Graves backed from the nervous whip.
"I want no words with you," he said.
"I dare say; but you'll have them." He reined the cob to block Graves's further retreat, forcing him well upon the string-piece of the dock. "You're here to smell out canal scandals," he charged. "You want to know what became of the marketable stone that was taken from the canal prism. You'll get your wish right here and now. I took that stone, my pattern of civic virtue; sold it, my pink of reformers. You needn't have screwed Jap Hinchey for that knowledge. I would have told you the truth any time, and much good may it do you. Are you ass enough to believe that the contractors went outside their specifications to dispose of the spoils banks to my company? They had their warrant from Albany in black and white. Every act was within the law."
"The more shame upon Albany and the law; it is the letter of the law which shelters you."
Shelby rasped a laugh.
"I know something of the spirit of laws."
"I doubt not. You've helped make enough disreputable legislation to qualify an expert."
"What right has a dilettante like you to sit in judgment?" he demanded, the other's barb rankling none the less that he had invited it. "You have no notion of just political expediency; no notion even of politics with which you meddle. Politics isn't book knowledge; it's flesh and blood fact. Party fealty means nothing to you. You've not voted a straight ticket twice in your life."
"I know where that shoe pinches," retorted Graves. "You mean I've consistently neglected to vote for you. Somehow I never could swallow your assumption of divine right to hold office all the time."
Shelby's fingers knotted round his whip-handle.