When young Morton was about to go, Big Kennedy detained him with a final query.
“This aint meant to stick pins into you,” said Big Kennedy, “but, on th' dead! I'd like to learn how you moral an' social high-rollers reconcile yourselves to things. How do you agree with yourself to buy them votes needed to get th' franchise? Not th' ones I'll bring in, an' which you can pretend you don't know about; but them you'll have to deal with personally, d'ye see!”
“There'll be none I'll deal with personally, don't y' know,” returned young Morton, getting behind his lisp and eyeglass, finding them a refuge in what was plainly an embarrassed moment, “no; I wouldn't do anything with the vulgar creatures in person. They talk such awful English, it gets upon my nerves—really! But I've retained Caucus & Club; they're lawyers, only they don't practice law, they practice politics. They'll attend to those low details of which you speak. For me to do so wouldn't be good form. It would shock my set to death, don't y' know!”
“That's a crawl-out,” observed Big Kennedy reproachfully, “an' it aint worthy of you. Why don't you come to th' center? You're goin' to give up four hundred thousand dollars to get this franchise. You don't think it's funny—you don't do it because you like it, an' are swept down in a gust of generosity. An' you do think it's wrong.”
“Really, now you're in error,” replied young Morton earnestly, but still clinging to his lisp and his languors. “As you urge, one has scant pleasure in paying this money. On the contrary, I shall find it extremely dull, don't y' know! But I don't call it wrong. I'm entitled, under the law, and the town's practice—a highly idiotic one, this latter, I concede!—of giving these franchises away, to come forward with my proposition. Since I offer to build a perfect road, and to run it in a perfect manner, I ought, as a matter of right—always bearing in mind the town's witless practice aforesaid—to be granted this franchise. But those officers of the city who, acting for the city, should make the grant, refuse to do their duty by either the city or myself, unless I pay to each of them, say ten thousand dollars; they do, really! What am I to do? I didn't select those officers; the public picked them out. Must I suffer loss, and go defeated of my rights, because the public was so careless or so ignorant as to pitch upon those improper, or, if you will, dishonest officials? I say, No. The fault is not mine; surely the loss should not be mine. I come off badly enough when I submit to the extortion. No, it is no more bribery, so far as I am involved, than it is bribery when I surrender my watch to that footpad who has a pistol at my ear. In each instance, the public should have saved me and has failed, don't y' know. The public, thus derelict, must not denounce me when, under conditions which its own neglect has created, I take the one path left open to insure myself; it mustn't, really!”
Young Morton wiped the drops from his brow, and I could tell how he was deeply in earnest in what he thus put forward. Big Kennedy clapped him lustily on the back.
“Put it there!” he cried, extending his hand. “I couldn't have said it better myself, an' I aint been doin' nothin' but buy aldermen since I cut my wisdom teeth. There's one last suggestion, however: I take it, you're onto the' fact that Blackberry Traction will lock horns with us over this franchise. We parallel their road, d'ye see, an' they'll try to do us up.” Then to me: “Who are th' Blackberry's pets in th' Board?”
“McGinty and Doloran,” I replied.
“Keep your peepers on them babies. You can tell by th' way they go to bat, whether th' Blackberry has signed up to them to kill our franchise.”
“I can tell on the instant,” I said.