"You make money out o' me," said Billy sourly. "You keep me under your
big fat ugly thumb. I guess I can run this business alone. I got all the
strings pretty well in my own hand."
"All right, Barry. I'll be sorry to be on the other side, but if you say
so, all right."
Barry swore a moment under his breath and changed the subject. So
matters went on, with Barry still subservient, but growing daily more
inclined to believe himself the autocrat he seemed, daily a little less
cautious, a little more fixed in his assurance that the officeholders,
the delegates and the saloon men constituted, in themselves, a
sufficient prop for his dominion, and that Murdock was a nuisance.
"Of course, it's to his interest to keep me under," he said to himself,
"and I dunno' whether I'm a fool to let him do it, or whether I'm a fool
to try to break away."
He began to try flyers on his own hook; he gathered many rake-offs of
which he said nothing to his mentor; he drank a little more and splurged
a little more and looked a little more like a bulldog and less like a
man. That the spirit of rebellion was growing up and that the pawn began
to take credit to itself for the position of power in which it was
placed, came gradually home to Mr. Murdock. It made him at first
annoyed, then anxious. So it was that the confidence bred from years of
business coöperation drove him this night to look up his old partner.
"Evening, Early," he said as the door closed behind him. "Beastly cold
night out. Wish you'd order me a little something hot to induce me to
stay by this comfortable fire of yours."
Mr. Early waved his hand toward a chair and settled himself without
ceremony. There was this comfort in Murdock: they had known each other
too long for pose, and, though the old hook-and-eye partnership was
dissolved, and Mr. Early had soared into the realms of Art, they were
still closely bound by common interests. So Sebastian met him with
cheerful resignation.
"Sit down, Jim," he said. "I don't mind a nip myself. What's up?"
"What's down, you'd better ask. Lord save us! What's that?" exclaimed
Mr. Murdock, as he caught sight of the lurid lady lying amid the litter
on the table.
"That's the cover of my next magazine. Never mind it. It's not in your
line."
"Well, I should say not," said the other with a slow grin. "I've been
pretty much vituperated for some of my business deals, but I never
sprung a thing like that on the public. 'Forget thyself!' That's good,
Early." He winked a wink that came more from the soul than from the eye.