“Where you been?”
“Over to the St. Nick—met up ’ith some o’ the boys, an’ set into a little game fer a while.”
“See Mendenhall?”
“Yep—he’ll be ’long. Gosh! it’s a regular Shawneetown flood outside!” And the man waved his big hat in a wide arc, the spray from it spitting angrily as it sprinkled the fire in the grate.
“So it’s all right, is it?”
“Ump huh.”
“How about the time lock?”
“Oh, George says they don’t never use that—haven’t sence the day the senate ’p’inted that committee to count the money in the treasury. ’Member? By gosh, didn’t pore ol’ Jim hustle to get a special train an’ haul that money down from Chicago, though?”
The secretary of state wagged his long head and chuckled.
“That thing lost him e’enamost fifty thousan’ in int’rust, he tol’ me onct,” the secretary of state went on, “an’ he hain’t never been able sinct to make ary long loan.”