“I saw something this morning.”
“I've been quite interested in it. Billy Boynton told me yesterday that they had searched his schooner. It's a wonder they haven't got after us if they're holding up fellows like him. Do you think they 'll ever get this Whiskey Jim, Cap'n?”
“No, they talk too much. And they couldn't catch a mud-scow with that old side-wheeler of theirs.”
“Guess that's right. The Foote must have started in here before the Michigan, and she's thirty years old if she's a day. The boys are all talking about it down at the city. I dropped around at the Hydrographic Office after I saw Billy, and found two or three others that had been hauled over. It seems they've stumbled on a pipe-line half built under the Detroit River near Wyandotte, and there's been a good deal of excitement. There's capital behind it, you see; and a little capital does wonders with those revenue men.”
Stenzenberger was showing symptoms of readiness to return to his desk, but Henry, who rarely grew reminiscent, was now fairly launched.
“They can't get an effective revenue system, because they make it too easy for a man to get rich. It's like the tax commissioners and the aldermen and the legislators,—when you put a man where he can rake off his pile, month after month, without there being any way of checking him up, look out for his morals. And where they're all in it together, no one dares squeal. It's a good deal like the railway conductors.
“You remember last year when the Northeastern Road laid off all but two or three of its old conductors for stealing fares? Well, it wasn't a month afterward that one of the 'honest' ones came to me and hired the Schmidt to carry a twelve-hundred-dollar grand piano up to Milwaukee, where he lives. He had reasons of his own for not wanting to ship by rail. No, sir, it wouldn't be hard for me to have sympathy with an honest thief that goes in and runs his chances of getting shot or knocked on the head,—that calls for some nerve,—but these fellows that put up a bluff as lawmakers and policemen and revenue officers and then steal right and left—deliver me!”
“Well, boys, I guess I 'll have to step back. I'm a busy man, you know. Have another before we go?”
“One minute, Cap'n,” said Dick. “There's something I want to talk over with you, if you can spare the time.”
Stenzenberger sat down again. Henry, whose outbreak against the evils of society had stirred up, apparently, some pet feeling of bitterness, now sat moodily looking at the table.