"Oh, you did, did you?" without enthusiasm. "No such luck this time. Oh, it's all right; it was a good bluff. Now about the rough-house. It was a funny stunt, your happenin' to be there at the same time I was. You've got your nerve with you, all right. As for yours truly, I'd been there so often before, without any trouble, that I must have got careless. Anyway, their talk was interesting and I shoved my face out from behind the sideboard a little too far, and up jumps that bald-headed dog of a Goldberg. And now my goose is cooked."
He sat silent for a few moments, moodily puffing his cigar and scowling blackly. O'Byrn critically watched him, without words. The sullen glow returned to Slade's eyes, his sallow cheeks flushed slightly. Then, with a savage oath, he leaped to his feet, facing the waiting Irishman.
"See here!" he exclaimed fiercely, "I owe you for more than one good turn, and I guess if you hadn't happened to be on deck tonight those dogs would have killed me. You're a good feller and they're a bunch of yellow curs. I've worked for 'em for all I was worth for a long while, done dirty work for 'em, and what have I got? Just promises and a run around the rim, that's all, when I've got enough in me to be helpin' to work the calliope in the inside. And they know it, too,—they know I ain't no fool. Many's the time has Dick Peterson, the rotten liar, said to me: 'Slade, my boy, you're the stuff; we're goin' to take care of you.' Promises, promises to burn! And it's all I've had.
"Well, that's the way it went, while they kept on playin' me for a sucker. Many's the job I've done for Peterson that he didn't have the sand for to do himself. I was always willin'." Micky suppressed a smile at the injured sorrow in Slade's tones. The ex-heeler shrugged his shoulders wearily and resumed his seat. The savagery had departed from his demeanor, replaced by an air of dogged malice.
"Why, that gang of lepers," he resumed impressively, "that bunch of hard-hearted slobs would have dumped me in a minute, after that little scrape me and you was mixed up in at Goldberg's, if it hadn't been for Peterson, and he ain't used me right to any extent since then, either. But if it hadn't been for him I'd have got t'run down then, with never a thought for what I'd done for 'em. You're always pure wool while you can be used, then you're cheap crash; remember that, my boy. I was kin' o' hangin' on by my teeth, though, till tonight. Now it's some other burg for mine, or likely get killed. Well, that's all right, too. They're racin' in other burgs as well as this, and I guess Slade can make a few other little pick-ups, too, just to keep the wolf away." He smiled cunningly.
"But before I take the choo-choos out," he continued, his eyes alive with malice as he bent toward Micky, "there's a score to settle with this lovely old Shaughnessy gang that I'm thinkin' will jar more than one of 'em clear behind the bars. You know this Shaughnessy. He's a deep one, though I notice you was onto him the very day of the convention. Nobody knows what he's drivin' at except his own little ring, the ring that everyone in this buncoed town, barrin' me and you and a mighty few others, thinks has turned him down. Turned him down!" Slade laughed dryly. "Why, he's got every mother's son of 'em by the neck; could jail every cursed one of 'em and crawl out of the muss himself. Oh, I believe he could, he's the devil himself.
"But there's one that's fooled him," exultantly, "and he won't know how much till election day. Sure, they caught me tonight, but do you think for a minute they'll find out that I've been attendin' their devilish little seances for months, unbeknown to 'em? Well, I have. I was at the meetin' that decided this whole funny programme that is givin' Fusion black eyes every minute, and Fusion would have won out in a canter if it had anyone else than this devil of a Shaughnessy to buck against. I was at that meetin', and I thought I knew a thing or two, but say, feller, the nerve of that proposition got my alley. When Shaughnessy sprung it on the bunch I came near dyin' prematoorly on the spot by wantin' to jump out from behind the sideboard and tellin' Shaughnessy he was a gilt-edged dandy; which he is, if he ain't got no soul. 'But,' says the gang, when he sprung it, 'it won't work. They won't follow us when we talk of throwin' you down. The party'll get hacked to pieces in its own convention.' 'Gentlemen,' says he, 'I never mixed with the hoi-polloi anyway, didn't have to. You have. They don't like me and they do like you. Work this thing slick, as I tell you to, and you'll have 'em all marking time to your music.' And it was so. Remember the convention? The reformers thought it meant a clean bill; the grafters thought it would be a gang more lavish than Shaughnessy had been. Oh, it was a lovely move. And he's on top yet, and they don't know it."
He gave Micky a lingering look. "I'm for gettin' even," he said. "You've been trying to get onto the trail ever since the convention; you've had your suspicions. I saw you myself the other night; walked from Shaughnessy's office back of you, after that old whitewashed graveyard of a nominee for mayor had left there. I was there, just as I'd been at others, though Mr. Shaughnessy never invited me. Of course, they're careful about windows, etc., but I can always make good somehow on a still hunt. What do I know? I know the whole rotten business. The circle always goes into particulars and there have been some beautiful give-and-takes between Shaughnessy and old Graveyard-Whiskers. Whiskers don't want to stand, not for a minute, you know, but Shaughnessy holds him to the gaff because he's _respectable_." This with a grim laugh. "Shaughnessy got his hooks on him years ago; it's a funny story, I guess. The old man hates to give up living decent; he knows if he's elected it'll be the worst administration of graft this city or any other ever saw. He can't help himself; Shaughnessy's claws are in him."
Micky was bending forward. Imagined possibilities were assuming definite shape. "Is it Consolidated Gas?" he asked, eagerly.
"Consolidated Gas!" Slade echoed. "Why, son, that's only the beginning. It's a long, hard story, a bigger one than you'll want to believe, but I know where you can get the proofs for it. I've been busy for a long time. When I saw the gang wasn't goin' to do anything for me, I began to find out about things on my own hook, and I've got a way of doin' it and I remember what I hear. When this thing was over and Fusion was knocked out, I was goin' to diplomatically introduce myself into a better thing, and then I'd have got it. But that's all changed now. When I remember that those lepers I've done so much for would have liked to murder me tonight, I get hell-hot. I want to see 'em downed now. I'm tired of the rotten town anyway. Now, I put you on, see? You have to do the work, for I've got to keep out of sight. 'Twon't be safe for me to be floatin' around the old diggin's, for I'm a 'traitor' now, you know, and a 'dirty spy.' But don't you care, it's a rich thing for you. You'll be at the top of the newspaper heap. I'll stay around here on the q. t. long enough to see the fun, and then it's me quietly out. There's an Indian streak in me, I guess, and it's doing double duty just now." His malevolent face looked it.