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YOU fool!" remarked former Alderman Goldberg to his man, Mulligan, when he learned a little later that night of the spirited occurrence in his bar room. "You fool! Don't you know no better than to put it onto a newspaper guy? Don't you know he can make all kinds of trouble for us if he wants to? Don't you know nothin'? Just because he did up a pal of yours,—and God knows he had it comin' to him!—is that any reason you've got to pitch into the bloke and set a lot of bees stingin' us? You're a bright one, ain't you? You're a rotten stiff!" fulminated Goldberg, while his assistant scowled and said nothing. "I'll tell you one thing," concluded Goldberg, "if they make any trouble for me out of your fool break, you get the run, see?"
But no trouble ensued and Mulligan remained. Micky, having come out ahead, laughed at his rough treatment as a part of a good joke, being no whiner. There was no disposition at the Courier office to cause Goldberg any more trouble than it was hoped was due him after the next election, along with his mates. All the Courier's hopes were centered on that pleasing goal.
Micky's night off, a little later in the week, fell uneventfully, and it was with distinct boredom that hetried to kill time. He was invariably uneasy at these brief intervals of respite from the grind, and it might be said that he enjoyed himself in discontent. It was with a generally ennuied air that he sauntered at midnight into a night lunch room much frequented by the Courier staff and encountered Dick there, whom he greeted with enthusiasm. It happened that Dick was through especially early that evening.
An odd friendship had arisen between these two, so dissimilar and yet so like in the welding quality of good fellowship and thorough bohemianism. It was this restless spirit, the arch-enemy of commercial routine, that had drawn Dick into journalism after leaving college. The step was a disappointment to his father, who had hoped that Dick would elect to enter the parent's office and learn the business from the ground up. He did not oppose Dick's inclinations, however, thinking that a little experience would weary him of his idea. Thus far, however, there seemed little likelihood that Dick would leave the fascinating grind for the more substantial though more prosaic office desk. He had taken naturally to journalism, was a ready and pleasing writer, and he liked it.
It was the same restless spirit, too, linked with an inborn, luring love of roving and shift of scene, that fired O'Byrn. A happy vagabond, his eyes were filled ever with the charm of new scenes that all too soon grew old. Always were fair mirages to glow on his horizon, bringing him hurrying on—to find them faded. Dream-houses, built on barren sands, dissolving in mists of tears as the years spell the bitter, brutal thing that we call wisdom! Always for him, strange little Irishman, the luring whisperfrom afar and the mad dash thither, to find as before only chill mists and brooding shadows; and so on, over the wastes, to silence and the end.
"What have you done with yourself?" inquired Dick, as the two settled themselves comfortably before their sandwiches and coffee. "Find anything worth while?"
"Oh, early in the evenin' I dropped into Ryan's roof garden," replied Micky. "The first stunt wasn't so bad; then they rang in one of those cockney carolers from dear ol' Lunnon. He got off a yowl about—
"'Wipe no more, my lidy,Oh, wipe no more to die—'
"'Wipe no more, my lidy,Oh, wipe no more to die—'
"'Wipe no more, my lidy,Oh, wipe no more to die—'
and I got out. Suggested a scullery strike and business, and it was my night off.
"Blew along and met a bunch of the boys at the Gold Coin. They had started in early and were left-handed in both feet and hangin' onto the bar like a freighter in a recedin' tide. They tried to annex me, but I faded away. I'm through. The budge-mixer's the natural enemy of the profesh. He gets your money and you get next, but it's never till the next morning. I knew a district attorney once, up north, who had been prosecutin' a gang of cheap thieves from a bum district of the county. He was gettin' off his final spiel, and it was a beaut'. 'Gentlemen of the jury,' he yells, 'they don't raise anything on the Pine Plains but hell and huckleberries!' and it was no lie.
"Now on whisky the product's even more limited. You just raise hell. No more for me, I'm stickin' to suds. It's popular, the red-eye, but it doesn't last and then it does. There's nothing in it but a pneumatic headand a nimbus of cracked ice in the mornin'. Your Uncle Mike—Why, hello, Fatty!"
Fatty Stearns had ambled in and stood regarding them with a tender smile. Glenwood pulled him into a chair and invited him to order what he wanted. Stearns was soon busy.
"Just ran out for lunch," came from him in muffled tones. "I'm up to my neck in that golf game you didn't have time to do," he told Glenwood with a reproachful glance. "It's got me wingin'."
There were strange gurglings from Micky, grown suddenly wild-eyed. "Fatty, Fatty!" he moaned. "Did you say 'game?'"
"Sure he did!" answered Dick truculently. "What's the matter with it, you little ape? I play it."
Micky dissolved in simulated sobs. "He plays it!" he groaned. "Oh, why was he ever born, Eliza? Better never have been born than born a slave!"
"We will listen, Micky," remarked Dick deliberately, "to any objections you have to the greatest, most healthful—"
"Oh, fudge!" interrupted Micky. "I was there once and it's a wonder I didn't turn out a lush for life. Honest, I'd done everything in my time, but that assignment got me wingin'. I get cross-eyed yet every time I think about it and I talk really maudlin. I can't tell what I say those times but the boys say it's fierce. Say I murmur fool talk about putting it onto the green and bawling on the bunkers. I don't know. I guess I got it all in my head that time, but somehow I never could make it jibe.
"You see it was when I was on the Signal in GulfCity. Old man sent for me one day and says, 'There's a three-day golf meet starts tomorrow morning and it's up to you.'
"Now ordinarily I'm the last to buck at any assignment, but I'd seen a fellow dislocate his jaw once on some of the vocabulary of that game, so I sparred for wind.
"'I don't know anything about it,' says I.
"'Neither does anyone else,' says he.
"'Do the players?' I asks him.
"'Damfino!' he came back at me. 'Ask 'em. That's what you're for.'
"So behold your Uncle Mike, Dick, about nine the next morning looping the links. I had done a fuss stunt and was got up regardless. Had one of those long cutaways that dallied with my ankles; they hadn't gone out in Gulf City. I saw a bunch of busy boys humped up around a dinky flag and started for 'em to ask 'em about it. One of 'em, I judged, was gettin' ready to whale a toad or somethin' with an umbrella handle. He'd hocked his hat and hadn't kept much more than his shirt on anyway; barrin' a pair of pants that had got elephant-tiss-siss-siss, or whatever you call it, and looked like they came off the pile way back in the happy hitherto. His shirt sleeves were rolled up and his arms were the color of sun-cured tobacco, or the mud pies that sister used to bake. Oh, he was a beam-baked child of nature all right. Well, he sees me comin' toward him, and straightens up and gives me the cold storage stare.
