The next day at four o'clock there was a resounding rap on the prosecutor's private office door.
"Come in!" said Murgatroyd.
The door opened, and Peter Broderick came puffing into the room with perfect nonchalance. He had had a day to think things over, and he had made up his mind that the outburst of the prosecutor had been all bluster. Seizing a chair, he drew it up to the desk and sat down, saying:—
"I never refuse an invitation to see a man alone; and now that we are alone, I don't mind telling you that I'm ready for another one of them good cigars."
The prosecutor passed a box, from which Broderick helped himself to a cigar, lit it, and after sending a few clouds of smoke in the air, went on:—
"Do you know, Murgatroyd, that I haven't had a good chance to talk to you since the Challoner case—you've been so blamed offish all the time. But now, here I am sittin' here with you,—you, the only mugwump in the town that I ever used to be afraid of,—and you know I can say any blamed thing I please to you, and you got to take it and say nothin'. Do you know that I'm one of the few that believe the truth about that bribe?"
Murgatroyd smiled.
"In other words, you think we're both in the same boat—is that it?"
"Not a bit of it!" returned Broderick. "I'm in a coal barge; you're in a motor boat. Why, Murgatroyd, there's many a man been in honest politics all his life, like me, for instance, and who's never pulled out three quarters of a million! Not much! And out of one deal, too! Why, look at me?" he went on glibly, "I've been in a lot of deals; but that gets me! Three quarters of a million and more on just one deal! Confound it, man, do you know the most I ever made out of any one deal?"
Murgatroyd lit a cigar, leaned back in his chair and inquired in an offhand manner:—