“Perhaps not, as you look at it, but if my last night’s condition and its results were known in the Phonograph office it would prove a very important something to me. They have no use there for a fellow who lets liquor get the best of him.”
“Nonsense!” exclaimed Ben. “Don’t try to make out that your own office is any better than any other. All newspaper men get drunk every now and then; everybody knows that.”
“Look here, Ben Watkins!” cried Myles, stopping short and turning upon his companion, while an angry flush mounted to his face, “you may be speaking from ignorance, and I hope you are. At any rate, I want you to understand that what you have just said is not true. I know a good deal more about newspaper men than you do. As a rule, they are gentlemen, from editors-in-chief down to reporters, and no drunkard can ever lay rightful claim to that title.”
“Oh, they can’t, can’t they?” remarked Ben, sneeringly. “Yet I suppose you consider yourself a gentleman.”
“I try to be one,” answered Myles, hot with indignation at the other’s significant tone and words.
“And hereafter I mean to associate only with those who are.”
So saying he turned and walked rapidly away, leaving Ben to stare after him with such an expression of intense hatred on his face as startled the passers-by who chanced to notice it.
Ben Watkins was a bad fellow. There was no doubt of that. Some people, and Myles Manning among them, suspected it, but nobody knew how bad he really was nor what evil he was capable of. As has already been shown, he could cherish a spirit of petty revenge, and would descend to any means to gratify it. In addition to this he was dishonest and recklessly extravagant. Although he had occupied his present position but a few months, he had managed to run into debt for one thing or another to a good many people. Some of these debts he had been obliged to pay, and, as his salary was not sufficient to meet them, he had appropriated to his own use several small sums of railroad money with which he had been intrusted, and altered the figures of his accounts to conceal the thefts. He hoped to win enough at cards to make good these sums before their loss should be discovered; but of late luck had been against him, and he had only succeeded in plunging more deeply than ever into debt. At the outbreak of the great strike his situation was so desperate that he had almost made up his mind to disappear from that part of the country and make a new start where he was unknown.