"'Here, you!' he yells, 'I can't drive over you!'
"'No, you bet you can't!' I yells back. 'Ain't it scandalous you can't? Why can't you? Did you hockthe horse along with the hat? Here, go buy yourself a new one of both!' and I tosses him a dime.
"They didn't say anything but it grew kind o' chilly, so I turns up my coat collar and wanders along and by and by I came to the club house.
"It was gorgeous enough around there, looked like the short end at the surrender of Yorktown. My fuss stunt looked like mourning in that color scheme. I drifted around, feelin' lonesome and like a drab tassel on a red fringe. It was a new one on me, but by and by I got a look-in on the pools. They had a set of cards tacked on the board.
"There was a big geezer in a sunrise coat goin' by just then. I annexed him. 'What's those?' I asked him, pointin' to the cards.
"'Why, the scores, of course,' says he, tryin' to jerk away.
"'Well, how many times do they score before they start?' I asks, hangin' on. And honestly, Dick, I didn't know. I was one up in the air with the parachute busted, and it certainly looked slow to me.
"He broke away, wouldn't answer me at all. It was no way to treat a lonesome tassel. He deserved to be censured for turning me adrift.
"Well, after awhile I struck a pretty decent guy, if he did wear a horse blanket for a vest. He said he'd help me out, that the scorers were busy. I suppose they were flaggin' the bad actors.
"This accommodatin' chap began to go over the cards with me. I got along all right for a while till I got to an X mark. 'What's this?' I asked him.
"'Oh,' says he, 'that's because he struck his caddy.'
"'For how much?' I asks. 'Besides, I supposed the caddies were the ones to strike. They need the money. What races has this bloke been playin' lately? Must have bet on some brute that ran like cold molasses.'
"'You don't understand,' says he. 'He struck his caddy with the ball. It knocks him out.'
"'I should think it would,' says I, running my finger down the list. 'Here's a fellow with two X's. That's two down, ain't it? I should think a ten-strike would make a caddy feel sore for fair.'
"'It makes a player use language when he does that,' says the accommodatin' chap, starin' at the board and lookin' reminiscent.
"'Does the caddy contribute?' I asked him.
"He didn't pay any attention to that, but kept on lookin' dreamy-eyed. But I wanted to find out about things, so I kept at him.
"'Say,' I says, 'I notice every once in a while one of those guys yells 'Fore!' That means he's just hit the caddy four times, doesn't it? The caddy gets all that's comin' to him, doesn't he?'
"And with that he came to and gave me a sad look-over. Then he faded away and I floated around lonesome again, lookin' for some one to put me wise. After a while I heard a couple of swell dames talkin'.
"'Theah,' one of 'em says, 'my deah, see those two young men? They ah the Sherrod twins. I declaiah, they ah so much alike that I cawn't tell one from the othah. One of them's an expert golfah, but I declaiah, I cawn't tell which one he is. I cawn't guess why he isn't playing today. The othah one doesn't play at all.'
"I took a look, and sure enough, they were as near alike as campaign promises. My move was cut out for me all right and I made a stab at it. I steered up against one of 'em and buttonholed him.
"'Say,' says I, 'are you you or your brother?'
"He looked kind of wild for a minute, but steadied. 'Why, I guess I'm me,' he says, as if he wasn't sure of it.
"'Well, you're the man I'm lookin' for,' says I. 'The other one doesn't play.' Sure enough, he was the right one. He was all right, barrin' the mashie microbe, and he started in to put me next. It would have been all hunk, only he was the soul of hospitality and I always hate to say no. Besides, I wanted to forget it.
"It was highballs till sunset and then I went away after sticking out both fins for farewell shakes with him both, for he looked like both him and his twin to me. It must have been a mistake, for I have a hazy recollection that the one who didn't play left early. Anyway, my friend might have been a sextette or a full chorus choir, for they all looked alike to me about that time. I got down town, thinkin' about writin' my story every now and then, and I fell in with a gang.
"The last I remember of that story I was in the backroom of a saloon tryin' to write it. I was writin' about two words to a page about then, though once in a while I would make an extra brace and get in three. It was 'steen down and a bluff to play with me and I was foozled for fair. My stuff wouldn't make sense. It just gibbered. I don't know just when I called it off, but I think it was just after I had scrawled a screed to the effect that 'Willie Van Hackensack, instead of approachingthe tea as he should, had bunked hazardous highballs till he was batty in his loft.' It was no lie, either, only it didn't belong in the story.
"That story never got to the Signal, Fatty, and I didn't either. It got lost somewhere and so did I. I came out of it about a week later, with Gulf City 'way back beyant the blue and me sitting by the old familiar track, waiting for a freight.
"No golf in mine, Dick, it holed me for fair. It's an excuse, that's all. When you aren't out huntin' low balls you're inside huntin' highballs. After a while you can't tell a mashie from a ball bat. I don't know what a mashie is, but I do know what a highball bat is. It's generally a job, unless you break it off in the middle. Do you follow me, Fatty? If you do, I'm sorry for you."
It was with a windy sigh and a look of added dejection that Fatty Stearns rose to return to the office and finish his account of the golf tourney. "Just forget what Micky told you," called Dick after him, "or you'll get all mixed up and get the run in the morning." Then he surveyed Micky with that smile, so exasperating in golfers, the smile of forgiving pity for the man outside.
"Of course, you never played, Micky," he remarked. "If you ever had—"
"Forget it, Dick," said Micky briskly. "I want to. Say, do you dance?"
"Why, I don't know," answered Dick doubtfully, taken aback by the swift change of subject. "Ask some of my partners. I'm in doubt myself and aching to know."
"And they know and are aching," grinned Micky. "Well, we'll try you out. Come on," he added, rising,"let's go over to the Ironworkers' ball. They'll be going for an hour yet." They left the cafe, and after a little bolted up the wide stairway of a big brick block. Encountering a stalwart young fellow behind a ticket table on a landing, Dick's hand sought his pocket. Micky restrained him, and nodding to the sentry, who knew him, they passed up to the final landing, where a burst of music saluted them. A number of couples were "cooling off" there. Dick peered curiously inside. "How do they dance in such a crush?" he inquired.
"Why, when these husky guys are dancin' with 'em," explained Micky, "their feet don't touch the floor at all, and the men don't count."
