"Asleep, old man?" said the intruder in Raymer's well-known voice.
There was a sound like a gasping sob, and another as of a drawer closing softly. Then Griswold said: "No; I'm not asleep. Come in. Shall I light the gas?"
"Not for me," returned the bedtime visitor, entering and groping for the chair at the desk-end, into which, when he had placed it, he dropped wearily. "I want to smoke," he went on. "Have you got a cigar--no, not the pipe; I want something that I can chew on."
A cigar was found, in the drawer which had so lately furnished the weapon, and by the flare of the match in Raymer's fingers Griswold saw a face haggard with anxiety. In the kindlier days it had been one of his redeeming characteristics that he could never dwell long upon his own harassments when another's troubles were brought to him.
"A mix-up with the labor unions. It's been brewing for some little time, but I didn't want to worry you with it. Unless we announce a flat increase of twenty per cent in wages to-morrow morning, and declare for the closed shop, the men will go out on us at noon. I've seen it coming. It began with the enlarging of the plant and the taking on of the new men needed. We've always had the open shop, as you know, and it was all right so long as we were too small for the unions to scrap about. But now we get the Iron Workers' ultimatum: we can do as we please about the profit-sharing; but the flat increase must go on the pay-rolls, and the shop must be run as a closed shop."
If the god of mischance had chosen the moment it could not have been more opportune for the fire-lighting of malevolence. Griswold's swing-chair righted itself with a click, and Bainbridge's prophecy that a hot-hearted proletary was likely to become the hardest of masters became a prediction fulfilled.
"We'll see them in hell, first, Raymer! Isn't that the way you feel about it?"
"Partly," allowed the smoker. "But it can hardly be disposed of that easily, Kenneth. A good third of the men are our old standbys; men who were in the shops under my father. Some pretty powerful influence has been brought to bear upon them to swing them against us. I don't know what it is, but I do know this: every second man we have hired lately has turned out to be either a loud-mouthed agitator or a silent mixer of trouble medicine."