Beaumont. He said, in his pleasantly modulated Irish voice: 'I owe you something for trying to talk Paul out of —'
'You don't,' Ned Beaumont said.
O'Rory asked: 'I don't?'
'No. I was with him then. What I told him was for his own good. I thought he was making a bad play.'
O'Rory smiled gently. 'And he'll know it before he's through,' he said.
Silence was between them awhile then. O'Rory sat half-buried in his chair smiling at Ned Beaumont. Ned Beaumont sat on the sofa looking, with eves that gave no indication of what he thought, at O'Rory.
The silence was broken by O'Rory asking: 'How much did Whisky tell you?'
'Nothing. He said you wanted to see me.'
'He was right enough as far as he went,' O'Rory said. He took his finger-tips apart and patted the back of one slender hand with the palm of the other. 'Is it so that you and Paul have broken for good and all?'
'I thought you knew it,' Ned Beaumont replied. 'I thought that's why you sent for me.'
'I heard it;' O'Rory said, 'but that's not always the same thing. What were you thinking you might do now?'
'There's a ticket for New York in my pocket and my clothes are packed.'
O'Rory raised a hand and smoothed his sleek white hair. 'You came here from New York, didn't you?'
'I never told anybody where I came from.'
O'Rory took his hand from his hair and made a small gesture of protestation. 'You don't think I'm one to give a damn where any man comes from, do you?' he asked.
Ned Beaumont did not say anything.
The white-haired man said: 'But I do care about where you go and if I have my way as much as I'd like you won't be going off to New York yet awhile. Did you never happen to think that maybe you could still do yourself a lot of good right here?'
'No,' Ned Beaumont said, 'that is, not till Whisky came.'
'And what do you think now?'
'I don't know anything about it. I'm waiting to hear what you've got to say.'
O'Rory put his hand to his hair again. His blue-grey eyes were friendly and shrewd. He asked: 'How long have you been here?'
'Fifteen months.'
'And you and Paul have been close as a couple of fingers how long?'
'Year.'
O'Rory nodded. 'And you ought to know a lot of things about him,' he said.
'I do.'
O'Rory said: 'You ought to know a lot of things I could use.' Ned Beaumont said evenly: 'Make your proposition.' O'Rory got up from the depths of his chair and went to a door opposite the one through which Ned Beaumont had come. When he opened the door a huge English bulldog waddled in. O'Rory went back to his chair. The dog lay on the rug in front of the wine and gold chair staring with morose eyes up at its master.
O'Rory said: 'One thing I can offer you is a chance to pay Paul back plenty.'
Ned Beaumont said: 'That's nothing to me.'
'it is not?'
'Far as I'm concerned we're quits.'
O'Rory raised his head. He asked softly: 'And you wouldn't want to do anything to hurt him?'
'I didn't say that,' Ned Beaumont replied a bit irritably. 'I don't mind hurting him, but I can do it any time I want to on my own account and I don't want you to think you're giving me anything when you give me a chance to.'
O'Rory wagged his head up and down, pleasantly. 'Suits me,' he said, 'so he's hurt. Why did he bump off young Henry?'
Ned Beaumont laughed. 'Take it easy,' he said. 'You haven't made your proposition yet. That's a nice pooch. How old is he?'
'Just about the limit, seven.' O'Rory put out a foot and rubbed the dog's nose with the tip of it. The dog moved its tail sluggishly. 'How' does this hit you? After election I'll stake you to the finest gambling-house this state's ever seen and let you run it to suit yourself with all the protection you ever heard of.'
'That's an if offer,' Ned Beaumont said in a somewhat bored manner, 'if you win. Anyhow, I'm not sure I want to stay here after election, or even that long.'
O'Rory stopped rubbing the dog's nose with his shoe-tip. He looked up at Ned Beaumont again, smiled dreamily, and asked: 'Don't you think we're going to win the election?'
Ned Beaumont smiled. 'You won't bet even money on it.'
O'Rory, still smiling dreamily, asked another question: 'You're not so God-damned hot for putting in with me, are you, Beaumont?'
'No.' Ned Beaumont rose and picked up his hat. 'It wasn't any idea of mine.' His voice was casual, his face politely expressionless. 'I told Whisky it'd just be wasting time.' He reached for his overcoat.
The white-haired man said: 'Sit down. We can still talk, can't we? And maybe we'll get somewhere before we're through.'
Ned Beaumont hesitated, moved his shoulders slightly, took off his hat, put it and his overcoat on the sofa, and sat down beside them.
O'Rory said: 'I'll give you ten grand in cash right now if you'll come in and ten more election-night if we beat Paul and I'll keep that house-offer open for you to take or leave.'
Ned Beaumont pursed his lips and stared gloomily at O'Rory under brows drawn together. 'You want me to rat on him, of course,' he said.
'I want you to go into the Observer with the low-down on everything you know about him being mixed up in—the sewer-contracts, the how and why of killing Taylor Henry, that Shoemaker junk last winter, the dirt on how he's running the city.'
'There's nothing in the sewer-business now,' Ned Beaumont said, speaking as if his mind was more fully occupied with other thoughts. 'He let his profits go to keep from raising a stink.'
'All right,' O'Rory conceded, blandly confident, 'but there is something in the Taylor Henry business.'
'Yes, we'd have him there,' Ned Beaumont said, frowning, 'but I don't know whether we could use the Shoemaker stuff'—he hesitated— 'without making trouble for me.'
'Hell, we don't want that,' O'Rory said quickly. 'That's out. What else have we got?'
'Maybe we can do something with the street-car-franchise extension and with that trouble last year in the County Clerk's office. We'll have to do some digging first, though.'
'It'll be worth it for both of us,' O'Rory said. 'I'll have Hinkle—he's the Observer guy—put the stuff in shape. You just give him the dope and let him write it. We can start off with the Taylor Henry thing. That's something that's right on tap.'
Ned Beaumont brushed his mustache with a thumb-nail and murmured: 'Maybe.'
Shad O'Rory laughed. 'You mean we ought to start off first with the ten thousand dollars?' he asked. 'There's something in that.' He got up and crossed the room to the door he had opened for the dog. He opened it and went out, shutting it behind him. The dog did not get up from in front of the wine and gold chair.
Ned Beaumont lit a cigar. The dog turned his head and watched him.
O'Rory came back with a thick sheaf of green hundred-dollar bills held together by a band of brown paper on which was written in blue ink: $10,000. He thumped the sheaf down on the hand not holding it and said: 'Hinkle's out there now. I told him to come in.'
Ned Beaumont frowned. 'I ought to have a little time to straighten it out in my mind.'
'Give it to Hinkle any way it comes to you. He'll put it in shape.'
Ned Beaumont nodded. He blew cigar-smoke out and said: 'Yes, I can do that.'
O'Rory held out the sheaf of paper money.
Saying, 'Thanks,' Ned Beaumont took it and put it in his inside coat-pocket. It made a bulge there in the breast of his coat over his flat chest.