Indeed, the brawny cavaliers were well nigh making Micky's comment good. The prompter, a big red-faced fellow with a bull's voice, just then roared, "Swing your partners!" It was the relished order, for every ironworker there had from earliest dancing days devoted himself without mercy to the mastery of the art of swinging. At the welcome call, each swain, an arm encircling his partner's waist gently but firmly, placed one calloused paw against the lady's back, just below the shoulder blades, while her palm sought his arm. His other hand sought her free one and extended it out sideways and a little upward. This served a double purpose, sufficing to fend off danger from colliding circlers and to add impetus to the ensuing maelstrom. Then, while the fiddlers bent to their work, there whizzed a general centrifugal whirl, with a soft scuff of pivoting feet and the swish of agitated lingerie. That it was as delightful as dizzying was evidenced by the appreciative comments of the breathlessfair, as the spinning knights halted them, preparatory to starting the next figure.
"I'm a thirty-third on that," announced Micky complacently. "Can you do it, Dick?"
Dick was dubious. "Well, probably they'll have a waltz or two-step next," proceeded Micky reassuringly. "They sandwich in round ones after every square deal lately. Gettin' what Bill Nye called ray-sher-shay. Come on, here's one I know. I'll put you next for the next." He dragged Dick over to a big blonde and left them introduced and waiting for a two-step.
The quadrille ended and Micky watched the dancers scrambling for seats, of which there were an insufficiency. The overflow billowed out upon the landing, laughing and demanding room at the open windows. Micky, from the doorway, beheld with sudden interest a vision seated across the hall. He grasped an acquaintance by the arm.
"Say, Lacy," he demanded impetuously, "if you know that, knock me down to it, will you?"
So Micky was conveyed across the room and formally knocked down to Miss Maisie Muldoon. The end was well worth his enterprise. Small and prettily formed, with eyes of truest Irish blue, the loveliest shade of brown hair extant and a complexion of milk and roses, she was charming. She was simply gowned in duck skirt and an airy confection of diaphanous white waist, which revealed tantalizing glimpses of sweet white neck and arms. Micky mentally registered her "a dream."
"Will you dance?" he asked, crowding into a seat beside her.
"Oh, I don't know, Mr.—er—O'Byrn," she answered."My card seems to be full already. I might give you an extra, if they have one," with a mischievous glance.
"You might scratch half a dozen of those names," suggested Micky easily, "and substitute mine. It looks prettier."
"I believe you're a newspaper man, aren't you?" freezingly. "Seems to me I've heard so."
"How do you like 'em?" he demanded, his impudent eyes twinkling.
"If you're any sample, they seem to have a crust," witheringly.
"So does any good thing," he chuckled. "Don't you like pie?"
She laughed in spite of herself. "Say," she acknowledged, turning her charming face toward his freckled one with decided interest, "you ain't so worse! I almost wish I had a dance for you."
"Maybe one of 'em will die," said Micky hopefully. "If I can be of any help—"
"The music's starting," she interrupted. "It's a two-step and I've got it with Billy Ryan. He's rotten on that. Are you?"
"I'm probably the ripest peach of a two-stepper," averred Micky, "that ever triangled down a floor. I'm a pippin. Where is your gazabe?"
"I don't know," she replied, looking about frowningly. "Maybe he won't come." Micky waxed complacent at the discreet hope lingering in her tone.
The dance was well under way. Dick shuffled past, the big blonde in his arms. He seemed enjoying himself. Micky grew impatient.
"Went out for another drink, I guess," remarked MissMaisie disgustedly, in another moment. "Come on, I sha'n't wait for him," and she rose.
"Went a block for a beer with a Manhattan right inside," murmured Micky, as they prepared to start. "Oh, you g'wan!" she laughed, and they swung into the revolving circle.
Micky's boast of terpsichorean ability made good, (he had picked up the art long before, as readily as he did everything else,) he was rewarded with two more regulars and an extra before the affair ended. One of the regulars was originally scheduled with the recreant Ryan, who appeared for it in due course and retired congealed, with a black look at the grinning O'Byrn. The other regular had originally been Miss Muldoon's cousin's. She transferred it airily, but the cousin bore it with the equanimity of a mere relative.
"I suppose you've got company home?" inquired Micky, with a certain mournful hesitation, as they were finishing the last dance.
"Not yet," she answered demurely. "That is," with a flash of blue eyes, "Mr. Ryan brought me but he sha'n't take me back. He's too thirsty. That first dance you got was the second he'd missed with me."
"Forget him!" breathed Micky ecstatically. "I'm in luck." He invariably took things for granted.
"But," she recollected, chilling somewhat, "I haven't accepted your escort yet, Mr.—er—O'Byrn. I never met you till tonight."
"O, happy night!" he retorted, with the impudence that time would never wither nor custom stale. "Aren't you glad you came?"
She laughed again, a girlish, joyous laugh that warmedthe heart in the hearing. "I'm it," she averred. "You are certainly the limit. But you aren't in such luck as you think. It's a long way home."
"Never too long with you for a pacemaker," he assured her. "And luck—I know the varieties. I've had all kinds." So, as the last waltz ceased and the dancers prepared for departure, he hastened to the door, where Dick was waiting for him, and dismissed that gentleman. Glenwood raised his eyebrows comprehensively and departed alone.
The way was short to Mulberry Avenue, all too short for Micky, and as for the lady—well, it would have seemed longer had the discredited Ryan been in her company. There was the first faint hint of dawn in the shrouded sky as Micky left the girl at her door and turned away, with her gracious permission to call on his next night off. So Micky turned to retrace the way now suddenly grown long; agitated stirrings in his warm Irish heart that he could not have explained, those first faint harbingers that come to us all, poor children of fleeting youth, and are stilled ere we can understand.
Ah, youth! with its thrilled pulses and fragrant, unspoiled heart, its mysteries divine—and the arid waste beyond, when dreams are done! It's a long way home, indeed!
A WHOLESALE liquor establishment supplied a portion of Shaughnessy's income. Time was, some years before, when it had demanded all of its proprietor's time and undeniable talents, but now a gradually increasing if reprehensible sphere of usefulness had made it a side-issue. However, it continued to yield its owner a satisfying revenue and the wicked prospered, after the fashion of this good old world.
The fourth ward, contiguous to Goldberg's, while free and easy enough, in very truth, was respectable in comparison with the notorious fifth. It was in this fourth ward, in the quietest district, that Shaughnessy's wholesale house was located. It was in the dingy office of this old brick building that the dark schemes were matured which, with the aid of the worst elements in the city, dominated its affairs. Here Shaughnessy reigned supreme, an unobtrusive king.
Shaughnessy sat at his desk one warm evening holding converse with his two faithful satellites, Abe Goldberg and Dick Peterson. The office was carefully closed to chance encroachment and the men talked in subdued tones. As usual, the cabal's plans had been carefully discussed, then the conversation shifted to a minor matter.It was the offense of which Nick Slade had been guilty, in aiding the journalistic enemy by telling O'Byrn of the row at Goldberg's saloon. Slade, by the way, was a heeler under the direct charge of Peterson, and he had done work which had commended him to that astute though apparently unsophisticated worthy.
