Twice Megales pressed the electric bell, but no orderly appeared in answer to it. He bowed to the inevitable.
“I grant you victor, Señor O’Halloran. Would it render your victory less embarrassing if I were to give you material immediately for that bulletin on suicide?” He asked the question quite without emotion, as courteously as if he were proposing a stroll through the gardens.
O’Halloran had never liked the man. The Irish in him had always boiled at his tyranny. But he had never disliked him so little as at this moment. The fellow had pluck, and that was one certain passport to the revolutionist’s favor.
“On the contrary, it would distress me exceedingly. Let us reserve that bulletin as a regrettable possibility in the event that less drastic measures fail.”
“Which means, I infer, that you have need of me before I pass by the Socratic method,” he suggested, still with that pale smile set in granite “I shall depend on you to let me know at what precise hour you would like to order an epitaph written for me. Say the word at your convenience, and within five minutes your bulletin concerning the late governor will have the merit of truth.”
“Begad, excellency, I like your spirit. If it’s my say-so, you will live to be a hundred. Come the cards are against you. Some other day they may fall more pat for you. But the jig’s up now.”
“I am very much of your opinion, sir,” agreed Megales.
“Then why not make terms?”
“Such as—”
“Your life and your friends’ lives against a graceful capitulation.”