“I ain’t a alderman, serving the city for pure love and a small salary,” grinned the other. “A contractor’s got a right to make money.”
“You make money out o’ me,” said Billy sourly. “You keep me under your big fat ugly thumb. I guess I can run this business alone. I got all the strings pretty well in my own hand.”
“All right, Barry. I’ll be sorry to be on the other side, but if you say so, all right.”
Barry swore a moment under his breath and changed the subject. So matters went on, with Barry still subservient, but growing daily more inclined to believe himself the autocrat he seemed, daily a little less cautious, a little more fixed in his assurance that the officeholders, the delegates and the saloon men constituted, in themselves, a sufficient prop for his dominion, and that Murdock was a nuisance.
“Of course, it’s to his interest to keep me under,” he said to himself, “and I dunno’ whether I’m a fool to let him do it, or whether I’m a fool to try to break away.”
He began to try flyers on his own hook; he gathered many rake-offs of which he said nothing to his mentor; he drank a little more and splurged a little more and looked a little more like a bulldog and less like a man. That the spirit of rebellion was growing up and that the pawn began to take credit to itself for the position of power in which it was placed, came gradually home to Mr. Murdock. It made him at first annoyed, then anxious. So it was that the confidence bred from years of business coöperation drove him this night to look up his old partner.
“Evening, Early,” he said as the door closed behind him. “Beastly cold night out. Wish you’d order me a little something hot to induce me to stay by this comfortable fire of yours.”
Mr. Early waved his hand toward a chair and settled himself without ceremony. There was this comfort in Murdock: they had known each other too long for pose, and, though the old hook-and-eye partnership was dissolved, and Mr. Early had soared into the realms of Art, they were still closely bound by common interests. So Sebastian met him with cheerful resignation.
“Sit down, Jim,” he said. “I don’t mind a nip myself. What’s up?”
“What’s down, you’d better ask. Lord save us! What’s that?” exclaimed Mr. Murdock, as he caught sight of the lurid lady lying amid the litter on the table.