Morrissy lighted a cigar, took the evening papers from the end of the
bar, and disappeared. Schmuck could hear him moving the chairs about.
Ten minutes later McQuade appeared. Schmuck nodded toward the stairs,
and without a word McQuade went up.
"Good evening, Morrissy. I missed a car, or I'd have been here
earlier."
"That's all right, Mr. McQuade; glad to wait for you." Morrissy threw
aside his papers and drew his chair to the table.
McQuade closed the door and sat down.
"You got my letter?" he began, wiping his forehead.
Morrissy nodded.
"Well?"
"Well, the boys will go out Monday morning. A committee will wait on
Bennington in the morning. He won't back down and discharge the
English inventor, so it's a sure thing they'll walk out, every
mother's son of them."
"On the morning they go out, I'll send you my check for five hundred."
"For the union?"
"I'll send it to you, and you can use it as you see fit. On Monday
morning, then."
"Sure thing."
They smoked for a while. Suddenly McQuade laid a bulky envelope on the
table, got up and went out. Morrissy weighed the envelope carefully,
thrust it into his pocket, and also departed.
"Five hundred now, and five hundred on Monday. I can see him sending a
check. It will be bills. Bah! I should have called out the boys
anyhow."
McQuade hurried home. He had another appointment, vastly more
important than the one he had just kept. Bolles had returned from New
York. It was easy enough to buy a labor union, but it was a different
matter to ruin a man of Warrington's note. Bolles had telegraphed that
he would be in Herculaneum that night. That meant that he had found
something worth while. Each time the car stopped to let passengers on
or off, McQuade stirred restlessly. He jumped from the car when it
reached his corner, and walked hurriedly down the street to his house,
a big pile of red granite and an architectural nightmare. He rushed up
the steps impatiently, applied his latch-key and pushed in the door.
He slammed it and went directly to his study. Bolles was asleep in a
chair. McQuade shook him roughly. Bolles opened his eyes.
"You've been on a drunk," said McQuade, quickly noting the puffed eyes
and haggard cheeks.
"But I've got what I went after, all the same," replied Bolles
truculently.
"What have you got? If you've done any faking, I'll break every bone
in your body."
"Now, look here, Mr. McQuade; don't talk to me like that."
"What have you got, then?"
"Well, I've got something that's worth five hundred; that's what. I
worked like a nigger for a month; pumped everybody that ever knew him.
Not a blame thing, till night before last I ran into the janitor of
the apartments where Warrington lived."
"Go on."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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