"Whaddye think of those damn four-flushers and come-ons, anyhow?" inquired Mr. Kerrigan of Mr. Tiernan, shortly subsequent to a conference with Gilgan, from which Tiernan had been unavoidably absent. "They've got an ordinance drawn up covering the whole city in an elevated-road scheme, and there ain't anything in it for anybody. Say, whaddye think they think we are, anyhow? Hey?"
Mr. Tiernan himself, after his own conference with Edstrom, had been busy getting the lay of the land, as he termed it; and his investigations led him to believe that a certain alderman by the name of Klemm, a clever and very respectable German-American from the North Side, was to be the leader of the Republicans in council, and that he and some ten or twelve others were determined, because of moral principles alone, that only honest measures should be passed. It was staggering.
At this news Mr. Kerrigan, who had been calculating on a number of thousands of dollars for his vote on various occasions, stared incredulously. "Well, I'll be damned!" he commented. "They've got a nerve! What?"
"I've been talking to this fellow Klemm of the twentieth," said Mr. Tiernan, sardonically. "Say, he's a real one! I met him over at the Tremont talkin' to Hvranek. He shakes hands like a dead fish. Whaddye think he had the nerve to say to me. 'This isn't the Mr. Tiernan of the second?' he says.
"'I'm the same,' says I.
"'Well, you don't look as savage as I thought you did,' says he.
Haw-haw! I felt like sayin', 'If you don't go way I'll give you a slight tap on the wrist.' I'd like just one pass at a stiff like that up a dark alley." (Mr. Tiernan almost groaned in anguish.)
"And then he begins to say he doesn't see how there can be any reasonable objection to allowin' various new companies to enter the street-car field. 'It's sufficiently clear,' he says, 'that the public is against monopolies in any form.'" (Mr. Tiernan was mocking Mr. Klemm's voice and language.) "My eye!" he concluded, sententiously. "Wait till he tries to throw that dope into Gumble and Pinski and Schlumbohm--haw, haw, haw!"
Mr. Kerrigan, at the thought of these hearty aldermen accustomed to all the perquisites of graft and rake-off, leaned back and gave vent to a burst of deep-chested laughter. "I'll tell you what it is, Mike," he said, archly, hitching up his tight, very artistic, and almost English trousers, "we're up against a bunch of pikers in this Gilgan crowd, and they've gotta be taught a lesson. He knows it as well as anybody else. None o' that Christian con game goes around where I am. I believe this man Cowperwood's right when he says them fellows are a bunch of soreheads and jealous.
If Cowperwood's willing to put down good hard money to keep 'em out of his game, let them do as much to stay in it. This ain't no charity grab-bag. We ought to be able to round up enough of these new fellows to make Schryhart and MacDonald come down good and plenty for what they want. From what Gilgan said all along, I thought he was dealing with live ones. They paid to win the election. Now let 'em pay to pull off a swell franchise if they want it, eh?"
"You're damn right," echoed Tiernan. "I'm with you to a T."
It was not long after this conversation that Mr. Truman Leslie MacDonald, acting through Alderman Klemm, proceeded to make a count of noses, and found to his astonishment that he was not as strong as he had thought he was. Political loyalty is such a fickle thing. A number of aldermen with curious names--Horback, Fogarty, McGrane, Sumulsky--showed signs of being tampered with.
He hurried at once to Messrs. Hand, Schryhart, and Arneel with this disconcerting information. They had been congratulating themselves that the recent victory, if it resulted in nothing else, would at least produce a blanket 'L' road franchise, and that this would be sufficient to bring Cowperwood to his knees.
Upon receiving MacDonald's message Hand sent at once for Gilgan.
