Olinger looked dully at Quade for a moment, then suddenly he gasped.
“We’ll be blamed! They’ll say one of us murdered him. It’ll lick us!”
“What do you mean, lick us?” snarled Ford Smith, an unshaven wild-eyed man of about thirty. “You hardly ever see a big strike without someone getting hurt.” At the moment Ford Smith looked very much like a soapbox orator inciting a crowd.
Olinger’s eyes glinted. “Cut out that kind of talk! If the men hear you they’ll do things. Every man in this plant was picked for the sit-down part of it because he agreed to play a passive part. I’ll stand for no rioting, no sabotage. Get that, all of you!” He glared around the circle composed of Steve Murphy, Pete Walsh, Ford Smith and Henry Jackson — his four strike captains.
“Don’t look at me!” growled Pete Walsh. “I didn’t kill this bozo.” Walsh was young, too, about thirty-five. Quade, sizing him up, guessed that he could make things very interesting for Murphy, the ex-prizefighter.
Henry Jackson, the last member of the group, was of a different mold. He was a dour-looking man, his tight-lipped mouth grimly set. Quade sympathized with the strike leader, Olinger. The workers had elected him leader, probably because he had a reputation for integrity and intelligence. But they had played him a scurvy trick in the selection of his four captains.
Quade said, “You’ve still got a corpse. What’re you going to do about it?”
Olinger clenched his fists. “We’ve got to notify the police and they’ll come here in swarms. The newspaper publicity resulting from it’ll ruin us.”
“If we lose now,” said Jackson, “we’re licked for good. We’ll never get the set-up we had this time.”
“The blood hasn’t congealed yet,” said Quade. “That means he was killed during the past half-hour — since the sit-down.”
“You would make it worse,” groaned Olinger. “Well, we’ve got to decide what to do.”
“If you find the murderer—” Quade began, but Ford Smith snarled at him:
“You keep your trap shut. You’ve got no business here in the first place. And anyway, I’ve got my suspicions about you.”
“And I’ve got mine about you!” snapped Quade.
Olinger said, “I don’t want news of this to get out. Quade, you’re in this, so stick around. Jackson, what do you think we’d better do?”
“What else is there to do? As strikers, we’re within our rights. Covering up a murder — no!” Jackson looked as if he’d been expecting the worst to happen and now felt justified.
“I don’t agree with you, Henry,” cut in Pete Walsh. “We tell the cops right now and we might just as well walk out of here. Call the strike off.”
“And you, Smith, what’s your opinion?” asked Olinger.
“I say bury him and keep our mouths shut!”
Olinger looked questioningly at Steve Murphy.
“I side with Jackson.”
Olinger sighed. “That’s two for and two against. Which leaves the deciding vote up to me. All my life I’ve been a law-abiding person. But the folks in this plant voted me their leader; they’re counting on me to see them through. I can’t let them down. While I’m absolutely in favor of keeping within the law, this time I’ve got to go against it. We keep this quiet and go on with the strike!”
Walsh and Smith nodded agreement. Murphy and Jackson sulked for a while, but finally agreed to abide by the decision of the majority.
Olinger said to Quade, then: “And you, Quade, unless you want to be locked up in some store room somewhere, you’ll promise to keep your mouth shut?”
“I’m the world’s greatest talker — when I’m paid to talk,” retorted Quade. “But no being paid, there’s a zipper on my mouth. But what about the girls?”
“I think I can count on them not to talk,” Olinger said.
Pete Walsh winked at the others. Olinger saw the wink and reddened. “Let’s get back to our business!” he snapped. “Walsh, you and Jackson remove — this! Hide the body in a box somewhere!”
“Not me,” said Walsh, backing away. “I’ll touch ’em when they’re alive and I’ll sling ’em around when they’re sick, but when they’re dead, Mrs. Walsh’s boy, Peter, don’t touch them!”
“You big cream-puff!” snorted Ford Smith. “I’ll help Steve.”
The others returned to the office. Quade looked out of the front window. The office was on the second floor and afforded an excellent view of the street. Scores of pickets were parading back and forth outside the fence and across the street several hundred sympathizers stood and watched. In between them and the pickets, on the street, patrolled fifty or sixty uniformed policemen, all with pistols belted on the outside of their uniforms.
Beyond the street, approximately a hundred yards from the cash register plant office was a three-story brick building. In an upper window a man was waving a couple of white flags on short poles.
“Man over there, signaling, Olinger,” Quade remarked.
Olinger came swiftly to the window. “That’s headquarters. We’ve disconnected the phones.” He watched quietly for a while, then said, “It’s Gaylord, boys. He says Bartlett’s having a powwow with the mayor and the city officials. He’ll let us know the results.”
Steve Murphy’s piggish eyes, almost concealed in his fat cheeks, gleamed. “Ain’t the conference private?”
Olinger grinned. “We’ve got a spy in the mayor’s office.”
Ford Smith, who had just come in, looked nastily at Quade. “And I’ll bet a dime there’s spies in here, too!”
“Mr. Smith,” Quade said bluntly, “I don’t think I like you!”
“I’ll hold your coat, Smith,” jeered big Pete Walsh.
But Ford Smith did not want to fight Quade. He glowered at him and retreated. Quade looked out of the windows again. “Better break out your flags, Olinger. Gaylord wants to know if things are O.K. over here?”
Olinger looked at Quade in astonishment. “How do you know?”
“I understand the code.”
“No,” said Olinger. “You don’t understand that code. It’s not the regular Semaphore code.”
“I know that,” replied Quade. “It’s the old Prussian Army code. The one they used so effectively during the Franco-Prussian War. It’s practically obsolete today, which is why you and Gaylord studied it, I suppose.” He grinned. “You remember I told you I was the Human Encyclopedia. I know everything.”
Olinger got a couple of white flags from a desk drawer. “You know too much, Quade. Would you mind leaving this room, now? I want to talk to Gaylord, privately!”
“I’ll go see how the boys in the back room are making out.”
They were making out all right. Quade found poker games going on in almost every room of the plant. There were plenty of checker boards in sight, too; even chess. The recreation room was the scene of a tremendous crap game. Everyone seemed to be in high spirits. It was the first afternoon of the strike.
At five o’clock Olinger announced that the mayor’s conference had broken up in a disagreement. Bartlett and his officials had decided to fight the strike. There was much cursing at that. Olinger stilled it by announcing there would be a dance immediately after supper. “But we’ll keep it in this recreation room!” he warned.
There was a big cafeteria in the plant for it was located out of the city a ways; the strikers had taken it over and drawn lots as to who would cook. There was plenty of food, well-cooked.
Later, the fifty female sit-down strikers came down from the second floor. There were musicians and musical instruments.
Quade did not dance. He wasn’t in the mood. This plant, he felt, was a smoldering volcano. The body of John Hocker was hidden in a packing box in the stock room, an overt move outside the plant, anything, might be a spark that would set off the volcano.