"I haven't thought," Maraton replied. "I have plenty to say to the people though."
"You gave 'em what for in Chicago," Preston remarked, with a grin.
"I haven't been used to mince words," Maraton admitted.
"There's four thousand policemen told off to look after you," Henneford informed him. "By-the-bye, is it true that Dale and all of them are coming up to-night?"
"I wired for some of them," he assented. "So long as I am going to make a definite pronouncement, they may as well hear it."
"Been spending the week-end with Foley, haven't you?" Preston enquired, closing his eyes a little.
Maraton nodded. "Yes," he confessed, "I have been there."
"There are many that don't think much of Foley," Henneford remarked. "Myself I am not sure what to make of him. I think he'd be a people's man, right enough, if it wasn't for the Cabinet."
"I believe, in my heart," Maraton said, "that he is a people's man."
They sped on through deserted spaces, past smoke-stained factories, across cobbled streets, past a wilderness of small houses, grimy, everywhere repellent. Soon they entered Manchester by the back way and pulled up presently at a small and unimposing hotel.
"We've taken a room for you here," Henneford announced. "It's close to the hall, and it's quiet and clean enough. The big hotels I doubt whether you'd ever be able to get out of, when once they found where you were."
"As a matter of fact," Preston added, "there's a room taken in your name at the Midland, to put folks off a bit. We'll have to smuggle you out here if there's any trouble to-night. The people are rare and restless."
"It will do very nicely, I am sure," Maraton replied.
The place was an ordinary commercial hotel, clean apparently but otherwise wholly unattractive. Henneford led the way up-stairs and with some pride threw open the door of a room on the first floor. "We've got you a sitting-room," he said. "Thought you might want to talk to these Press people, perhaps, or do a bit of work. Your secretary's somewhere about the place--turned up with a typewriter early this morning. And there's a young woman--"
"A young woman," Henneford continued,--"secretary's sister or something."
"What, the tailoress?" Preston replied. "She's a good sort. Wrote rare stuff, she did, about her trade. They are out together, seeing the sights. Didn't expect you quite so soon, I expect."