As Luke entered the door of the Broadway building in which the Municipal Reform League had its headquarters, he came up with Venable also going in. The old man's hand trembled as he greeted the candidate.
"We seem to have raised a real thunderstorm," said Luke, smiling. "I hope it'll clear the atmosphere."
"Then you know?" asked Venable. "You've seen it in the papers?"
"How could I help it?" said Luke. "It's all over them."
"Oh, the speech?"
"That and this strike at the Forbes factory, yes."
"I didn't mean those things," said Venable. "I meant this."
He took from his coat-pocket a folded newspaper open at the financial and real estate page. He pointed a shaking finger at first one and then another obscure paragraph, both printed in small type and far separated.
Luke read the paragraphs. Each applied to the same block of an uptown street. The former said that a new branch of an elevated railroad would be run through this street, and the latter curtly announced that two of the apartment houses in the block were about to be converted into tenements for negroes.
"My apartment house," said Venable simply, "the one that all my money is invested in, will have those 'L'-tracks running in front of its second-floor windows. It is just between the two houses that are to to be made into tenements."