“It spells disaster.”
“For whom?”
“For the North Star Company—for all of us. Why—”
“That’s not the point that’s worrying you, Mr. Slack!”
The challenge came swift and sharp like the crack of a whip. Though nominally his subordinate, there were crises in the history of the North Star Company when Slack had to mentally acknowledge a master in Acey Smith’s presence. That was perhaps because he knew Smith in some way held the confidence of the directing mind of the firm, and—there was another reason that was not as tangible.
A wan remnant of what was meant to be a patient smile broke over the politician’s fat face. “We’ll be absolutely candid then,” he agreed. “There’s a Dominion election coming—the House may go to the country at any time. Smith, this proposed strike, with us refusing a settlement, would alienate every solitary labour vote in the North. Why, man, I couldn’t run against a yellow dog and win; it would ruin my political future.”
Acey Smith approached the other deliberately. He leaned forward until the tips of his inordinately long, tapering white fingers supported him on the edge of the desk.
“Slack,” he pronounced with cold insolence, “you have no political future.”
“One moment!” He raised a detaining hand, as Slack, ashen to the throat, opened his mouth in a sort of sickly gasp. “I am merely uttering the judgment of J.C.X., whose spokesman I am for the time being. Your future, as mine, belongs utterly to the North Star. The day you took over the president’s desk you became a pawn, body and soul. You knew that; it was put coldly to you. You accepted in the knowledge that the decisions of the anonymous head of the North Star Towing and Contracting Company must be absolute law, to be obeyed without equivocation of any kind.
“Slack, the North Star made you; picked you up when you were a hand-to-mouth, soap-box demagogue with about as much chance of carving a name in Canadian politics as a celluloid beetle has of cruising the drought-belts of hell. You were a brief-hunting, small-town lawyer in those days, dependent on the political crumbs the big fellows brushed off the table. If it hadn’t been for a mean portion of party patronage you would have had to tackle honest toil or starve.