"Well, perhaps not, as things stood. But he will now. Have you seen the morning papers?"
"The papers? No, sir."
"If you'll read them you'll find that Senator Norman has broken with all his old life and turned over a new leaf entirely, which he can't turn back. You have helped him do it, in fact!"
"What's the idea?" growled Simpson suspiciously.
"Listen, Mr. Simpson."
Rapidly Rockwell sketched the principal events which had taken place at the hotel while the waiter was driving his enemy about Chicago: Merriam's impersonation, the Mayor's failure to veto the Ordinance in time, and the necessity which both the Mayor and Norman were now under of breaking with the "interests" and coming out as the candidates of the Reform League.
"In that rôle," he concluded, "George Norman will have to lead a strictly virtuous life. It will be the business of his friends and backers--my business, for example--to see that he does so. I will personally undertake to see that you get the money he promised you. All you will have to do is to make it up with Jennie. You may not be able or willing to do that right away. But in a few months---- There's no reason why you shouldn't be set up in a nice little business of your own--a delicatessen or caterer's, or a taxicab firm, or whatever you would like--in some other city, with Jennie for your wife. Will you think it over?"
Simpson looked at Rockwell and then at Merriam.
"You certainly are as like as two plates," he said irrelevantly to the latter.
"Won't you think it over?" returned Merriam, as persuasively as if he had been reasoning with some irate patron of the Riceville High School.