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All this was strictly true; but it did not pacify McGivney, who was in a black fury. "It might have been worth thousands of dollars to you!" he declared. "He's the biggest fish we'll ever get on our hook." "Won't he come again?" asked grief-stricken Peter. "No," declared the other. "They'll get him at his home city." "But won't that do?" asked Peter, naively.
So Peter chafed more and more at his inability to get action. How much more evidence did the secret service of the Traction Trust require? Peter would ask this question of McGivney again and again, and McGivney would answer: "Keep your shirt on. You're getting your pay every week. What's the matter with you?" "The matter is, I'm tired of listening to these fellows ranting," Peter would say.
"Down with the Red Flag!" the editorial was headed; and Peter couldn't see how any red-blooded, 100% American could read it, and not be moved to do something. Peter said that to McGivney, who answered: "We're going to do something; you wait!"
Peter had noticed that Angell's pockets were stuffed, and had assumed that they were going to do their dynamiting, so he had phoned to McGivney from the drug-store. By this phoning he had missed the crowd, and then he had been ashamed and afraid to tell McGivney, and had spent the night wandering in the park.
Peter saw that there was still a lot left to the roll, and knew that he hadn't asked as much money as McGivney had been prepared to have him ask; so his heart was sick within him. At the same time his heart was leaping with exultation such a strange thing is the human heart! Section 21 McGivney laid the money on the bed.
Peter was trying his best to become a real "he-man," a 100% red-blooded American, and he had the "Times" twice each day, morning and evening, to guide, sustain and inspire him. Peter had been told by McGivney to fix himself up and pose as one of the martyrs of the night's affair, and this appealed to his sense of humor.
When he put the proposition up to McGivney, the rat-faced man guffawed in his face. He found it so funny that he did not stop laughing until he saw that he was putting his spy into a rage. "What's the joke?" demanded Peter. "If I'm ruined, where'll you get any more information?" "But, my God!" said McGivney. "What did you have to go and get that kind of a girl for?"
But young Lackman was a real millionaire, McGivney positively assured him; and so Peter was free to admire him in spite of all his freak ideas, which the rat-faced man explained with intense amusement. Young Lackman conducted a school for boys, and when one of the boys did wrong, the teacher would punish himself instead of the boy!
Lackman had returned, paid his bill, and departed with his suitcase to a destination unknown! Section 39 Peter had a midnight appointment with McGivney, and now had to go and admit this humiliating failure. He had done his best, he declared; he had inquired at the desk, and waited and waited, but the hotel people had failed to notify him of Lackman's arrival.
Peter repeated and insisted that he really had played entirely fair he hadn't told Nelse Ackerman a thing except just the truth as he had told it to Guffey and McGivney. He had said that the police were all right, and that Guffey's bureau was stepping right on the tail of the Reds all the time. "And what does he want you to do?" demanded the rat-faced man.
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