"Hallelujah, I'm a bum—bum!
Hallelujah, I'm a——"
He lurched forward into the strike-breaker's arms. Before those arms closed about him, he was dead.
CHAPTER XX
On the twentieth floor of a Wall Street skyscraper, in that office where the engraving of George Washington hung between the windows, three men sat in the mid-morning light, about the mahogany table. They were talking business. Each man had his own offices and his own businesses, but they frequently and quietly met in this one because most of the businesses of each were closely allied with the business-interests of all.
There was nothing unusual about the outward appearance or public actions of this trio; they were apparently but three units of the legion that makes this portion of New York a city by day and a desert by night. Each had come down town in his own motor that morning, defying speed-laws and traffic regulations, just as scores of his business neighbors had done. Each had descended at his own offices, passed through half a dozen doors guarded by six bowing attendants, and proceeded to his own desk in his own private room, precisely as a small army of other business men were doing at the same time within a radius of half a mile. Each looked like the rest of that army. All three were men of about the average height, not noticeably either above or below it, and two were inclined to bulkiness. Those two had pale faces and close mouths and steady eyes, which looked out from under bushy brows with glances that gave the lie to the lethargic indications of the little pouches of lax skin below their lower lids. They wore flowers in the lapels of their coats; one wore a white waistcoat; the cropped mustache of one was black; that of the other was touched with grey. Hallett chewed leisurely at the end of an unlighted cigar; Rivington's slim hand stroked his mustache with a contemplative movement.
The man at the head of the table was almost of the age of the man that used to sit there, but he was somewhat shorter, and he was thin. His clothes fell loosely about his bony frame. His eyes were narrow. He sat before a neat pile of memoranda, with his thin hands, the blue veins of which marked them like a map, tapping upon the surface of the table. Like his predecessor's, his elbows were raised at right angles to his torso and pointed ceilingward; his chest heaved visibly, but his breathing was inaudible. His eyes were everywhere.
He had come to his office betimes that morning. He had read his letters, directed his charities, instructed his brokers, given his orders to lieutenants at the state capitals and to such lieutenants at the national capital as needed them. Now he was receiving his fellow commanders in council.
"McKay?" he said in thin comment on some remark of Rivington. "What McKay?"
"Henry," said Rivington. "Dohan's successor in the M. & N. He's the sort of man——"
"We can unload this stock," said Hallett, "any time now."