It was settled that I should be the emissary.  With lively sensations of curiosity and excitement, tempered by a certain anxiety as to my ability to match wits with the Spider, I made my way to his “lair” over Monahan’s saloon, situated in a district that was anything but respectable.  The saloon, on the ground floor, had two apartments; the bar-room proper where Mike Monahan, chamberlain of the establishment, was wont to stand, red faced and smiling, to greet the courtiers, big and little, the party workers, the district leaders, the hangers-on ready to be hired, the city officials, the police judges,—­yes, and the dignified members of state courts whose elections depended on Mr. Jason’s favour:  even Judge Bering, whose acquaintance I had made the day I had come, as a law student, to Mr. Watling’s office, unbent from time to time sufficiently to call there for a small glass of rye and water, and to relate, with his owl-like gravity, an anecdote to the “boys.”  The saloon represented Democracy, so dear to the American public.  Here all were welcome, even the light-fingered gentlemen who enjoyed the privilege of police protection; and who sometimes, through fortuitous circumstances, were hauled before the very magistrates with whom they had rubbed elbows on the polished rail.  Behind the bar-room, and separated from it by swinging doors only the elite ventured to thrust apart, was an audience chamber whither Mr. Jason occasionally descended.  Anecdote and political reminiscence gave place here to matters of high policy.

I had several times come to the saloon in the days of my apprenticeship in search of some judge or official, and once I had run down here the city auditor himself.  Mike Monahan, whose affair it was to know everyone, recognized me.  It was part of his business, also, to understand that I was now a member of the firm of Watling, Fowndes and Ripon.

“Good morning to you, Mr. Paret,” he said suavely.  We held a colloquy in undertones over the bar, eyed by the two or three customers who were present.  Mr. Monahan disappeared, but presently returned to whisper:  “Sure, he’ll see you,” to lead the way through the swinging doors and up a dark stairway.  I came suddenly on a room in the greatest disorder, its tables and chairs piled high with newspapers and letters, its windows streaked with soot.  From an open door on its farther side issued a voice.

“Is that you, Mr. Paret?  Come in here.”

It was little less than a command.

“Heard of you, Mr. Paret.  Glad to know you.  Sit down, won’t you?”

The inner room was almost dark.  I made out a bed in the corner, and propped up in the bed a man; but for the moment I was most aware of a pair of eyes that flared up when the man spoke, and died down again when he became silent.  They reminded me of those insects which in my childhood days we called “lightning bugs.”  Mr. Jason gave me a hand like a woman’s.  I expressed my pleasure at meeting him, and took a chair beside the bed.