a peculiar feeling for this city.  I like it, the way some people like their families.  It’s—­well, it’s home to me, for one thing.  I like to go out in the evenings and walk around, and I say to myself:  ‘This is my town.’  And we, it and me, are sending stuff all over the world.  I like to think that somewhere, maybe in China, they are riding on our rails and fighting with guns made from our steel.  Maybe you don’t understand that.”

“I think I do.”

“Well, that’s the way I feel about it, anyhow.  And this Bolshevist stuff gets under my skin.  I’ve got a home and a family here.  I started in to work when I was thirteen, and all I’ve got I’ve made and saved right here.  It isn’t much, but it’s mine.”

Willy Cameron was lighting his pipe.  He nodded.  Mr. Hendricks bent forward and pointed a finger at him.

“And to govern this city, who do you think the labor element is going to put up and probably elect?  We’re an industrial city, son, with a big labor vote, and if it stands together—­they’re being swindled into putting up as an honest candidate one of the dirtiest radicals in the country.  That man Akers.”

He got up and closed the door.

“I don’t want Edith to hear me,” he said.  “He’s a friend of hers.  But he’s a bad actor, son.  He’s wrong with women, for one thing, and when I think that all he’s got to oppose him is Howard Cardew—­” Mr. Hendricks got up, and took a nervous turn about the room.

“Maybe you know that Cardew has a daughter?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I hear a good many things, one way and another, and my wife likes a bit of gossip.  She knows them both by sight, and she ran into them one day in the tea room of the Saint Elmo, sitting in a corner, and the girl had her back to the room.  I don’t like the look of that, Cameron.”

Willy Cameron got up and closed the window.  He stood there, with his back to the light, for a full minute.  Then: 

“I think there must be some mistake about that, Mr. Hendricks.  I have met her.  She isn’t the sort of girl who would do clandestine things.”

Mr. Hendricks looked up quickly.  He had made it his business to study men, and there was something in Willy Cameron’s voice that caught his attention, and turned his shrewd mind to speculation.

“Maybe,” he conceded.  “Of course, anything a Cardew does is likely to be magnified in this town.  If she’s as keen as the men in her family, she’ll get wise to him pretty soon.”  Willy Cameron came back then, but Mr. Hendricks kept his eyes on the tip of his cigar.

“We’ve got to lick Cardew,” he said, “but I’m cursed if I want to do it with Akers.”

When there was no comment, he looked up.  Yes, the boy had had a blow.  Mr. Hendricks was sorry.  If that was the way the wind blew it was hopeless.  It was more than that; it was tragic.