Now just as Mr. Newberry and Mr. Dick Overend were finishing their discussion, the huge bulky form of Mayor McGrath came ponderously past them as they sat. He looked at them sideways out of his eyes—he had eyes like plums in a mottled face—and, being a born politician, he knew by the very look of them that they were talking of something that they had no business to be talking about. But,—being a politician—he merely said, "Good evening, gentlemen," without a sign of disturbance.
"Good evening, Mr. Mayor," said Mr. Newberry, rubbing his hands feebly together and speaking in an ingratiating tone. There is no more pitiable spectacle than an honest man caught in the act of speaking boldly and fearlessly of the evil-doer.
"Good evening, Mr. Mayor," echoed Mr. Dick Overend, also rubbing his hands; "warm evening, is it not?"
The mayor gave no other answer than that deep guttural grunt which is technically known in municipal interviews as refusing to commit oneself.
"Did he hear?" whispered Mr. Newberry as the mayor passed out of the club.
"I don't care if he did," whispered Mr. Dick Overend.
Half an hour later Mayor McGrath entered the premises of the Thomas Jefferson Club, which was situated in the rear end of a saloon and pool room far down in the town.
"Boys," he said to Alderman O'Hooligan and Alderman Gorfinkel, who were playing freeze-out poker in a corner behind the pool tables, "you want to let the boys know to keep pretty dark and go easy. There's a lot of talk I don't like about the elections going round the town. Let the boys know that just for a while the darker they keep the better."
Whereupon the word was passed from the Thomas Jefferson Club to the George Washington Club and thence to the Eureka Club (coloured), and to the Kossuth Club (Hungarian), and to various other centres of civic patriotism in the lower parts of the city. And forthwith such a darkness began to spread over them that not even honest Diogenes with his lantern could have penetrated their doings.