“Who, Hickman? No, he paid it to Slattery, and Slattery came here from his office. Why, is he trying to crawl out of that part of it?”
“No, not exactly. But he makes a great fuss about being held up.”
“Yes!” said Callahan. “I dare say! He's got his new franchise, and he and the Lockman estate are clearing about ten thousand a month out of it. And my two thousand was gone the week I got it—it had cost me twice that to get elected—and without counting the free drinks. It's a great graft, being a supervisor, ain't it?”
“Why did you do it then?” asked Samuel in a faint voice.
“I'll never do it again, young fellow,” said the saloon keeper. “I'm the Honorable John for the rest of my life, and I guess that'll do me. And the next time old Henry Hickman wants his dirty work done, he can hunt up somebody that needs the money more than me!”
Then the Honorable John went on to discuss the politics of Lockmanville, and to lay bare the shameless and grotesque corruption in a town where business interests were fighting. The trouble was, apparently, that the people were beginning to rebel—they were tired of being robbed in so many different ways, and they went to the polls to find redress. And time and again, after they had elected new men to carry out their will, the great concerns had stepped in and bought out the law-makers. The last time it had been the unions that made the trouble; and three of the last supervisors had been labor leaders—“the worst skates of all,” as Callahan phrased it.
Samuel listened, while one by one the last of his illusions were torn to shreds. There had been a general scramble to get favors from the new government of the town; and the scramblers seemed to include every pious and respectable member of St. Matthew's whose name Samuel had ever heard. There was old Mr. Curtis, another of the vestrymen, who passed the plate every Sunday morning, and looked like a study of the Olympian Jove. He wanted to pile boxes on the sidewalks in front of his warehouse, and he had come to Slattery and paid him two hundred dollars.
“And Mr. Wygant!” exclaimed Samuel, as a sudden thought came to him. “Is it true that he is back of the organization?”
“Good God!” laughed Callahan. “Did you hear him say that?”
“Some one else told me,” was the reply.