The Boss, and How He Came to Rule New York

Morton, worn with this long harangue, was moved to recruit his moody energies with the inevitable cigarette. He puffed recuperative puffs for a space, and then he began:

“What an angelic ass is this city of New York! Why! it doesn’t know as much as a horse! Any ignorant teamster of politics can harness it, and haul with it, and head it what way he will. I say, old chap, what are the round-number expenses of the town a year?”

“About one hundred and twenty-five millions.”

“One hundred and twenty-five millions – really! Do you happen to know the aggregate annual profits of those divers private companies that control and sell us our water, and lighting, and telephone, and telegraph, and traction services? – saying nothing of ferries, and paving, and all that? It’s over one hundred and fifty millions a year, don’t y’ know! More than enough to run the town without a splinter of tax – really! That’s why I exclaim in rapture over the public’s accommodating imbecility. Now, if a private individual were to manage his affairs so much like a howling idiot, his heirs would clap him in a padded cell, and serve the beggar right.”

“I think, however,” said I, “that you have been one to profit by those same idiocies of the town.”

“Millions, my boy, millions! And I’m going in for more, don’t y’ know. There are a half-dozen delicious things I have my eye on. Gad! I shall have my hand on them, the moment you take control.”

“I make you welcome in advance,” said I. “Give me but the town again, and you shall pick and choose.”

In season, I handed my slate of names to the nominating committee to be handed by them to the convention.

At the head, for the post of mayor, was written the name of that bold judge who, in the presence of my enemies and on a day when I was down, had given my Sicilian countenance. Such folk are the choice material of the machine. Their characters invite the public; while, for their courage, and that trick to be military and go with closed eyes to the execution of an order, the machine can rely upon them through black and white. My judge when mayor would accept my word for the last appointment and the last contract in his power, and think it duty.

And who shall say that he would err? It was the law of the machine; he was the man of the machine; for the public, which accepted him, he was the machine. It is the machine that offers for every office on the list; the ticket is but the manner or, if you please, the mask. Nor is this secret. Who shall complain then, or fasten him with charges, when my judge, made mayor, infers a public’s instruction to regard himself as the vizier of the machine? – its hand and voice for the town’s government?

It stood the day before the polls, and having advantage of the usual lull I was resting myself at home. Held fast by the hooks of politics, I for weeks had not seen young Van Flange, and had gotten only glimpses of Blossom. While lounging by my fire – for the day was raw, with a wind off the Sound that smelled of winter – young Van Flange drove to the door in a brougham.

That a brisk broker should visit his house at an hour when the floor of the Exchange was tossing with speculation, would be the thing not looked for; but I was too much in a fog of politics, and too ignorant of stocks besides, to make the observation. Indeed, I was glad to see the boy, greeting him with a trifle more warmth than common.

Now I thought he gave me his hand with a kind of shiver of reluctance. This made me consider. Plainly, he was not at ease as we sat together. Covering him with the tail of my eye, I could note how his face carried a look, at once timid and malignant.

I could not read the meaning, and remained silent a while with the mere riddle of it. Was he ill? The lean yellowness of his cheek, and the dark about the hollow eyes, were a hint that way, to which the broken stoop of the shoulders gave added currency.

Young Van Flange continued silent; not, however, in a way to promise sullenness, but as though his feelings were a gag to him. At last I thought, with a word of my own, to break the ice.

“How do you get on with your Blackberry?” said I.

It was not that I cared or had the business on the back of my mind; I was too much buried in my campaign for that; but Blackberry, with young Van Flange, was the one natural topic to propose.

As I gave him the name of it, he started with the sudden nervousness of a cat. I caught the hissing intake of his breath, as though a knife pierced him. What was wrong? I had not looked at the reported quotations, such things being as Greek to me. Had he lost those millions? I could have borne it if he had; the better, perhaps, since I was sure in my soul that within two days I would have the town in hand, and I did not think to find my old paths so overgrown but what I’d make shift to pick my way to a second fortune.

I was on the hinge of saying so, when he got possession of himself. Even at that he spoke lamely, and with a tongue that fumbled for words.

“Oh, Blackberry!” cried he. Then, after a gulping pause: “That twist will work through all right. It has gone a trifle slow, because, by incredible exertions, the road did pay its dividends. But it’s no more than a matter of weeks when it will come tumbling.”

This, in the beginning, was rambled off with stops and halts, but in the wind-up it went glibly enough.

What next I would have said, I cannot tell; nothing of moment, one may be sure, for my mind was running on other things than Blackberry up or down. It was at this point, however, when we were interrupted. A message arrived that asked my presence at headquarters.

As I was about to depart, Blossom came into the room.

I had no more than time for a hurried kiss, for the need set forth in the note pulled at me like horses.

“Bar accidents,” said I, as I stood in the door, “tomorrow night we’ll celebrate a victory.”

Within a block of my gate, I recalled how I had left certain papers I required lying on the table. I went back in some hustle of speed, for time was pinching as to that question of political detail which tugged for attention.

As I stepped into the hallway, I caught the tone of young Van Flange and did not like the pitch of it. Blossom and he were in the room to the left, and only a door between us.

In a strange bristle of temper, I stood still to hear. Would the scoundrel dare harshness with my girl? The very surmise turned me savage to the bone!

