"That's all very well, Alderman." said a plump, moon-faced fellow across the table, "but we've had these scares before and they've been for nothing. Two years ago Fusion thought it had us beat and we was afraid it was going to turn the trick. Remember the vote? Why, we got the laugh from our own men. We needn't have hustled ourselves. It was a dead open-and-shut."
"It's because the town don't believe half it hears," interpolated the lank gentleman. "I'll say this, that the old man—drink to him, boys!—is the best organizer in this country today, and he leaves the blindest trail. They can't bring anything home, not while we're in control."
"That's what I'm tellin' you," remarked the bald one grimly. "You've got to hang on to the control. Let it slip away from you while you're nappin' and how long would it be before the town was next? What would the hide of any man in this room be worth?" His voice had instinctively lowered; his head was thrust forward, his little eyes were piercing. "I tell you it always pays to keep busy all the time."
There was a moment's silence. The half dozen companions of the speaker surveyed him minutely but with visible respect. After all, he could give any and all of them pointers in the gentle art of grafting and they knew it. Moreover, his words had at last struck home, had awakened them from a false sense of security. Alderman Goldberg had been through the mill, and had fed at the public crib at intervals no better judged than times when he elected to remain in discreet retirement, in his cyclone cellar, until ominous signs on the municipal weather horizon had disappeared. So, because they knew that he spoke by the card, his companions now paid him the tribute of uneasy silence.
The lanky individual, Dick Peterson by name, finally resumed the conversation. "Well," said he, "this is only a preliminary to the main event anyway. Wonder what's keepin' the old man? Here we've been waitin' an hour. We'll see what he says. I haven't mentioned 'campaign' to him myself."
"I know what he'll say," retorted Goldberg. "Just what I've been tellin' you, to get busy. That's why he called you here tonight, to dig in the spurs a little. The old man's no fool. Hark! I guess he's comin' now."
There was a soft tread outside, a door opened and a man entered the room. Nodding slightly in response to their greeting, he seated himself in a chair, at the head of the table, which had evidently been reserved for him. Peterson pushed some cigars toward him, at the same time thrusting an interrogative finger toward the electric bell. The newcomer shook his head, and selecting one of the cigars, leaned back in his chair as he leisurely lighted it.
John Shaughnessy was as unlike the cartooned type of political boss as could be imagined. He looked decidedly ordinary, and might have been taken for anything from a dejected clerk of middle age to an unostentatious gambler. His garb was quiet; there was an utter absence of vociferous jewelry. In person he was lank and slightly over middle height. The face was singularly impassive; that of a gambler to whom nothing apparently mattered. A hawk nose and small black moustache had Shaughnessy, also a pair of heavy-lidded eyes.
These eyes, when they glanced casually at you, held a lustreless, ennuied expression that impressed you, did you trouble to entertain any impression at all, with a definite idea of somnolence in Shaughnessy. A discouraged gambler, you might think casually, had you not the honor of his acquaintance. But did you happen to kindle Shaughnessy's interest in any way, lo! a startling change. The heavy lids contracted ever so little about the black eyes, which shot forth gleams that revealed Shaughnessy in a new and sinister light. They bared a sleepless vigilance, an unpleasant concentration, which inspired the person regarded with a nervousness that was justified. For when those eyes, but a moment before lustreless and dead, lightened with that strange gleam, the dispirited clerk or discouraged gambler vanished. In his stead, regarding you with a cold, basilisk, snaky stare that pierced you through and through, there was revealed—Shaughnessy.
It was his wonted mask of impassive features and lustreless eyes that long caused Shaughnessy to be surprisingly and generally underestimated. Men chose not to believe that one whose general appearance so lacked significance was capable of the stealth and finesse in large, dark matters that a portion of the press emphatically but rather gropingly attributed to Shaughnessy. So it was Shaughnessy's good fortune, for his nefarious ends, that most men refused to take him too seriously. The majority chanced never to rouse his interest; hence, never saw the optical gleam. For the minority who did, Shaughnessy was a man transformed, invested with power, genuine and unmistakable.