Half a Rogue - Harold MacGrath (phonics books TXT) 📗

he ceased to pay any attention to them.

"John, there's been something in my mind for many months."

"What is it?"

"Do you recollect the night you came into my rooms in New York?"

"I shall never forget it," quietly.

"Your wife was there."

"I know it. I found her gloves." He made a difficult masse. "She told me all about it. At the time, however, I had a pretty bad case of heart-trouble. But I understand. She was in the habit of dropping in on you. Why not? Your cooperation made you both famous. A man in love finds all sorts of excuses for jealousy. But I'm glad you've spoken. I can readily understand how you felt when you found the gloves gone.

"You're a good man, John," said Warrington.

"Kate loves me; it ought to make any man good to have a wife who loves him. I have no use for a man who sees evil in everything and good in nothing. Say no more about it, boy."

"I hadn't seen you in so long that I was confused. If I had reflected ... But you see, I didn't know that you were engaged, or even that you knew her. I never understood, until you were gone, why she wanted to hide herself. I'm glad I've relieved my mind." Warrington sighed.

"It's all right. There! I told you that I'd win even at those odds."

Presently they heard a stir down stairs. Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene was going. The door closed. The family came up to the billiard-room. Warrington looked at Patty, whose cheeks were flushed and whose eyes flashed.

"Why, what's the matter, Pat?" John asked.

"Nothing."

"Mrs. Haldene has been making herself useful as usual," said Mrs. Jack, slipping her arm around Patty's waist.

Patty was in a rage about something; nobody seemed to know what it was.

"You are not going to join the Auxiliary, are you, mother?" John inquired, putting the cues in the rack.

"Indeed I am not. The men in my family always used their own judgment in politics. They have always been Whigs or Republicans."

"Did you ever meet a woman, Dick, who was a Democrat?" laughed John.

"Perhaps," was the reply, "but it has escaped my recollection."

But he was thinking: after all, he had a right to win Patty if he could. It was not what he had done in the past, it was what he was capable of doing from now on that counted.

"You're going to have a stiff fight at the convention," said John.

"I know it. But a fight of any kind will keep my mind occupied. The senator has assured me that I shall get the nomination."


On the way home Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene saw the flutter of a white dress on the Wilmington-Fairchilds' veranda. She couldn't resist, so she crossed the lawn and mounted the veranda steps. She did not observe her husband in the corner, smoking with the master of the house.

"I've been over to the Benningtons'," she began, rather breathless.

"What's the news?"

"There is no truth in the report of Patty's engagement to young Whiteland."

"There isn't? Well, there ought to be, after the way they went around together last winter."

"She told me so herself," Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene declared emphatically. "Do you know what I believe?"

"No," truthfully.

"I've an idea that Patty is inclined toward that fellow Warrington."

"You don't mean it!"

"He's always around there. He must have thought a great deal of his aunt. She was buried to-day, and there he is, playing billiards with John Bennington. If that isn't heartlessness!"

"What do you want a man to do?" growled her husband from behind his cigar. "Sit in a dark room and wring his hands all day, like a woman? Men have other things to do in life than mourn the departed."

"Franklyn? I didn't see you."

"You seldom do."

Mrs. Franklyn-Haldene at once plunged into a discussion of fashion, the one thing that left her husband high and dry, so far as his native irony was concerned.


That same night McQuade concluded some interesting business. He possessed large interests in the local breweries. Breweries on the average do not pay very good dividends on stock, so the brewer often establishes a dozen saloons about town to help the business along. McQuade owned a dozen or more of these saloons, some in the heart of the city, some in the outlying wards of the town. He conducted the business with his usual shrewdness. The saloons were all well managed by Germans, who, as a drinking people, are the most orderly in the world. It was not generally known that McQuade was interested in the sale of liquors. His name was never mentioned in connection with the saloons.

One of these saloons was on a side street. The back door of it faced the towpath. It did not have a very good reputation; and though, for two years, no disturbances had occurred there, the police still kept an eye on the place. It was on the boundary line of the two most turbulent wards in the city. To the north was the Italian colony, to the south was the Irish colony. Both were orderly and self-respecting as a rule, though squalor and poverty abounded. But these two races are at once the simplest and most quick-tempered, and whenever an Irishman or an Italian crossed the boundary line there was usually a hurry call for the patrol wagon, and some one was always more or less battered up.

Over this saloon was a series of small rooms which were called "wine rooms," though nobody opened wine there. Beer was ten cents a glass up stairs, and whisky twenty. Women were not infrequently seen climbing the stairs to these rooms. But, as already stated, everybody behaved. Schmuck, who managed the saloon, was a giant of a man, a Turnvereiner, who could hold his own with any man in town. It will be understood that the orderliness was therefore due to a respect for Schmuck's strength, and not to any inclination to be orderly.

On this night, then, at nine o'clock, a man entered and approached the bar. He was sharp-eyed, lean-faced, with a heavy blue beard closely shaven, saving the mustache, which was black and hung over the man's lips. He wore good clothes. There was a large diamond on one of his fingers and another in the bosom of his shirt, in which a white tie was tucked carefully. They were yellow diamonds. But those among whom this man moved did not know the difference between yellow stones and white. Morrissy was accounted very well-to-do.

"Hello, Schmuck!" he hailed. "Got the room up stairs in order?"

"Yes." Schmuck wiped the bar. "Der poss iss coming to-night, I see. Huh?"

"Yes. He ought to be along now," replied Morrissy, glancing at his watch, which was as conspicuous as his yellow diamonds.

"How you getting along mit der poys?"

"Oh, we're coming along fine, all right."

"Going to call 'em out uf der mills? Huh?"

"Perhaps. When the boss comes, tell him I'm up stairs."

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."

"He'd been fired, and I got him drunk. I asked him if any women had ever gone up to Warrington's rooms. One. He was sitting in the basement. It was a hot night, and he was sitting up because he could not sleep. At midnight a coupe drove up, and Warrington and a woman alighted. From the looks of things she was drunk, but he found out afterward that she was very sick. The woman remained in Warrington's apartments till the following morning."

"When was all this?"

"About four years ago. She left very early."

"Hell!" roared McQuade, doubling his fists. "And I've been sending you money every week for such news as this! I want something big, you fool! What earthly use is this information to me? I couldn't frighten Warrington with it."

"I haven't told you the woman's name yet," said Bolles, leering.

"The woman's name? What's that got to do with it?"

"A whole lot. It was Katherine Challoner, the actress, Bennington's wife; that's who it was!"

McQuade sat very still. So still, that he could hear the clock ticking in the parlor. Bennington's wife!


Chapter XII


The death of his aunt gave Warrington a longing for action-swift mental and physical action. To sit in that dark, empty house, to read or to write, was utterly impossible; nor had he any desire to take long rides into the country. His mind was never clearer than when he rode alone, and what