Young Van Flange was speaking of those two hundred thousand dollars in bonds with which, by word of Big Kennedy, I had endowed Blossom in a day of babyhood. When she could understand, I had laid it solemnly upon her never to part with them. Under any stress, they would insure her against want; they must never be given up. And Blossom had promised.

These bonds were in a steel casket of their own, and Blossom had the key. As I listened, young Van Flange was demanding they be given to him; Blossom was pleading with him, and quoting my commands. My girl was sobbing, too, for the villain urged the business roughly. I could not fit my ear to every word, since their tones for the most were dulled to a murmur by the door. In the end, with a lift of the voice, I heard him say:

“For what else should I marry you except money? Is one of my blood to link himself with the daughter of the town’s great thief, and call it love? The daughter of a murderer, too!” he exclaimed, and ripping out an oath. “A murderer, yes! You have the red proof about your throat! Because your father escaped hanging by the laws of men, heaven’s law is hanging you!”

As I threw wide the door, Blossom staggered and fell to the floor. I thought for the furious blink of the moment, that he had struck her. How much stronger is hate than love! My dominant impulse was to avenge Blossom rather than to save her. I stood in the door in a white flame of wrath that was like the utter anger of a tiger. I saw him bleach and shrink beneath his sallowness.

As I came towards him, he held up his hands after the way of a boxing school. That ferocious strength, like a gorilla’s, still abode with me. I brushed away his guard as one might put aside a trailing vine. In a flash I had him, hip and shoulder. My fingers sunk into the flesh like things of steel; he squeaked and struggled as does the rabbit when crunched up by the hound.

With a swing and a heave that would have torn out a tree by its roots, I lifted him from his feet. The next moment I hurled him from me. He crashed against the casing of the door; then he slipped to the floor as though struck by death itself.

Moved of the one blunt purpose of destruction, I made forward to seize him again. For a miracle of luck, I was withstood by one of the servants who rushed in.

“Think, master; think what you do!” he cried.

In a sort of whirl I looked about me. I could see how the old Galway nurse was bending over Blossom, crying on her for her “Heart’s dearie!” My poor girl was lying along the rug like some tempest-broken flower. The stout old wife caught her up and bore her off in her arms.

The picture of my girl’s white face set me ablaze again. I turned the very torch of rage!

“Be wise, master!” cried that one who had restrained me before. “Think of what you do!”

The man’s hand on my wrist, and the earnest voice of him, brought me to myself. A vast calm took me, as a storm in its double fury beats flat the surface of the sea. I turned my back and walked to the window.

“Have him away, then!” cried I. “Have him out of my sight, or I’ll tear him to rags and ribbons where he lies!”

CHAPTER XXVI – THE VICTOR AND THE SPOILS

FOR all the cry and call of politics, and folk to see me whom I would not see, that night, and throughout the following day – and even though the latter were one of election Fate to decide for the town’s mastery – I never stirred from Blossom’s side. She, poor child! was as one desolate, dazed with the blow that had been dealt her. She lay on her pillow, silent, and with the stricken face that told of the heart-blight fallen upon her.

Nor was I in much more enviable case, although gifted of a rougher strength to meet the shock. Indeed, I was taught by a despair that preyed upon me, how young Van Flange had grown to be the keystone of my arch of single hope, now fallen to the ground. Blossom’s happiness had been my happiness, and when her breast was pierced, my own brightness of life began to bleed away. Darkness took me in the folds of it as in a shroud; I would have found the grave kinder, but I must remain to be what prop and stay I might to Blossom.

While I sat by my girl’s bed, there was all the time a peril that kept plucking at my sleeve in a way of warning. My nature is of an inveterate kind that, once afire and set to angry burning, goes on and on in ever increasing flames like a creature of tow, and with me helpless to smother or so much as half subdue the conflagration. I was so aware of myself in that dangerous behalf that it would press upon me as a conviction, even while I held my girl’s hand and looked into her vacant eye, robbed of a last ray of any peace to come, that young Van Flange must never stray within my grasp. It would bring down his destruction; it would mean red hands for me and nothing short of murder. And, so, while I waited by Blossom’s side, and to blot out the black chance of it, I sent word for Inspector McCue.

The servants, on that day of awful misery, conveyed young Van Flange from the room. When he had been revived, and his injuries dressed – for his head bled from a gash made by the door, and his shoulder had been dislocated – he was carried from the house by the brougham that brought him, and which still waited at the gate. No one about me owned word of his whereabouts. It was required that he be found, not more for his sake than my own, and his destinies disposed of beyond my reach.

It was to this task I would set Inspector McCue. For once in a way, my call was for an honest officer. I would have Inspector McCue discover young Van Flange, and caution him out of town. I cared not where he went, so that he traveled beyond the touch of my fingers, already itching for the caitiff neck of him.

Nor did I think young Van Flange would resist the advice of Inspector McCue. He had reasons for flight other than those I would furnish. The very papers, shouted in the streets to tell how I had re-taken the town at the polls, told also of the failure of the brokerage house of Van Flange; and that young Van Flange, himself, was a defaulter and his arrest being sought by clients on a charge of embezzling the funds which had been intrusted to his charge. The man was a fugitive from justice; he lay within the menace of a prison; he would make no demur now when word and money were given him to take himself away.

When Inspector McCue arrived, I greeted him with face of granite. He should have no hint of my agony. I went bluntly to the core of the employ; to dwell upon the business would be nothing friendly to my taste.

“You know young Van Flange?” Inspector McCue gave a nod of assent.