“As a member of the Arareek,” cut in Caleb, “you’ll set down an’ be quiet. You’ve had your say. What I’ve just told, I’ve told as a member of the Club—an’ to fellow-members. Of course if I’m kicked out of the Arareek—an’ kicked out on your vote, Featherstone—I won’t feel bound to keep my mouth shut about those same stories or who told ’em. Nor what you whispered to a girl as you passed my table on your way out. If—”
“This is blackmail!” shrieked Featherstone, “I—”
“It’s anything you like to name it,” agreed Caleb, cheerfully, “But it goes. Understand that. Anyone else got somethin’ to say?”
“I should like to ask Mr. Conover,” put in another man, “if he can truthfully deny that his business dealings will not bear such inspection as—”
“As your own deal in buyin’ the tip of where the new High School was to be built an’ then gettin’ an option on the land an’ squeezin’ the city for $48,000?” asked Conover. “Oh, I guess most of my business will frame up pretty well alongside of that. Say, your talk of ‘business methods’ makes me laugh, when I remember what you offered for that tip an’ who you went shares with on the money you got. As a feller Club member, my mouth’s shut on that. When I’m kicked out, it’ll be a diff’rent story. That’s blackmail again, if you like.”
A nervous, gray-haired man at the foot of the board checked comment by saying:
“It’s scarcely needful, Mr. Conover, to adopt that tone. For the sake of the club’s good name, we are simply inquiring into the truth of certain reports of the way your money was made. We—”
“It’s my own business how it was made, Mr. Hawarden,” countered Caleb. “The way I spend it is anybody’s business. An’ when I leave this Club I’m willin’ to make public the accounts of some of my disbursements.”
Though the retort was not rough of tone and seemed quite harmless,—even vapid—of meaning, Hawarden all at once dropped out of the dispute. In vain did several of his fellow Committeemen who had relied on him to press the prosecution, signal for a renewal of attack. Thenceforth, throughout the session, Hawarden was gloomily mute. But there were others to carry on the attack he had so unexpectedly abandoned. Notably a downy little man who sat at Reuben Standish’s right.
“It is said, Mr. Conover,” observed the new assailant, with an air of nervous relish, “that your father was a convict.”