Hermann, behind the bar, frankly yawned. He remembered, with a slow smile, how, when he had first come across such practices, years ago, he had gone to the ward-leader of that party in whose interests the work was being done. He remembered how this potentate had first assured him that he had "heard wrong," and finally met his persistence with a warning that he had better keep his mouth shut. He remembered how, at the rival headquarters, he had been told that there was always a mass of such evidence, none of which could be effectively used before election, and how, when he had ventured to suggest that an election-offense was punishable after election-day, he had been ridiculed. And lastly, he knew that his own Socialist friends had already all the information that he had now obtained, but could do no more at the polls than lodge protests that would be overruled by the election-judges and subsequently pigeon-holed by the courts.
"All right," Angel was saying, as he pocketed his pen and tore the envelope into small bits, which he tossed deftly across the room into the gutter beneath the bar. "I feexa heem. I geta da rest."
The two men rose and stepped to the bar for a nightcap of whiskey.
Already the Austrian had drunk more than was good for his temper, but Hermann, whose eye was usually exact in discerning such matters, was sleepy to-night, and did not notice this. Angel poured a bountiful portion from the cool metal-stoppered bottle that Hoffmann shoved clanking toward him. Mirka decanted even more, and then momentarily released his hold of the bottle to speak to his companion. Hermann, thinking both men satisfied, reached for the liquor.
"Keep your dirty fingers off of that!" cried Mirka, with no trace of his nationality in his speech. "Can't you wait till I pour a real man's drink?"
Hermann flushed.
"It's a bath, den, you're goin' to dake?" he asked.
"I will if I like, you damned fool!" rejoined Mirka, his eyes warming.
Hermann's blue glance surveyed the uncouth, slouching figure.
"All righd," he said; "you need von."