She seemed like a woman who had just awakened. Her earlier comatose expression had altogether passed away. There was life, now, in every line of her body.
"I mean that Durkin's got his quarter of a million in securities, all right, all right, but, by God, I've got you! And I mean that he's goin' to, that he's got to, make a choice between them and you. So we'll just wait and find out which he loves best, his beau or his dough!" And he laughed harshly at the feeble witticism, as he added, in his guttural undertone: "And I guess we get the worth of our money, whichever way it goes!"
Frank's impression was that he was half drunk, that he was mumbling vaguely of revenges which grew up and died in their utterance. Her look of open scorn stung him into a sudden tremor of anger.
"Oh, don't think I'm spoutin' wind! If Durkin's the man you think he is, and I hope he is, he'll be tryin' to nose his way into this place before midnight tonight!"
"And he will," cried Frank, exultantly, "and with the whole precinct police force behind him!"
"He daren't!" retorted MacNutt. "He daren't get within a hundred yards of the Central Office, and he daren't show his nose inside a precinct station-house! And that's not all, either. There's no captain on this side of New York who's goin' to buck against the whole Tammany machine an' poke into this Penfield business. If that young man with the butterfly necktie over on Centre street thinks he can keep us movin', he's got to do a heap less talkin' and a heap more convictin' before he can put our lights out! That air is good enough for politics—but it's never goin' to break this here Penfield combination! Oh, no, Jimmie Durkin knows how the land lays. He's one o' your bold and brainy kind, who likes to shut himself up in a garret for a week, and make maps of what he's goin' to do, an' how he's goin' to do it, and then trip off by his lonely and do his huntin' in the dark! And he's goin' to try to get in here, before midnight, tonight, and what's more, he's goin' to find it uncommonly easy to do!"
"You mean you'll entice him and trap him here?"
"No, I won't lay a finger on him. You'll do the enticin', and he'll do the trappin'! I won't even be round to see—till afterward!"
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean we're holdin' open house tonight," mocked MacNutt, "and that Durkin will maybe drop in!"