One very hot morning early in July Mike Prim came up the staircase of the National Bank Building. He stood for a moment in the hall, breathing heavily from the exertion of bearing his great weight up the steps. He took off his straw hat and mopped his red face. Then he glared at the door of Judge Regis"s office.
"That"s the long-legged old devil"s horse who"s put the women up to all this d.a.m.nation!" he growled as he entered his own office and closed the door.
He took off his coat, then his collar and tie, flung them with his hat on a chair, and sat down to his desk. Then he unb.u.t.toned his cuffs and rolled up his sleeves. He placed his elbows on the desk and his enormous folded chin in his two hands. So he sat, a monstrous figure, with his great paunch filling his white shirt like a concealed balloon, with his hideously hairy arms naked halfway, and his thick hands purple beneath the weight of his amorphously fat face, his little reptilian eyes staring at the opposite wall.
He was at his wits" end. He was not making good at his business, and he knew it. What was worse, everybody else knew it. He had had few callers of late. Campaign collections had dwindled to almost nothing. They were getting bold in their refusals to contribute at all. "Why didn"t he do something?" "What were they paying him for if it was not to do something?" "Was he going to let a set of fanatical women down him and take things in their own hands?" These were some of the questions they asked him which he could not answer satisfactorily. In vain he advised patience, and even more vainly he vowed he could and would stop the women"s damphulishness at the proper time. They did not believe him; they pointed out that business had already stopped. From being the one who threatened, he had become the one who cajoled, while every man who came in offered him veiled threats instead of dollars.
He was furious, and he was obliged to conceal his fury. He hated these rebellious men even more than he hated the upstart women. He was determined, if the opportunity offered, to be revenged upon them for their insolence. But how? This was the matter he revolved in his snake-licking mind as he stared at the wall, and he was in a hurry to reach a solution of his difficulty. Stark Coleman had called him before he was out of bed that morning to say that there had been a citizens"
meeting the night before, and that he, Coleman, would be up to see him at ten o"clock. In the first place, why had he not been notified of the citizens" meeting. He usually presided on these occasions when the tutelary deities of Jordantown gathered in Coleman"s office, or more frequently in his own office, to discuss the ways and means by which the principles of the Democratic party could be made to contribute most liberally to the liberty of man, especially in Jordantown. In the second place, the tone of Coleman"s voice was cool, offensively so. He detected a note of command in it. Suppose Coleman should be coming up to inform him of certain changes in the policy which would govern the manifestations of the democratic principle? In short, suppose he was about to be dismissed from his office? True, it was an office without a name, but it had been a lucrative position.
There was a knock upon the door. He flung himself back, looked hastily at his watch and saw that it was barely nine o"clock. Coleman must be anxious, he thought, to keep an appointment in such a hurry, which was a good sign.
"Come in!" he shouted, whirling around on his swivel chair to face the door.
It opened with a quick inward thrust and Susan Walton walked in. She carried her everlasting little black reticule in one hand, and in the other she held--of all things in this world--an empty brown-linen laundry bag, swinging by the strings!
"Good morning, Mr. Prim!" she said, looking at him pleasantly over the top of her spectacles, as if it was the most natural thing for her to drop in informally.
He was too amazed to return her salutation. He stared at her, then he bowed his thick neck and stared at the flabby bag. He did not even offer her a seat, but she was in no way disconcerted by that. She chose a chair, drew it up in front of him, sat down, and crumpled the bag up in her lap.
"I came to see you on a matter of business, Mr. Prim," she said, coming briskly to the point. "I suppose you"ve been expecting me?"
"No," he managed to say.
"I"d given you credit then for more sense than you seem to have, for I"m the only hope you have now."
She said that in tones of conviction.
"You are the last person in the world I"d look upon as a--hope!" he returned slowly, widening his lips into a grin which was also a sneer.
"You are at the end of your rope. You"ve been so for a month. You can"t squeeze another dollar out of this town for your campaign fund. The men have lost confidence in you."
"How"d you come by so much useful information?" he interrupted.
"I have it. That"s the point. You"ll never dare announce yourself a candidate for representative. You gave that up three months ago."
"What makes you think so?" he asked, fixing his eyes upon her face with deep reptilian concentration.
"I don"t think, I know it. You went on with your collections for private, personal reasons. But you did not deposit a single dollar of it in this bank, and you knew from the day Sarah Mosely"s will was read up here in Judge Regis"s office that you did not have a ghost of a chance to be elected, and you made up your mind that day not to run."
"Your powers of penetration are well known, Madam, but again I must ask you how you have penetrated so far into my secret thoughts, granting of course for the sake of argument that you have done so?" he said, now in complete possession of his faculties, and coolly on guard.
"I saw you listening at Judge Regis"s office door the day the will was read, and the day we first discussed our plans for winning equal suffrage for women in this country. You are the only man in it who has known positively from the first that we can do it!" she answered, and showed her nerve by keeping her gaze fixed imperturbably upon him.
He bent forward, his face slowly purpling with rage, his fists clenched, his upper lip skinned back from his teeth as he hissed: "You are a--you did not see me!"
"I didn"t see you, that"s a fact, but I saw your shadow in the ground-gla.s.s door, cast by the light from the window at the end of the hall. n.o.body could mistake it for any other shape who"d ever seen you, Mike Prim!"
They sat for the briefest moment measuring each other, he with incredible ferocity, and Susan with her lips primped, grimly fearless.
"Now that we understand each other, let"s get down to business!" she began.
"To business?" he snarled.
"Yes, this is the situation: you can"t run for the legislature; you don"t want to! You have squeezed every dollar you can get out of the Democrats here." She sniffed at the word. "They have lost confidence in you as manager of their political ends. They"ve begun to suspect your game. It"s only a question of hours, I might say of one hour, before you get your walking papers, so to speak; for they are mad, Mike Prim. They are as angry as men always are when they realize that they"ve been duped and robbed----"
"If you were not a woman you couldn"t sit there and say such things to me. Anyhow, I won"t stand it! What"s your business, as you call it?" he exclaimed, heaving his huge bulk from the chair and coming to his feet.
"Sit down! Sit down, Mr. Prim. I am here to make you a definite proposition!"
"Make it!" he growled, still standing, his feet wide apart, glowering down at her.
"The Co-Citizens" Foundation is prepared to purchase your papers----"
"My papers?"
"Yes, your letters, your political correspondence."
"Think they are valuable?"
"We can get on without them, but we are willing to pay a reasonable price for them. We know that they are valuable to a certain extent."
"How?"
"You remember your conversation with Stark Coleman the day you threatened him with certain letters you had of his and of other prominent citizens here. Miss Adams heard what you said on that occasion."
"So she"s added eavesdropping to her other accomplishments?" he exclaimed venomously.
"Not eavesdropping, but Coleman left the door slightly ajar; she had come back up here to get some papers from Judge Regis, and, hearing such interesting conversation going on, naturally she listened. What will you take for these letters?" she demanded.
"I"d have to think about it," he said, sitting down.
"I"ll buy them now or not at all"" she said.
"Aim to publish them?" he asked, grinning. He was beginning to be in a very good humour.
"That"s our affair, but I don"t mind telling you that we do not intend to publish them."
"And if I refuse?" he held out.
"In that case you must abide by the consequences, you and the men who wrote the letters. We shall publish all we know about them, what you yourself claimed for them, and leave the next grand jury to make the proper investigations."
"Humph!"
"Naturally we should try to see to it that you did not escape," she added.
"What will you pay for them?" he demanded.