"I give you this to show them, if your arguments do not prevail," concluded Bennington, producing a folded paper. "They will hardly doubt this."
Ben opened it. It was a permit from the municipal government to tear down a brick structure within the city limits. Ben stowed the permit in his pocket. He looked with admiration at the man who could plan, coolly and quietly, the destruction of a fortune that had taken a quarter of a century to build. He was grave. There was a big responsibility pressing on his shoulders.
"Much obliged. You will never regret the confidence you repose in me. Now I'll tell you something on my side. It is not the inventor, though the men believe it is. The inventor is a pretext of Morrissy, the union leader."
"A pretext?"
"I can't prove what I say, that's the trouble; but McQuade has his hand in this. I wish to Heaven I could find solid proofs."
"McQuade?" Bennington scowled. He could readily understand now. McQuade! This was McQuade's revenge. He could wait patiently all this while!
"I'll do what I can, Mr. Bennington; I'll do what I can."
Bennington ate no lunch that noon. Instead, he wandered about the great smoky shops, sweeping his glance over the blast-furnaces, the gutters into which the molten ore was poured, the giant trip-hammers, the ponderous rolling-machines, the gas-furnaces for tempering fine steel. The men moved aside. Only here and there a man, grown old in the shops, touched his grimy cap. ... To tear it down! It would be like rending a limb, for he loved every brick and stone and girder, as his father before him had loved them. He squared his shoulders, and his jaws hardened. No man, without justice on his side, should dictate to him; no man should order him to hire this man or discharge that one. He alone had that right; he alone was master. Bennington was not a coward; he would not sell to another; he would not shirk the task laid out for his hand. Unionism, such as it stood, must receive a violent lesson. And McQuade?
"Damn him!" he muttered, his fingers knotting.
Education subdues or obliterates the best of fighting in the coward only. The brave man is always masculine in these crises, and he will fight with his bare hands when reason and intelligence fail. A great longing rose up in Bennington's heart to have it out physically with McQuade. To feel that gross bulk under his knees, to sink his fingers into that brawny throat!—The men, eying him covertly, saw his arms go outward and his hands open and shut convulsively. More than ever they avoided his path. Once before they had witnessed a similar abstraction. They had seen him fling to the ground a huge puddler who had struck his apprentice without cause. The puddler, one of the strongest men in the shops, struggled to his feet and rushed at his assailant. Bennington had knocked him down again, and this time the puddler remained on the ground, insensible. Bennington had gone back to his office, shutting and opening his fists. Ay, they had long since ceased calling him the dude. The man of brawn has a hearty respect for spectacular exhibitions of strength.