“You’ll stand where you’re put, or it will be the worse for you!”
“Surely,” Schuyler Tenney interposed, “you ought to have confidence that we will do the fair thing.”
“My bosom may be simply overflowing with confidence in you both”—Horace ventured upon a suggestion of irony in his intonation—“but experience seems to indicate the additional desirability of an understanding. If you will think it over, I daresay you will gather the force of my remark.”
The New Yorker seemed not to have heard the remark, much less to have understood it. He addressed the middle space between Horace and Tenney in a meditative way: “Those two speech-making fellows who are here from the Amalgamated Confederation of Labor, or whatever it is, can both be had to kick up a row whenever we like. I know them both of old. They notified me that they were coming here ten days ago. We can tell them to keep their hands off the Canadians when they come next week, and lead their crowd instead up to the Minster house. We’ll go over that together, Tenney, later on. But about Tracy—perhaps these fellows might—”
Wendover followed up the train of this thought in silence, with a ruminative eye on vacancy.
“What I was saying,” insisted Horace, “was that I wanted to know just how I stand.”
“I suppose it’s out of the question to square Tracy,” pursued Wendover, thinking aloud, “and that Judge Waller that he’s applied to, he’s just another such an impracticable cuss. There’s no security for business at all, when such fellows have the power to muddle and interfere with it. Tenney, you know this Tracy. Why can’t you think of something?”
“As I remarked before,” Horace interposed once more, “what am I to get out of this thing?”
This time the New Yorker heard him. He slowly turned his round, white-framed face toward the speaker, and fixed upon him a penetrating glance of wrath, suspicion, and dislike.
“Oh, that is what you want to know, is it?” he said, abruptly, after a momentary silence. “Well, sir, if you had your deserts, you’d get about seven years’ hard labor. As it is, you’ve had over seven thousand dollars out of the concern, and you’ve done seven hundred thousand dollars’ worth of damage. If you can make a speech before Judge Waller this week that will stave off all these things until after New Year’s, perhaps I may forgive you some of the annoyance and loss your infernal idiocy and self-conceit have caused us. When you’ve done that, it will be time enough to talk to me about giving you another chance to keep your salary. But understand this, sir! You never made a bigger mistake in your life than in thinking you could dictate terms to Peter Wendover, now or any other time! Why, you poor empty-headed creature, who do you suppose you could frighten? You’re as helpless as a June-bug in a cistern with the curb shut down.”