CHAPTER X
THE STENOGRAPHER STILL LISTENING
The visitors who came and went occasionally up the back stairs at Blatchford Ferguson's office were a motley lot. Silk hats and expensive overcoats sometimes hung on the hooks in the corner. Again, ill-kempt figures slunk up that back way and signal-tapped an entrance; for in his police-reporter days Blatch Ferguson had been interested in the study of underworld types and he made no secret of his intention of one day writing an authoritative work upon the psychology of crime.
The big leather chair, so placed that it faced the light and left the lawyer in partial shadow behind his desk, had held many a strange and anxious caller in its day. Great men, men of national importance, had sat in that deep old leather chair; but with fine passivity it yielded the same comforts to men who only thought they were important.
Just now it was occupied by Mr. Hugh Podmore—within an hour of that worthy's arrival in the city. At three p.m. his new-found friend, Philip Kendrick, had agreed to call upon Ferguson to corroborate the story which Mr. Podmore had just finished telling and to which his auditor had listened with great intentness, that being the only indication of surprise which the practiced Mr. Ferguson permitted himself to exhibit.
"You always were pretty cock-sure of yourself, Poddy, even back in the days when we both worked on the old Tribune," commented Ferguson with a smirk of amusement. "But this proposition of yours is the deckle-edged limit and no mistake. If you were anybody else I'd have a lot of fun—kicking you downstairs!"
"Old stuff, Fergey!" grinned Podmore, unperturbed. "You don't need to pull that for my benefit. Talk brass tacks. Kendrick will be here in ten minutes with all the proof you want that I'm handing it to you straight and that that campaign-fund wad of Nickleby's is where I can lay hands on it. Do I pass it to you or must I hand it over to Charlie Cady? Guess the Opposition'll know what to do with it. I'm asking you this: What's it worth to the Government to win the next election? That's the little old answer I want."
"Would a couple of million satisfy you? How'll you have it?—in fives and tens?" and Mr. Ferguson gravely stroked his fleshy red nose.
"Be serious, Fergey," protested Podmore. "You can see for yourself that I came near getting killed, lining this thing up."
"I could not be more serious if you really had got killed, Poddy," and again he stroked the emblem of his entrez to the social functions of John Barleycorn. "I'm afraid your mind is warping in the sunshine of your own cleverness, Poddy. This fool notion of yours—coming to me about this money Nickleby's lost—if anybody had told me that once that long green was in your possession you'd come away back here——"