"Gif to me ze message," said Blasius. "When Meestaire Park he come, he shall have it."
"I couldn't give it to you," I said. "I am to deliver it into his hands only. And I can tell you that he will be very angry if there's any delay about it."
H. Blasius' pasty face took on an expression of dismay at the thought of an angry Parks, and with a grumbling of French interjections that suggested the cracking of his ill-regulated internal machinery, he waddled to a doorway at the end of the bar, and disappeared up a box stairway.
I looked around the saloon at the dozen or more men who lounged about in varying degrees of alcoholic stupefaction, and had just noted a group of men half concealed at a table at the farther end of the L of the room, when a rapid step descended the stairs, and Parks appeared.
"Hampden!" he cried, shaking my hand. "What can I do for you? It is a surprise to see you here."
"If I need an apology for intruding, here is a good one." And I held out Mercy's letter.
Parks seized it with a start of emotion as he recognized the handwriting, looked about with apparent thought of the profanation of reading Mercy's words in that place, and then giving me a nod to follow him, strode to a secluded table and opened the letter. His face lost something of its aggressive resolution as he read and re-read the pages.
"Hampden," he said in a softened voice, "did you ever realize that the sympathies of women are individual and concrete? The welfare of the masses is but a shadow to them, except as they see it through some one they know and care for. Here my petty personal welfare is put before the interests of the whole people!" And he laid a monitory finger on the letter. "I am asked to give up an enterprise of the greatest moment lest I shall get my head cracked or be thrown into prison."
"Would you have her think otherwise?"
He looked at the letter without answering. Then he thrust it into his pocket, gave his head a shake, and his face was once more dominated by the aggressive spirit of the agitator.