Half a Rogue Part 30

"You are not going to join the Auxiliary, are you, mother?" John inquired, putting the cues in the rack.

"Indeed I am not. The men in my family always used their own judgment in politics. They have always been Whigs or Republicans."

"Did you ever meet a woman, d.i.c.k, who was a Democrat?" laughed John.

"Perhaps," was the reply, "but it has escaped my recollection."

But he was thinking: after all, he had a right to win Patty if he could. It was not what he had done in the past, it was what he was capable of doing from now on that counted.

"You're going to have a stiff fight at the convention," said John.

"I know it. But a fight of any kind will keep my mind occupied. The senator has a.s.sured me that I shall get the nomination."

On the way home Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene saw the flutter of a white dress on the Wilmington-Fairchilds' veranda. She couldn't resist, so she crossed the lawn and mounted the veranda steps. She did not observe her husband in the corner, smoking with the master of the house.

"I've been over to the Benningtons'," she began, rather breathless.

"What's the news?"

"There is no truth in the report of Patty's engagement to young Whiteland."

"There isn't? Well, there ought to be, after the way they went around together last winter."

"She told me so herself," Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene declared emphatically.

"Do you know what I believe?"

"No," truthfully.

"I've an idea that Patty is inclined toward that fellow Warrington."

"You don't mean it!"

"He's always around there. He must have thought a great deal of his aunt. She was buried to-day, and there he is, playing billiards with John Bennington. If that isn't heartlessness!"

"What do you want a man to do?" growled her husband from behind his cigar. "Sit in a dark room and wring his hands all day, like a woman?

Men have other things to do in life than mourn the departed."

"Franklyn? I didn't see you."

"You seldom do."

Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene at once plunged into a discussion of fashion, the one thing that left her husband high and dry, so far as his native irony was concerned.

That same night McQuade concluded some interesting business. He possessed large interests in the local breweries. Breweries on the average do not pay very good dividends on stock, so the brewer often establishes a dozen saloons about town to help the business along.

McQuade owned a dozen or more of these saloons, some in the heart of the city, some in the outlying wards of the town. He conducted the business with his usual shrewdness. The saloons were all well managed by Germans, who, as a drinking people, are the most orderly in the world. It was not generally known that McQuade was interested in the sale of liquors. His name was never mentioned in connection with the saloons.

One of these saloons was on a side street. The back door of it faced the towpath. It did not have a very good reputation; and though, for two years, no disturbances had occurred there, the police still kept an eye on the place. It was on the boundary line of the two most turbulent wards in the city. To the north was the Italian colony, to the south was the Irish colony. Both were orderly and self-respecting as a rule, though squalor and poverty abounded. But these two races are at once the simplest and most quick-tempered, and whenever an Irishman or an Italian crossed the boundary line there was usually a hurry call for the patrol wagon, and some one was always more or less battered up.

Over this saloon was a series of small rooms which were called "wine rooms," though n.o.body opened wine there. Beer was ten cents a gla.s.s up stairs, and whisky twenty. Women were not infrequently seen climbing the stairs to these rooms. But, as already stated, everybody behaved.

Schmuck, who managed the saloon, was a giant of a man, a Turnvereiner, who could hold his own with any man in town. It will be understood that the orderliness was therefore due to a respect for Schmuck's strength, and not to any inclination to be orderly.

On this night, then, at nine o'clock, a man entered and approached the bar. He was sharp-eyed, lean-faced, with a heavy blue beard closely shaven, saving the mustache, which was black and hung over the man's lips. He wore good clothes. There was a large diamond on one of his fingers and another in the bosom of his shirt, in which a white tie was tucked carefully. They were yellow diamonds. But those among whom this man moved did not know the difference between yellow stones and white. Morrissy was accounted very well-to-do.

"h.e.l.lo, Schmuck!" he hailed. "Got the room up stairs in order?"

"Yes." Schmuck wiped the bar. "Der poss iss coming to-night, I see.

Huh?"

"Yes. He ought to be along now," replied Morrissy, glancing at his watch, which was as conspicuous as his yellow diamonds.

"How you getting along mit der poys?"

"Oh, we're coming along fine, all right."

"Going to call 'em out uf der mills? Huh?"

"Perhaps. When the boss comes, tell him I'm up stairs."

Morrissy lighted a cigar, took the evening papers from the end of the bar, and disappeared. Schmuck could hear him moving the chairs about.

Ten minutes later McQuade appeared. Schmuck nodded toward the stairs, and without a word McQuade went up.

"Good evening, Morrissy. I missed a car, or I'd have been here earlier."

"That's all right, Mr. McQuade; glad to wait for you." Morrissy threw aside his papers and drew his chair to the table.

McQuade closed the door and sat down.

"You got my letter?" he began, wiping his forehead.

Morrissy nodded.

"Well?"

"Well, the boys will go out Monday morning. A committee will wait on Bennington in the morning. He won't back down and discharge the English inventor, so it's a sure thing they'll walk out, every mother's son of them."

"On the morning they go out, I'll send you my check for five hundred."

"For the union?"

"I'll send it to you, and you can use it as you see fit. On Monday morning, then."

"Sure thing."

They smoked for a while. Suddenly McQuade laid a bulky envelope on the table, got up and went out. Morrissy weighed the envelope carefully, thrust it into his pocket, and also departed.

"Five hundred now, and five hundred on Monday. I can see him sending a check. It will be bills. Bah! I should have called out the boys anyhow."