"He ought to get the run," Goldberg growled. "What use is a man to us that don't stand by the gang? Of course, that row wasn't exactly mixed up with our doings, but a lot of our men was mixed up in it, and it ain't the kind of advertising that's goin' to do us any good. Then this Slade goes and tips off the whole business. He ought to be kicked out."
"Hold on, Goldberg," said Peterson. "I know all about the deal. I've talked with Slade. Now you know Slade is shady with the police. Of course, there are others, but they've got it in for Slade for more than one reason and he ain't important enough to be immune. As luck would have it, they were going to nab him the other night for a piece of light-fingered work that he didn't happen to be concerned with. This Courier chap, who seems to be a corker anyway, had picked up acquaintance with Slade in some way, and, more than that, he happened to know the right party the police were after and he got Slade off. Well, what could Slade do when the fellow asked for the tip at your place? Of course, he could have turned him down flat, but that wouldn't have been natural, would it?"
Before Goldberg could reply, Shaughnessy's cold voice cut in. "Is he worth while?" he asked of Peterson.
"He's O. K.," replied that worthy, with conviction. "One of the best—"
Shaughnessy turned to Goldberg. "Then forget it," he said dryly. "Keep on using him, if he's any good. He's hardly worth firing. Exercise your firing privilege for the officers' quarters; you need the men in the ranks."
With which characteristic bit of philosophy, Shaughnessy stretched his arms and yawned. The others rose, the conference having been closed, and lighting fresh cigars, left the office. Shaughnessy was left alone. He leaned back lazily in his office chair, his thin hands clasped behind his head, his expressionless eyes watching the smoke that curled upward leisurely from the tip of his cigar. His white face would hold no more of immobility when he should lie dead. Under the gaslight he reclined at ease, staring upward. In the eyes, the queer, black, heavy-lidded eyes, there was a momentary lack alike of definite scrutiny or the soft, impalpable veil that is drawn by transitory dreams of better things. Rather were they like a sluggish serpent's; lustreless, foreboding, unwinking and infinitely, sleeplessly sinister. They stared with a reptilian fixedness, seeing nothing. Thus for a space, and then they lighted with a gleam of strange malevolence, as the thin, grim lips of Shaughnessy relaxed under the small black moustache in a smile that was not good to see. Some secret reflection had evidently pleased the boss.
He suddenly leaned forward in his chair and turned to his desk, extracting some papers which he surveyed with quiet satisfaction and replaced. As he did so he started violently, then sank back in his chair, his face drawn lugubriously with sudden pain; the natural pallor giving place to a ghastly gray. His hands were clasped at his left side and he gasped for breath. In a momentthe paroxysm passed, and Shaughnessy sat limp in his chair with sprawling legs and nerveless hands, his head bent forward. Presently he sought his handkerchief with shaking fingers and wiped the cold beads of perspiration from his forehead. Then he rose slowly, and with trembling knees tottered to a small cupboard and produced a flask and glass. Pouring out a stiff draught of brandy, he swallowed it at a gulp, replaced the bottle and glass and walked back to his chair. His eyes, again inscrutable, sought the clock; his face, once more an impassive mask, was turned toward the door. Shaughnessy was game.
A moment more and there was the sound of footsteps outside, then a cautious tapping summoned at the door. Shaughnessy stepped forward and released the spring lock which had confined it, standing aside to allow his visitor's entrance, then snapped the door shut. Placing a chair conveniently, he motioned his caller into it and resumed his own seat.
The caller sat regarding Shaughnessy with an odd nervousness. He was plainly ill at ease. An old man he was, with gray hair and beard and faded blue eyes, whose wonted amiability was just now shadowed by an unmistakable expression of helplessness. A pair of gold-bowed eyeglasses dangled at the end of a silken cord looped about his collar; the cut and texture of his black garb indicated prosperity as well as solid respectability. The impression was heightened by the old-fashioned high collar and the white lawn tie. The thin white hands, on which the blue veins showed prominently, nervously fumbled a black slouch hat. Shaughnessy's eyes rested an instant upon the headgear.
"You ordinarily wear a silk hat, don't you, Judge?" he asked. "What's the matter? Isn't this part of the town good enough for it, or does this one help to shade your eyes from the light?" The visitor winced and the boss smiled cruelly.
"One has to be careful,—" began the old man, and hesitated.
"Sure," acquiesced the leader, grimly. "A good many eyes would open to see you in here with me. And I suppose you left your carriage a few blocks back and walked? Your discretion does you credit. Well, you can afford to come here better than you can afford to have me go to your house, which I should have done if you had not wisely concluded to accept my polite invitation to call. Some of your holy neighbors would have been surprised, wouldn't they? Well, Judge, saving your venerable presence, they generally have to come to me,—because I know things."
The spare form fidgeted, the faded blue eyes sought waveringly Shaughnessy's black ones that were now quickened with a baleful fire. "What do you want?" asked the visitor. "I am an old man,—I was through long since—"
Shaughnessy bent forward. "No, you are not through," he said with a softness that was metallic. "You are not through while you live and I need you. Understand that! You served me on the bench; you shall serve me now! Else—" He paused significantly while his companion's face whitened. "Now listen. I am coming to be known; you are not. You are respectable!" with an ugly sneer. "Now this is the programme, and it'll feaze the yelping fools that are after me, just asit'll feaze you, my dear friend, in a minute. The Democratic convention will be held just before the 'Cits' hold theirs. The 'Cits' are inconveniently in earnest this year and they're talking of putting up a man who'll cause us trouble. Now there'll be a dummy candidate, a machine man, in the Democratic convention, who'll be mine. Well, he'll be knocked out; decency will give the old Democracy heart disease by swooping down on her out of a clear sky; there'll be an honored name proposed that'll sweep the convention off its feet, and that honored name, my dear Judge, will be your own!"
The old man sprang to his feet, shivering as with the ague. He shook impotent, furious fists, his pale eyes glaring. "Damn you!" he cried, "I won't do it! Never! never! do you understand,—you—devil?"
Shaughnessy's hand closed on an object on his desk. He rose, shaking a bundle of documents in his caller's face. "I understand," he muttered menacingly, "and—you understand. You understand that you will serve as the next mayor of this city—or you will serve time!"
The old man fell into his chair and buried his face in his hands, while Shaughnessy smiled, his eyes alight with malice.
A BIG figure arose from a desk at the opposite side of the room. Glenwood handed in a bulky wad of matter to be read and strolled over to O'Byrn's desk. Throwing himself into a convenient chair, he produced his cigar case. They lighted weeds and sat for a time in congenial if smoky silence.
