“Yes—yes, of course,” he said. “Well, Cap’n Townsend,” leaning easily back in his chair and knocking the ashes from his cigar, “what was it you wanted to talk over with me? A little politics, eh?”
Townsend nodded. “You’ve guessed it,” he said. “It was a little matter of politics. I never should have dared bother as busy a man as you are with anything but business.”
This was overdoing it a trifle. Mooney was not an absolute fool and his suspicion that he was being made fun of became more of a certainty. He cleared his throat, and frowned slightly.
“I see,” he said, more brusquely. “Yes, I see.... Well, Cap’n Townsend, for old times’ sake I should like to oblige you if I can. What do you want? What can I do for you?”
Townsend blew a cloud of smoke and fanned it from before his face with his hand.
“You can’t do anything for me, Mooney,” he answered. “You’ve done all you can do for me by coming here to-night. As far as that is concerned I could have managed to get along if you hadn’t come.... So,” with an ominous change in his tone, “I wouldn’t put it just that way if I were you. Mooney, when you started to pitch Reliance Clark out of our post office and squeeze Sim Thacher into it why did you do it behind my back? Why did you hide it from me?”
So it was the post office matter, after all. In a way Mooney was relieved. That battle was won. His countenance assumed an expression of pained resentment.
“Nonsense, Cap’n Townsend,” he said, with lofty indignation. “Nonsense! Whoever told you I have been hiding anything—lied, that’s all. You were sick—”
“Here, here! I may have been sick along the last of it, but not at first when you and Thacher were laying your plans. I know as much about those plans as you do, I guess. I have made it my business to find out. You started planning away last December, a month after you were elected to Washington. Before that election you were crawling around here on your hands and knees, begging me to please do this and that to help you get votes. Why, confound you, you couldn’t have been nominated if it hadn’t been for me. And away back in the beginning, when that cranberry bill had you licked so that you couldn’t have been elected poundkeeper, I gave you the chance to square yourself. I was the fool there, of course; but I thought you were so scared you would behave yourself for the rest of your life. Bah! Don’t you say ‘nonsense’ to me again.... Here! You aren’t going yet. This little talk of ours has only begun.”
The Honorable Alpheus was on his feet, his round face crimson. He snatched his hat from the table.