"It's a wonder he didn't get it before."
Peter Bolton had lived without good will to man, and he was dying without man's regret. He summoned up his failing energies and continued:
"If I had another day, your--man--Kendrick--would--be--smashed!" The last word was spoken almost as a hiss. Then the blood welled up in his throat, and with a convulsive effort to rise he fell back and was still.
The Bolton-Kendrick Feud was over.
CHAPTER XXXI
THE BROKEN WEB
With the death of Peter Bolton there was an immediate slackening of the tension in the commercial exchanges. The shock of his sudden end turned men's minds for a little from the market-place, and when they turned back it was not the same. The enginery of evil that he had set in motion to crush Wharton Kendrick ran slower and slower, and at last came to a stop.
"The El Dorado Bank has thrown up the sponge," said Partridge when I met him at noon. "They were acting for Bolton more than for themselves in this deal. Now that the old fox has gone, they have lost stomach for the fight."
And with this assurance, I walked the street with the buoyancy of heart that follows a hard-won victory.
I was still in exultant frame of mind when I came a few minutes later upon the personification of Gloom. It was Parks. His mouth was drawn down into an expression of somber weariness of the world. A piece of court-plaster ornamented his cheek; and his right eye was swollen and discolored until it resembled nothing so much as an overripe tomato.