It was Micky's night off, but it was early. He was loitering about the office for a few moments before leaving to fulfill an engagement that had become usual. He now sat regarding Glenwood appreciatively. What a man he was, to be sure! He sat at indolent ease, his feet on Micky's desk, hands clasped behind his handsome blonde head, staring dreamily far beyond the littered room. He wore no coat. Micky marked the deep chest, the swell of the splendid muscles outlined beneath the folds of the soft outing shirt, the well set neck. There was the suggestion, none the less strong in repose, of mingled virility and grace. Strength of great scope was here, strength that had once against odds rescued him, O'Byrn, from an unpleasant predicament.
How puny was he, O'Byrn, by contrast, physically—and morally. Ah, but that last thought stung! For here was a man who was thoroughly master of himself,without being a milksop. His was no pedestal. He was one of the boys, yet liberty did not spell license with him. There was for him no painful crawl up a slippery toboggan of renewed intentions, following a wild, shooting descent that had left him gasping and breathless at the bottom. Glenwood's was the absolutely perfect mechanism of the normal. Tough fibred, richly endowed in mental, moral and physical equipment from long generations of right livers, how different was his lot from O'Byrn's, cursed at the outset with a vicious appetite which had been fostered from the beginning by the man who had bequeathed it; hampered, too, with an indifferent physique that rendered the more hopeless the boy's struggles with his mastering vice. True, after all, mused Micky bitterly, that men are created equal in only limited senses.
He rose abruptly and walked to the window, staring out into the soft night, for the ebon had settled down. Close by loomed the shadowy bulk of the city hall, dwarfing the stark ambitious blocks that were its lesser neighbors. Under the luminous moon glittered an adjacent church spire; stars peppered the curtained sky. Far down, amid the glare of myriad electric lights, there arose the faint roll of carriage wheels, drowned the next moment in the rumble of passing street cars. Within there sounded the sharp click of typewriters; in a sudden lull there was audible the ticking of a telegraph key at the end of the room. A man entered hastily, seated himself before a desk and began to write like mad. Another young fellow, after a few brief words from the city editor, seized his hat and hurried on a mission. The room was unwontedly busy for so early an hour.Copy boys scurried, telephone bells rang, editors summoned and reporters scuttled. Always there poured into the great room, in strange and turbulent contrast to the wideflung peace of dead white moon and watching stars in the black night sky outside, the unresting flood, the formidable torrent of life and death and the joys and ills that lurk between, called News.
Micky stared out of the window, oblivious to the whirl within. It would have distracted a novice. To the veteran it meant only the inevitable environment of effort. Many such find it difficult to write in the midst of quietude. Of such was Micky, and so it was that, with no scribbling to do, he could lose himself in vague, sad contemplation of moon and stars and black night sky, with the roar of the flood no louder in his unheeding ears than the ripple of a little river through June meadows. It was with a start that he was recalled to earth with a violent slap upon his thin shoulder. He turned, eyes still wool-gathering, to confront Dick.
"What's the dream?" demanded that worthy, smiling down at him. "Isn't this something new?"
"Why," answered Micky, a little confusedly, "I was thinking. Yes," with a laugh but with sober eyes, "it's something new, Dick, I guess. It would be better if it were oftener," a little wistfully.
Dick, staring out of the window, readily fell in with his mood. "Thinking? Yes, it's a good thing,—sometimes. But you don't have much time for it in this business."
"No," rejoined Micky thoughtfully. "You need to put in all your hustling on the job, and it don't give you time for a heavy load under your roof." He glanced atthe clock. "Well, I must be going. Didn't know it was so late. Gimme a cigar."
Dick produced one and Micky proceeded to light up. Dick surveyed the other's unwonted immaculateness with an air of understanding. "Give her my regards," he said.
"Her?" repeated Micky, in simulated amazement. "Nit; you're off. I'm going to cut coupons tonight; they're accumulating on me." He vanished with a grin and Dick sauntered back to his desk.
Micky descended in the elevator and stepped forth into the cool night air. He stood for a moment in indecision, debating whether he should take a car. Too fine a night to ride, he decided, and started down the street at a brisk pace. Presently leaving the crowded thoroughfare for a quieter side street, he proceeded southward. After a half an hour's walk he turned a final corner and was on Mulberry Avenue. Down the street he went to a modest little dwelling, with a light shining from the shaded parlor windows. He ascended the steps and rang the bell. The door opened. Micky stepped inside and they entered the tiny parlor.
The door communicating with the sitting room opened ever so cautiously. A freckled, inquisitive face appeared unobtrusively in the gap, but Maisie saw it. "Terence!" she exclaimed, and the face disappeared. Maisie slammed the door shut with asperity, then, taking a seat near it, turned her pretty face toward her caller. "You're late, Micky," said she reprovingly. Micky was progressive. It had not taken him long to induce her to address him by his Christian name.
"Yes," admitted Micky. "I didn't know it was so late.I forgot to wind my watch, anyway. What time is it?" He moved toward her, his timepiece in his hand. It was an old silver hunting-case affair. In fumbling with the spring to open it, the rear cover opened, disclosing the faded picture of a woman. Micky held it out to the girl.
"My mother," he said simply. "She died when I was little." Maisie looked at the sweet face and patient eyes a moment, then her look sought Micky's face. It held an unwonted gravity, the blue eyes were a little misty. He leaned over her, his gaze bent upon the dial of her smart little watch.
"Eight forty-five, eh?" he exclaimed. "Whew! it is late." He set his watch and then began winding it. "That case is loose, I must get it fixed," he pursued. He glanced again at the girl's timepiece, then whimsically shook his own. "Not much like yours, is it?" he said, with a sorry smile. "Poor little turnip! But it'll be buried with me, Maisie, I'll never have another. I don't want another. You see,—she gave it to me."
He sank into a chair, his face in the shadow. "I can see it now," he pursued in a low voice, "just as if it was yesterday. How tickled I was! and so was she, to see me so. There were just us two, and now—I'm alone. Oh! it's years ago, but it's one of those things that'll hurt every time I remember it—now she's gone—will hurt till I go, too! Of course it didn't cost her much, poor little woman. It couldn't; she didn't have it. How she managed to save the few poor dollars for it, God knows; I can't figure it. But she did, and one day when I got in from selling my papers, she met me and gave it to me. And I was only a kid, Maisie, and I up and bellered like acalf, with my arms around her,—and she cried, too; and it wasn't very long,—" his voice broke for a moment,—"it wasn't very long after that,—it was dark and cold I remember, and snowflakes in the air,—and I was crying and trying to pull away from them while they were leading me away—from—her grave."
It was very still. The girl averted her eyes; they were full of tears. O'Byrn sat in the shadow, his head bent. In a moment he resumed.
