“Say, you ain't going to put up any Wild West tricks on me, are you? I heard you nearly flung Tom Gaylord out of the one in the other room.”
“If this were a less civilized place, Ham, I'd initiate you into what is known as the bullet dance. As it is, I have a great mind to speed you on your way by assisting you downstairs.”
Mr. Hamilton Tooting became ashy pale.
“I haven't done anything to you, Aust. Say—you didn't—?” He did not finish.
Terrified by something in Austen's eye, which may or may not have been there at the time of the Blodgett incident, Mr. Tooting fled without completing his inquiry. And, his imagination being great, he reproduced for himself such a vivid sensation of a bullet-hole in his spine that he missed his footing near the bottom, and measured his length in the entry. Such are the humiliating experiences which sometimes befall the Talleyrands—but rarely creep into their biographies.
Austen, from the top of the stairway, saw this catastrophe, but did not smile. He turned on his heel, and made his way slowly around the corner of the passage into the other part of the building, and paused at the open doorway of the Honourable Hilary's outer office. By the street windows sat the Honourable Brush Bascom, sphinx-like, absorbing wisdom and clouds of cigar smoke which emanated from the Honourable Nat Billings.
“Howdy, Austen?” said Brush, genially, “lookin' for the Honourable Hilary? Flint got up from New York this morning, and sent for him a couple of hours ago. He'll be back at two.”
“Have you read the pronunciamento?” inquired Mr. Billings. “Say, Austen, knowin' your sentiments, I wonder you weren't one of the twenty prominent citizens.”
“All you anti-railroad fellers ought to get together,” Mr. Bascom suggested; “you've got us terrified since your friend from Leith turned the light of publicity on us this morning. I hear Ham Tooting's been in and made you an offer.”
News travels fast in Ripton.