The Lash Part 8

"He's an odd genius," d.i.c.k 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 to hamper 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, n.o.body 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 canva.s.s 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 pa.s.sed 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 d.i.c.k, 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, d.i.c.k. I don't know what it is, but there's something about that geezer that makes a fellow feel like c.r.a.pe on the k.n.o.b."

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 fragrant cigar 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 impa.s.sive 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 Shaughnessy antic.i.p.ated 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 princ.i.p.al 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 contract for 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 G.o.d 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 impa.s.sive, 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, a.s.sured 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 G.o.d 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 n.o.body should know better than yourself, and if your sneaking lieutenant had 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 a.s.sure 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.

CHAPTER IX

NOT ON THE PROGRAMME

In a few days occurred the Citizens' convention. A formidable array of men was there; business and professional men, leaders in the city's activities. It was an array which might well set the forces that controlled the city government to worrying. Moreover, real enthusiasm ruled the a.s.semblage, and when Colonel Westlake, in a fiery nominating speech, named Theodore Packard, one of the city's leading merchants, for the mayoralty, thunderous demonstrations attested the temper of the delegates.

Under the aggressive leadership of Colonel Westlake, the Fusionists had taken time by the forelock and were first in the field with a strong ticket. Warm hopes were entertained for it this year. Republicans, who were greatly in the minority in the city, had taken the initiative in starting the Fusion movement, which was strengthened by the open avowal of some of the community's best known men, of Democratic allegiance, that they were done with Shaughnessy and his methods. The movement appeared to be gaining in force and bulk, like a s...o...b..ll rolling down hill, as the hour approached for the Democratic convention, toward which all eyes were now turning.

There were indications that the entrenched, corrupt forces which dominated the city were getting ready to invite their own destruction.

Was it not Shaughnessy who held the whip hand, and was not Shaughnessy going crazy? Verily, it seemed so, and Shaughnessy, apparently drunk with the power invested in his acquired authority, seemed likely to exercise it to his own destruction. "The man is mad," remarked the leaders of the Citizens' movement, one to the other, and rubbed their hands. For Shaughnessy's candidate for the nomination, the man for whom, as he calmly stated, the convention would, at his word, vote as one man, was so notoriously inadequate, so miserably unfit, that the prospect of his nomination set a resentful growl to circulating even among many of the chosen delegates to the Democratic, otherwise the Shaughnessy, convention. Dare Shaughnessy, so c.o.c.ksure of his evil hold upon the city, thrust such a candidate upon his party? Certain of Shaughnessy's supporters grumbled, while the leaders of the Citizens' movement ground their teeth and figuratively removed their coats.

True to his promise to Shaughnessy, on the occasion of that worthy's call upon the owner of the Courier, Colonel Westlake's paper was firing hot shot at the local boss. The effrontery and callous indifference to all considerations, save his own sweet will, which Shaughnessy was displaying in his choice of a candidate for the mayoralty, was dished up daily, in attractive and toothsome guise, for the Courier's readers.

Westlake was certainly pounding Shaughnessy.

Meanwhile, strange whispers began circulating around the town, things that savored of disloyalty to Shaughnessy. The unpopularity of the candidate, whose fortunes he had espoused, was evidently breeding a revolt among Shaughnessy's followers, of which he seemed strangely oblivious. At all events, he was wholly indifferent to it. To add seriousness to the situation, some of the boss' most trusted lieutenants had been heard to utter words that sounded strangely from the lips of faithful followers. These little seeds of dissension were sown cautiously, but they fell where they seemed sure to bring forth the fruit of contention. When ex-Alderman Goldberg, supposed to be retired from politics, the lanky d.i.c.k Peterson, and the moon-faced Willie Shute, men known to have been for years identified with Shaughnessy's interests, began treacherously knifing him, the Fusionists p.r.i.c.ked up their ears and polished their eyegla.s.ses. Might there not be a disastrous factional Democratic fight?

The day before the convention occurred there was a tense, growing expectancy through the city, a vague, intangible premonition of an unguessed something on the morrow. What is was to be n.o.body knew, but that there was a rift in the Shaughnessy lute,--or "loot," as one Fusionist wag expressed it,--was now plainly apparent to all parties.

The existence of a plot against him was recognized, yet Shaughnessy made no sign. His insolent programme was known; he proposed on the morrow to thrust his preposterously unfit candidate for the mayoralty, together with a few other objectionable nominees for divers offices, down the throat of the convention. The programme of the opposition was not known, but Goldberg, Peterson and Shute, with others whose fidelity to the interests of the boss had hitherto been unquestioned, had been busy.

They had toward the end thrown off the pretense of secrecy and had declared the boss' programme to be suicidal to the chances of Democratic success. The array of malcontents grew larger and more formidable. It was increased by the well circulated report that Goldberg had tried to remonstrate with the boss and been freezingly turned down.

"The delegates won't stand for it, Shaughnessy," Goldberg had said.

"It's out of all reason."

The sneer in Shaughnessy's reply had inflamed an army of hitherto faithful adherents against him. "The delegates will do as I dictate," he had said. "This convention, let me tell you, will name my ticket, and the kickers will be kicked out of the party."

Surely Shaughnessy was going mad. "I understand he said lately that he didn't intend to figure in local politics much longer," said Colonel Westlake one day to the Fusionist candidate for the mayoralty, Theodore Packard, though without apprising him of the circ.u.mstances under which the boss made that statement. "Well, do you know, I begin to believe this dissension in their ranks has been brewing for some time. 'When thieves fall out,' you know. I think he foresaw this sc.r.a.p and is risking the issue on a last desperate game, which he is growing rather afraid of losing."