"I've knocked around from pillar to post since then, Maisie, from one end of the land to the other. I've lived high and low, from glad rags to just plain rags. I could always get a job—and I could always lose it. Oh, yes, I might as well be frank," with a bitter laugh. "It's whisky—a heritage. Not all the time—fits that I can't help—every now and then—like bad dreams, only worse—they're real! It's at those times that the old feeling grips me, too,—to keep movin'. Why, I usually wake up where everything's strange—and I have to ask 'em where I am. I've been on the road to something worth while so often—and always kicked it over. And it cropped out in me so young! You'd be surprised—"
"Oh, don't!" she cried. He stared at her mutely. "What makes you say such horrible things about yourself?" she pursued passionately, a quiver in her voice. "Do you want me to believe—"
"The truth," he interrupted, gently. "Only the truth. Of course, I haven't known you long, but it seems like all my life. I'd feel like a yellow dog, somehow, if I shouldn't tell you. But then, we won't say anything more about it. I'm not to blame, exactly; it was a present. We'll go back, there isn't much to tell. It'salways been the newspaper business with me. Odds and ends at first, then they found I could write, and I've been at it ever since. I wasn't much on education, but I've picked up quite a lot, and I've seen the country. Oh, I've had my dreams. Maybe I could do something sometime—if—" He broke off abruptly.
She sprang up, coming quickly to him. Her little hand sought his arm. "Micky," she breathed softly, with shining eyes, "do it! You can; it's in you; if you will only leave off—and you can—you must! Think of her, Micky,—she cried over you—perhaps she's crying yet! Make her smile, instead! Oh, what makes me talk to you like this, only knowing you a few weeks? What right—"
He caught her hand as she moved slowly away and drew her back. "What right?" he echoed warmly. "The best in the world! It does me good! You're a true friend, you are, and you can see what a mess I've made of my life and how I could do better if I would—or could, for you don't know what I have to fight against, Maisie." He drew a chair for her close to his own. "But then, I'm young yet," he pursued, with a rather sorry smile. "Time yet, perhaps, for dreams. Dreams!" he repeated, with a queer, half-shamed look, "how the fellows at the office would laugh to hear me say that! They'd say I'd gone bug-house."
"Dreams?" she repeated softly, a divine smile in her wistful eyes, "why, Micky, we're all dreamers. Between here and the store—the store and here, day after day, don't you suppose they help me; the dreams? Doesn't it help your work—your old humdrum work, whatever it is, without any beginning or ending—doesn'tit help to mix a little dreaming with it? Of course, it doesn't really help me—I'm a poor, silly little thing—but it can help you, Micky—it can help you!"
"'Poor, silly little thing!'" he repeated after her, his eyes moistening. "Don't, Maisie, it makes me feel like a fool! Why, I'm not fit to speak to you, girl! The life I've lived—Oh, the road is where I belong, after all! And the dreams—why, they're just dreams, that's all. I'd only have to try to realize them to prove it—and I'm afraid. Yes, when I haven't been drunk, I've been afraid."
She winced at the word, while he, unheeding, stared gloomily at the carpet. "What—" she began hesitantly, and stopped. He looked up, comprehending.
"To write," he said simply. "To write instead of scribble. Oh, I can see things—and I can feel 'em. Seems to me that I could do it—but it looms up so that I don't dare try. And sometimes I get into the proper mood, and get squared away—and then—" He broke off with a despairing gesture.
"I don't know much about those things, of course," she said, "but I like to read what I can, and it seems to me that feelin' like you do about it—I mean it's lookin' so big to you—that you ought to be all the more able to do it."
He stared at her. This subtle viewpoint had never struck him before. "By George, it takes a girl, after all, to hit the nail square," he told her. "I never thought of it. But say,—why—it's encouraging, it is!"
"Sure it is." She smiled at him. "You want to get busy."
He stared wide-eyed in sudden reverie, his eyes wistful, his freckled face softened with something that contrastedoddly enough with his ordinary reckless, devil-may-care attitude toward the world. His better side was uppermost; somehow this girl could always summon it. But now, as she watched him mutely, a swift shadow darkened his face.
"Yes," he told her, "perhaps I ought to be encouraged by the way I feel about it, and get busy. I could if I was built right, but I'm not, Maisie. I can't get settled and I haven't any balance wheel. It's 'off again, on again, gone again' with me. I can't get fairly into a place before the old itch to keep moving bothers me, and with the other, the combination keeps me shifting. Why, I seem to be a whole bunch of fellows mixed up in a free-for-all, sometimes," he added, with a forlorn smile. "Other fellows can get down to a steady grind and climb; I can't. God knows I want to, sometimes." He gave her a queer look; she did not seem to notice.
"And then," he pursued, "I've never had a home, you know, not since the poor little mother died. Of course, that wasn't much of a home to look at, but she was there, and I've never had one since. Oh, it's been so lonesome sometimes; you don't know. It's the man who goes jumping over the world alone, here today and there tomorrow, that knows what lonesomeness is. It's that, I tell you, that's raised the devil with me. Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems to me that if it had been with me like it is with others I'd have been different. I've known fellows inclined the same way as I am, but they settled down and got homes, and now—why, they've got me beat out of sight."
"Well," she queried eagerly, "why don't you—" and stopped suddenly, her cheeks crimsoning, for Micky'sdisturbed face had with her unthinking words grown suddenly tense with purpose. A flash of realization had revealed to him his great need, the influence to anchor him and hold him fast against the restless, turbid tide that sought to sweep him away. Why, he needed—her! On the word of this slip of a girl hung his opportunity for a new and better world; a world for two, two who might work, one for the other,—and climb; a world in which dreams might come true. In a moment it would have all been poured forth in broken, incoherent phrase, the sum of Micky's illumining dream and his desire. But the girl, with the unerring instinct of her sex, divined the situation and in quick alarm frustrated O'Byrn's intention, though very gently.
"Well," she said, smiling at him brightly, "we've had a good talk, haven't we? I'm glad you told me about—everything. I know you'll win, it's in you. And now—I know you won't mind—but it's gettin' late, and I have to get up early, you know."
So Micky, effectually forestalled, went away with settled gloom shadowing his freckled face. For a long time after he had gone the girl sat by the window, the light turned low; young eyes staring sombrely out upon the darkened street; young, fearful soul oppressed by the soft encroaching shadow of the divinest of life's mysteries.
IT was early in the evening and some of the Courier's reportorial staff were in the office, waiting for late assignments. As often happened when a few moments of leisure allowed, there was an animated group in the corner, with O'Byrn occupying the center. The political situation was beginning to grow warmer, so it naturally followed that Shaughnessy was the subject of conversation.
