“What can I do without Inspector McCue? and he has been removed from the affair. I talked with him concerning it; he told me himself there was no hope.”
“Now, what were his words?” said I, for I was willing to discover how far Inspector McCue had used my name.
“Why, then,” returned the Reverend Bronson, with a faint smile at the recollection, “if I am to give you the precise words, our talk ran somewhat like this:
“'Doctor, what's the use?' said Inspector McCue. 'We're up against it; we can't move a wheel.'
“'There's such a word as law,' said I, advancing much, the argument you have just now given me; 'and such a thing as justice.'
“'Not in the face of the machine,' responded Inspector McCue. 'The will of the machine stands for all the law and all the justice that we're likely to get. The machine has the courts, the juries, the prosecuting officers, and the police. Every force we need is in its hands. Personally, of course, they couldn't touch you; but if I were to so much as lift a finger, I'd be destroyed. Some day I, myself, may be chief; and if I am, for once in a way, I'll guarantee the decent people of this town a run for their money.'
“'And yet,' said I, 'we prate of liberty!'
“'Liberty!' cried he. 'Doctor, our liberties are in hock to the politicians, and we've lost the ticket.'”
It was in my mind to presently have the stripes and buttons off the loquacious, honest Inspector McCue. The Reverend Bronson must have caught some gleam of it in my eye; he remonstrated with a gentle hand upon my arm.
“Promise me that no more harm shall come to McCue,” he said. “I ought not to have repeated his words. He has been banished to the Bronx; isn't that punishment enough for doing right?”