"We had best leave this steel trap of his while there is yet time," counseled Markham.
"While there is yet time!" repeated Quinn, with a wild laugh. "A pretty set of conspirators you are, on my soul! Markham, there, would raise the price of food until the poor would go hungry; you, Meigs, would so manipulate the cost of clothing that they would not have the wherewithal to cover their nakedness; Popham would make fuel a luxury of the rich; and Gilhooly would so boost passenger and freight rates as to quadruple to the consumer the tremendous cost of the necessities of life. Deny me if you can, if you dare!"
Quinn looked like a Nemesis as he confronted the four men and lashed them with his scorpion whip of words.
"Fiddlededee!" exclaimed Popham.
"We deserve it," said Meigs, "for it was the height of folly for us to come here, in the first place."
"Is this why you brought us here?" asked Markham, "to air your own particular ideas on sociology and to make us the victims of your abuse?"
The professor threw back his head and straightened his shoulders. It was the real thing in dignity that he showed those plutocrats, and my nerves tingled with admiration. I was sorry I had come to the castle with designs oh Quinn's portable property, and doubly glad that I could force tribute from these four who were badgering him.
"I am not unjust," averred the professor, "and such a thing as abuse is farthest from my mind; but I love the plain people, the bone and sinew of this glorious republic, and it arouses my indignation when the right to live and let live is trampled upon by any one man, or set of men."
"Platitudes!" sneered Popham.
"To call a truth a platitude is witless argument," answered Quinn serenely.