Micky had just been indulging in what Dick Glenwood called one of his "bursts of indiscriminate philosophy." "This game of politics," he declared, "is getting to be a science in solitaire. It's up to you to play it alone and use the rest of 'em for pawns, if you want to win out. Now, look at Shaughnessy. He fools his bowers, right and left. He annexes the whole graft. His gang of four-flushers think it's a divvy, but the boss has the wad and they're gettin' one-half of one per cent handouts. What a graft it is! I read in a paper the other day of a sign in front of an eat-joint in a Western boom town. It read:
MEALS, 25 CENTS.SQUARE MEALS, 50 CENTS.GORGE, 75 CENTS.
But Shaughnessy's doin' a lot better than that. He's gettin' gorged without payin' for it."
"Where did he hail from?" asked Peters. "Isn't indigenous, is he?"
"Please remember, Pete," remarked Dick, in a pained tone, "that kind of vocabulary is barred outside your copy writing, and even then must never be used unless you've lost your book of synonyms. You positively must never throw verbal lugs into us like that. As for Shaughnessy, he isn't whatever you call it. He came here from the devil knows where a dozen years ago and annexed Goldberg, the gentleman that's so popular with Micky. Mr. Shaughnessy had enjoyed a good ward training somewhere and was quick to catch onto the possibilities of that section of the town. His connection with politics has always been of the quietest nature, but he's popularly supposed to rule the roost. They say, too, he's long on aspirations and hopes humbly for the ultimate possession of the state."
"Newspapers are dead against him," observed Mead; "at least, all that count."
"Two of 'em weren't till lately," responded Dick dryly. "He had 'em bought, body and soul, till they had a row with him on a question of patronage and did a chameleon change for political virtue. He's got his own Messenger—good name for that organ. He's the owner of that sheet, though he doesn't figure in the firm name. There's the Courier, of course, and our rival over the way must have fought him from the first, but the good in this city mostly died young, I guess."
"'Tisn't that," put in Micky, from the midst of a placid cloud of cigar smoke. "There's enough of the decent element in this place to shelve Shaughnessy, if you could rouse it. But it's doing a Rip Van Winklethat it's going to take a big gob of dynamite to jar it out of. Some day that will happen, and the decent element will be on top for a year or two. Then it will fall asleep at the switch and do another century, while the gang rings in again. Oh, it'll happen, for a little while, the reform stunt. It always does. But it won't last long, and then it's the gang that we have always with us. Boss rule? It's explained easily enough. Your decent element is troubled with trances; the gang's got insomnia."
"So you thinkShaughnessy'llget what's coming to him some day?" mused Dick. "Where's your dynamite?"
"Right here!" asserted O'Byrn, bracing in his chair and vigorously banging his desk. "Here or in some other good newspaper office in this town. Do you know the reason of Shaughnessy's success here? It's because he never shows his hand. He's a gilt-edged daisy, that fellow. If he had been doing his business in the open they'd have had him behind bars long ago. But he's doing his directing from the wings. You and I know that if we pick out a reputable man, hap-hazard, from the decent element we've been speaking of, and begin talking to him of Shaughnessy, he'll laugh and chase up the street, saying that the papers have Shaughnessy on the brain. It's a fact that a lot of people don't look on that Irish scoundrel as anything more than a cheap ward boss, with little influence in the city at large. There's reason enough for the view. The newspapers have poured out columns of abuse of Shaughnessy in the past few years, but sum it all up and it's composed wholly of vague generalities. They've never brought anything home to him that was worth the bringing, never a thing that would jug him for a minute. The average voter here holds him too cheap.That fact, coupled with the natural majority he controls, always tips his scales right. Tell your voter-at-large that it was Shaughnessy who engineered the queer, rotten deals that have figured in this town—yes, and the legislature,—deals whose parentage they can't trace, and the voter would give you the laugh."
"He'd have a right to," commented Kirk. "Go slow, Micky. Shaughnessy's a good organizer, and maybe he's put some cheap ones through, but he's limited."
"So is the flyer," retorted Micky, "but it'll jerk you along some. Don't you foolish yourself about that mick, Andy. He's a deep one. He's got a side to him that's working overtime. It's an underground system, and any lucky guy in this business that tumbles into it will see things that'll fill his paper next day with facts, not surmises, facts that'll set 'em all gapin'. That's the dynamite that'll explode some day and it'll blow Shaughnessy into stripes and behind the bars. Of course, there'll be a new boss after a while, but it won't be Shaughnessy."
The city editor summoned them just then and the conference was abruptly terminated. Soon afterward Micky and Dick descended together in the elevator and walked up the avenue toward the point where their paths separated. They were still talking of Shaughnessy.
"He's an odd genius," Dick was saying, "and I think you have sized him up about right. I've studied him more or less, and I gave him credit from the first of having a lot more under his hat than a good many think he has. He strikes me as a sort of a cross between a hyena and a bulldog. From his start here he's never let go—and there's the stench about him of a political charnel house. After he got his start, everything that would be likely tohamper him went by the board. You know he runs a wholesale liquor house. It used to be a little saloon when he first struck here, and they tell me he used to drink up most of his stock himself. Very secretive fellow, nobody knew anything about him. Then, all of a sudden, he got started on his career. Alderman at first, I believe, but wasn't in public life long, didn't need to be. He's a wonder. They tell me that from the time of his first canvass for office he cut out the booze and doesn't touch it at all. Wiped out his own handicap. Well, you see what he's done; he's well fixed. They all know it's there, but they can't prove where he got it. And say, speak of the devil—there he is now."
Shaughnessy passed them, with a slight nod of recognition to Glenwood. His face gleamed ghastly under the flood of electric light, there were blue shadows under his black eyes. While he walked briskly enough, his face, in addition to its usual lack of animation, held utter weariness.
"Looks bad, doesn't he?" remarked Dick, as they separated on the corner. "Something must be the matter with him. Looks to be all in."
"No," grinned Micky; "it just makes him thin every campaign figuring to keep his job." Then he added unsmilingly, "He makes me feel as tired as he looks, Dick. I don't know what it is, but there's something about that geezer that makes a fellow feel like crape on the knob."
A little later, seated in the library of his handsome residence on Morley Street, Colonel John Westlake heard his door bell ringing and was manifestly apprehensive. The closed oak desk in the corner, the sight of the Colonel stretched contentedly in his easy chair, a fragrantcigar between his lips and a favorite book in his hand, indicated a quiet, enjoyable evening which the gentleman regretted to have disturbed. So it was with suppressed irritation that the Colonel looked up, warned by the rustle of feminine skirts, to find the maid standing in the doorway.
