With a solid phalanx of admirers and a chain of supporting social clubs behind him, he soon made himself manifest; controlling the most powerful subdivision of the organization, he held the balance of power and was courted and feared. He walked into his first ward convention with his breast pocket stuffed with proxies and dictated the nomination of his bitterest foe; then he threw his strength, in secret, with an independent movement and buried the said foe under an avalanche of ballots that effectually stripped him of his dangerous qualities. As Mr. Haley had remarked, McQuirk was a miracle.
James Kelly was sweating blood and spending money, provided by the Motor Traction Company, right and left, to accomplish his nomination. The back room of his saloon, turned into a campaign headquarters, had for weeks been a vortex of activity. The air was never clear of cigar smoke, or the table of beer bottles. Kelly, aided by that rising young politician, Gratten Haley, Nobby Foley and his son, had canvassed the ward from end to end. This did him some good; but vastly greater than their combined exertions was the fact that the boss favoured him—that he was the choice of the machine.
“That mocaraw,” said McQuirk, on Tuesday morning as he stood in Moran’s “court,” “has queered the whole shooting match! He’ll have every voter out to-night, either for him or against him, and that’ll bring our other people into the fight.”
“He ain’t got no gumption,” remarked the magistrate tipping himself back in his office chair, and loosening the foil covering of a paper of fine cut. “The old way’s the best. Keep quiet and on the night of the primaries half of them will forget it, and the other half won’t bother their heads. Enough picked people to elect each delegate is all we want; when the whole crowd starts to chip in, it keeps you guessing.”
“That’s what! It’s time enough to make a hurrah and shoot off the sky-rockets when the convention’s over and your slate’s all to the good; you’re fresh for the fight, then; but when there’s a preliminary about who’ll carry the flag, it makes hard feelings; and a man who would turn out with the gang, with a torch dropping grease down his back, in the first place, wouldn’t show up in the second even if you promised to put him under a plug hat and on top of a horse ahead of the band.”
Moran nodded his approval of this piece of political sagacity; McQuirk buttoned up his coat.
“I’ve fixed it,” said the latter, “so that if anybody’s pinched they’ll be run over here in the wagon. Be sure you have somebody to bail them out if you can’t discharge them.”
“That’ll be all right. I’ll have Pete Slattery hangin’ around somewhere; he’ll do for a few more, yet.”
Here the magistrate laughed, but the boss looked glum.
“That young Murphy,” said he, “is bothering me some. I don’t like the way he is jumping into this thing. He’s sore on Kelly, eh?”