“Yes, sir. Me.”
“The Louisville manager,” announced Faggott loftily, “is a man of affairs. The company conducts its business here through its local counsel—that’s me.”
“Nevertheless an’ notwithstandin’, I reckon hit’ll kinderly pleasure ther boss-man ter talk ter me—when he hears what I’ve got ter tell him.”
A light of greed quickened in the shyster’s narrow eyes. It was possible that Blind Joe had come by some scrap of salable information. It had been stipulated when his damage suit was settled, that he should, paradoxically speaking, keep his blind eyes open.
“See here, Joe,” the attorney, no longer condescending of bearing, spoke now with a wheedling insistence, “if you’ve got any tidings, tell ’em to me. I’m your friend and I can get the matter before the parties that hold the purse strings.”
Joe Givins stretched out a wavering hand and groped before him. “Lead me on outen hyar, boy,” he gave laconic command to his youthful varlet. “I’m tarryin’ overlong an’ wastin’ daylight.”
“What’s daylight to you, Joe?” snapped Faggott brutally, but recognizing his mistake he, at once, softened his manner to a mollifying tone. “Set still a spell an’ let’s have speech tergether—an’ a little dram of licker.”
Ten minutes of nimble-witted fencing ensued between the two sons of avarice, and at their end the blind man stumped out, carrying in his breast pocket a note of introduction to a business man in Louisville—whose real business was lobbying and directing underground investigations—but the lawyer was no wiser than he had been.
And when eventually from the murky lobby of the Farmers’ Haven Hotel, which sits between distillery warehouses in Louisville, the shabby mountaineer was 130 led to the office building he sought, he was received while more presentable beings waited in an anteroom.