"A gentleman to see you, sir," said she. "He didn't give any card. He said to tell you that Mr. Shaughnessy wanted to see you a minute."
The Colonel's smile was grimly questioning, while he reflectively stroked his sandy beard, which was faintly streaked with gray. Then he cogitated for a moment, while he abandoned his whiskers for a small, round bald spot on his crown, which he thoughtfully rubbed. "Well," said he finally, "show him in, Mary."
Left to himself the Colonel took a couple of long thoughtful puffs at his cigar, while he chuckled audibly. The look of irritation had vanished; it had given place to one of piqued and peppery curiosity.
The look with which Colonel Westlake greeted his visitor, as the boss entered the library, was one of eager aggressiveness. The Colonel was a fighter and a gallant one; he itched for any fray that would allow him to glory in honorable combat, for it was always honorable on his side. His eyes were blue and stormy, but they always looked straight at you and the fire of awakened antagonism in them had often caused the dishonorable to quail. But at this particular moment, the black, sinister eyes of Shaughnessy, the unbidden, sullenly impassive as an Indian's, stared straight into the sharp, challenging ones of the Colonel without a sign of wavering, and the even, expressionless voice of Shaughnessyanticipated any words of dubious welcome the Colonel might have spoken.
"You need not ask regarding the occasion for the honor of my visit, Colonel," he said, as his host rose, "for I know well enough that you do not regard it as an honor." He smiled sardonically.
The Colonel smiled also, quite broadly. This was not so bad. "You are quite right, Mr. Shaughnessy," he acknowledged. "I know you well enough to know that you're here on business. Well, take a chair and state it." There was an underlying something in the Colonel's tone, a peremptory note that spelled, "Be brief as possible and get out."
It failed to disturb the nonchalance of Shaughnessy. He leisurely seated himself in a chair opposite that of the Colonel, the large oak table being between them. Then, with half-closed eyes dreamily searching the ceiling, he proceeded to apparently forget his host's presence in a sudden fit of abstraction which was, under the circumstances, superb.
The Colonel waited a moment, his choler rising perceptibly. "Well, sir?" he finally queried, and there was menace in his tone.
Shaughnessy lazily lowered his eyes till they rested level with those of his host. The Colonel thought instinctively, as he gazed into them, of the fixed beady stare of a serpent.
"You are at present the principal owner of the Courier, having purchased the controlling interest early the past summer, aren't you, Colonel?" asked Shaughnessy.
"Most certainly. What of it?"
"You are not at present in favor of taking a contractfor any or all of the official city printing?" pursued Shaughnessy.
"What do you mean?" demanded the Colonel, his gorge rising. "You have had my answer—"
"Wait a moment," interrupted the boss, raising a deprecating thin hand. "Let's get at this logically. Keep cool, Colonel. And now, another thing. Do I understand that you intend to pound what you are pleased to call my machine during the present campaign?"
The Colonel's eyes lighted up with the battle fire, but his voice was mellow with an ominous softness as he answered, "Pound you? As hard as God will let me, my dear sir. Yes, you bet your life!"
"Well, now, let's see about that," pursued Shaughnessy, his voice as soft and menacing as the other's. "I'm told by a friend of mine, Colonel, that you're a heavy holder of this Consolidated Gas that is arousing so much speculation just now." His voice had grown insolent. His face remained impassive, but his eyes, beginning to burn with evil exultation, searched the Colonel's own.
For his part, the host leaned forward, his elbows on the table, and stared straight across at Shaughnessy. "Well," he inquired, still softly, "what if I am, eh?"
"Well, if you are," retorted Shaughnessy, also leaning forward, his lips set cruelly under his small black moustache, "if you are—not to please me, for I'm getting out of the small share I've had in local politics, but for your own good—don't you think you'd better reconsider that city printing matter?"
"And if I should," suggested the Colonel, his tone even quieter, "why, you'd expect the Courier—of course—"
Shaughnessy leaned back with a cynical, assured smile.His tone was now arrogant. "The Courier," he sneered, "why, of course, the Courier will get in line."
Colonel Westlake looked away for a moment. "Yes, the Courier will get in line," he murmured. He slowly removed his still lighted cigar from his mouth and placed it carefully on the corner of the table. Shaughnessy silently exulted with evil eyes, which then again indifferently, dreamily, sought the ceiling.
"The Courier will get in line!" There was a difference in the tone, a ringing note which in a flash recalled Shaughnessy's wandering gaze. He found the Colonel standing opposite him, his hands grasping the edge of the table, his face crimson with rage. "You hound!" growled the Colonel, "you crawling snake! I've drawn you out; I only wish it was far enough for me to get my heel on you. But I'll do it yet. The Courier will get in line, you leper, don't you doubt it, but it will be to crush you and your dirty brood, for the forces of decency are going to stamp you out this November as sure as there's a God in heaven! We've got to dig to do it, thanks to your devilish ingenuity, but it'll be done. The Citizens' Fusion ticket, with an honest man at the head, is going through, and your ward heeler list will be wiped out at the polls, mark me. We're going to clean this cesspool, but we'll drown you in it first! And now let me tell you just how much of a cursed fool you made of yourself just now in trying to intimidate me. Your solicitous friend didn't pry long enough, it seems. I was the holder of a big block of Consolidated Gas for just three days, solely through the blunder of an agent. It's an infamous thing, which nobody should know better than yourself, and if your sneaking lieutenanthad been worth his salt, he'd have found that I haven't had a dollar in that highway robbery combine for four months; that I was not personally responsible for being in it in the first place, and that I was at pains to get out of it at the expense of a personal loss the moment I learned of it. Moreover, I suspect that it was a cunning plan made months ago to compromise me in the belief that the love of revenue would keep me in it and allow interests of which you well know, you scoundrel, to get control of me. It's worked with others, but I'm not built that way. You've shown your hand for nothing, and if your heeler had been possessed of a penny's worth of brains, he'd have found out about things and saved you unnecessary trouble. Let me assure you that the Courier will put in double time to smash you, Shaughnessy, and now I will ask you to leave before you are put out."
The Colonel ceased, his hands trembling with rage, his blazing eyes fixed on Shaughnessy, who had sat with averted face and without a word during Westlake's fiery denunciation. Now he rose, ever so leisurely, and turned slowly, facing the owner of the Courier. The white face was unruffled by any trace of emotion, the black, sinister eyes stared unwaveringly as a reptile's into the Colonel's fiery blue ones. Shaughnessy fumbled in an upper pocket of his vest.
"Pardon, Colonel, have you a match?" he inquired. His voice had all the serenity of a mild June day. The dazed Westlake mechanically produced one. Shaughnessy lazily lighted a cigar and sauntered out.