“Yes. What can I do for you, Mr. Cowperwood?”
“I see by the morning papers that you state that you will have nothing to do with any proposed ordinance which looks to giving me a franchise for any elevated road on the North or West Side?”
“That is quite true,” replied Mr. Sluss, loftily. “I will not.”
“Don’t you think it is rather premature, Mr. Sluss, to denounce something which has only a rumored existence?” (Cowperwood, smiling sweetly to himself, was quite like a cat playing with an unsuspicious mouse.) “I should like very much to talk this whole matter over with you personally before you take an irrevocable attitude. It is just possible that after you have heard my side you may not be so completely opposed to me. From time to time I have sent to you several of my personal friends, but apparently you do not care to receive them.”
“Quite true,” replied Mr. Sluss, loftily; “but you must remember that I am a very busy man, Mr. Cowperwood, and, besides, I do not see how I can serve any of your purposes. You are working for a set of conditions to which I am morally and temperamentally opposed. I am working for another. I do not see that we have any common ground on which to meet. In fact, I do not see how I can be of any service to you whatsoever.”
“Just a moment, please, Mr. Mayor,” replied Cowperwood, still very sweetly, and fearing that Sluss might choose to hang up the receiver, so superior was his tone. “There may be some common ground of which you do not know. Wouldn’t you like to come to lunch at my residence or receive me at yours? Or let me come to your office and talk this matter over. I believe you will find it the part of wisdom as well as of courtesy to do this.”
“I cannot possibly lunch with you to-day,” replied Sluss, “and I cannot see you, either. There are a number of things pressing for my attention. I must say also that I cannot hold any back-room conferences with you or your emissaries. If you come you must submit to the presence of others.”
“Very well, Mr. Sluss,” replied Cowperwood, cheerfully. “I will not come to your office. But unless you come to mine before five o’clock this afternoon you will face by noon to-morrow a suit for breach of promise, and your letters to Mrs. Brandon will be given to the public. I wish to remind you that an election is coming on, and that Chicago favors a mayor who is privately moral as well as publicly so. Good morning.”
Mr. Cowperwood hung up his telephone receiver with a click, and Mr. Sluss sensibly and visibly stiffened and paled. Mrs. Brandon! The charming, lovable, discreet Mrs. Brandon who had so ungenerously left him! Why should she be thinking of suing him for breach of promise, and how did his letter to her come to be in Cowperwood’s hands? Good heavens—those mushy letters! His wife! His children! His church and the owlish pastor thereof! Chicago! And its conventional, moral, religious atmosphere! Come to think of it, Mrs. Brandon had scarcely if ever written him a note of any kind. He did not even know her history.
At the thought of Mrs. Sluss—her hard, cold, blue eyes—Mr. Sluss arose, tall and distrait, and ran his hand through his hair. He walked to the window, snapping his thumb and middle finger and looking eagerly at the floor. He thought of the telephone switchboard just outside his private office, and wondered whether his secretary, a handsome young Presbyterian girl, had been listening, as usual. Oh, this sad, sad world! If the North Side ever learned of this—Hand, the newspapers, young MacDonald—would they protect him? They would not. Would they run him for mayor again? Never! Could the public be induced to vote for him with all the churches fulminating against private immorality, hypocrites, and whited sepulchers? Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! And he was so very, very much respected and looked up to—that was the worst of it all. This terrible demon Cowperwood had descended on him, and he had thought himself so secure. He had not even been civil to Cowperwood. What if the latter chose to avenge the discourtesy?