Rollins could smile, if Luke could not. He shook his head.
"My bank," said Luke, anxious to end the scene, "is just around the corner. It's closed, but the clerks will still be there. They know me. I can get them to let me in the side door, and I know they'll do me a favor. I've got just about that much on deposit." He looked at Leighton. "Shall I take Rollins along?"
"Rollins? Yes." Leighton's good-humor seemed to have returned to stay. "Then hurry back here—alone. I'll want to talk this thing over with you."
§4. Luke paid and dismissed Rollins. Returning, he found Leighton walking rapidly up and down his office.
"Shut the door," said the District-Attorney. His face was flushed; he spoke quickly.
Luke shut the door.
Leighton came forward and brought his hand down on Luke's shoulder with a resounding smack.
"Do you know what this means?" he cried. His mouth was wide with laughter; the whole man exulted. "This re-elects me! Nothing can keep us out now, Huber—not a thing on God's green footstool. All we've got to do is use these letters and then sit back and fold our arms and attend to office business. Politics? These two pieces of paper will play all the politics we need, and more besides. I could shout, Huber; I could sing a regular Song of Deborah. What about Mr. Timothy Heney, now? And his Tammany? Gone the way of Sisera, my boy. Tim Heney! 'At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down; at her feet he bowed, he fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead!'"
Luke's old enthusiasm was rekindled. He thought that he had been misjudging Leighton. Of course the man had been discouraged: he had never before been able to seize an efficient weapon with which to shatter the forces of wrong; even at this time it was only reasonable that his first thought should be of his immediate political opponents; but the weapon was put into his hand at last, the blow would be given against both Tammany and Wall Street; it would be the blow that Luke had hoped for when he read the first accounts of the North Bridge wreck.
"There must be a special Grand Jury to investigate the disaster," said Luke, his words falling over one another much as Leighton's had done. "We must keep the letters dark till it's in session, and then produce them. We can give them to the papers right afterward. It will be jail for the lot of them. Big as they are, it'll be that. It'll be the end of the whole crowd!"