With a dozen words he outlined the matter over which they were exercised, called one and another by name, shunted an inconvenient question, told a little story, and had slipped out of the building with Shelby before the pupil realized that the interview had fairly begun.
"I like the boys," he declared. "They slate me, but we're good friends."
The incident impressed Shelby only less than the desk telephone, and the walk to luncheon intensified his respect. The Boss explained that he ate at a mid-air club rather remote from his place of business because it compelled a chestful of fresh air; and Shelby underwent the unique experience of promenading busiest Broadway with a man to whom people bowed on every hand. The Boss took it all as equably as the country lawyer might his morning salutations between his office and the Tuscarora House; but to Shelby, from Trinity to St. Paul's, and from the City Hall to the granite sky-scraper, whose elevator shot them story after story to the roof, was a splendid triumphal progress. It was a democratic people's homage to power.
The big green and white club dining room in the sky took up the wondrous tale. Greetings everywhere, and jovial beckonings to join this group and that. At the great man's instance, however, they were placed at a table for two, whose outlook seemed to the stranger to embrace the kingdoms of the earth. Life, pulsing life, as far as the embarrassed eye could carry; life in the mazy streets below; life in the forking estuary's tide; life, eager red-blooded life, to the crest of the horizon's hills! Nerve ganglion of a continent, market-place of a world! Shelby swept the panorama again and again as his host gave his quiet orders to the waiter, tracing the Hudson from the shipping-crowded bay till its blueness melted in the haze beyond which lay the commonwealth, the empire, whose political destinies seemed to rest in the hollow of this man's hand. It drugged the senses to attempt to gauge his power.
The Boss was speaking of Tuscarora and the Demijohn. Out of painful experience he had come to believe that the truest privacy is the privacy of the crowd, and indeed the mounting chaff and chatter of the lunch hour insured isolation most complete. He was speaking of Tuscarora and the Demijohn, and it had begun over the salad, apropos of Bowers.
"His political usefulness is at an end," said the leader. "There was nothing tangible to be got from him at our last conference, and I determined to send for you."
Shelby essayed a middle course between expectation and regret.
"He says it's his last campaign, poor old chap."
"Yes," concurred the Boss, without sentiment; "we talked it over. It was our opinion that the organization requires younger blood—in fine, your own."
"Mine?" The query was perfunctory.