“That's right,” agreed Big Tim. “It don't do any harm to hear both sides of a proposition. I guess that cousin o' yours kind of hypnotized you. He's got more fool schemes for redeemin' this state. Far as I can see it don't need any redeemin'. It's loaded to the rails with prosperity and clippin' off its sixty miles an hour. I say, let well enough alone. Where youse keep your matches, Mr. Farnum? Thanks! Well, talk it over with P. C. I reckon you can get together. So long, me boy.”
Not until he was safe in the street did the big boss of Verden allow his satisfaction expression.
“We've got him! We've got the boob hooked!” he told himself exultantly.
A little man standing behind a showcase was watching him tensely.
CHAPTER 9
“Man is for woman made,
And woman made for man
As the spur is for the jade,
As the scabbard for the blade,
As for liquor is the can,
So man's for woman made,
And woman made for man.”
THE HERO STUDIES THE MONA LISA SMILE IN ITS PROPER SETTING. INCIDENTALLY, HE MEETS AN EMPIRE BUILDER
Since James was not courting observation he took as inconspicuous a way as possible to The Brakes. He was irritably conscious of the incongruity of his elaborate afternoon dress with the habits of democratic Verden, which had been too busy “boosting” itself into a great city, or at least one in the making, to have found time to establish as yet a leisure class.
Leaving the car at the entrance to Lakeview Park, he cut across it by sinuous byways where madronas and alders isolated him from the twilit green of the open lawn. Though it was still early the soft winter dusk of the Pacific Northwest was beginning to render objects indistinct. This perhaps may have been the reason he failed to notice the skulking figure among the trees that dogged him to his destination.