“Well, Hughie, they’re after you,” he said with a grin.

“After me?  Why not include yourself?”

He sat down and stretched his long legs and his long arms, and smiled as he gaped.

“Oh, they’ll never get me,” he said.  And I knew, as I gazed at him, that they never would.

“What sort of things did they say?” I asked.

“Haven’t you read the Pilot and the Mail and State?”

“I just glanced over them.  Did they call names?”

“Call names!  I should say they did.  They got drunk on it, worked themselves up like dervishes.  They didn’t cuss you personally,—­that’ll come later, of course.  Judd Jason got the heaviest shot, but they said he couldn’t exist a minute if it wasn’t for the ‘respectable’ crowd—­capitalists, financiers, millionaires and their legal tools.  Fact is, they spoke a good deal of truth, first and last, in a fool kind of way.”

“Truth!” I exclaimed irritatedly.

Ralph laughed.  He was evidently enjoying himself.

“Is any of it news to you, Hughie, old boy?”

“It’s an outrage.”

“I think it’s funny,” said Ralph.  “We haven’t had such a circus for years.  Never had.  Of course I shouldn’t like to see you go behind the bars,—­not that.  But you fellows can’t expect to go on forever skimming off the cream without having somebody squeal sometime.  You ought to be reasonable.”

“You’ve skimmed as much cream as anybody else.”

“You’ve skimmed the cream, Hughie,—­you and Dickinson and Scherer and Grierson and the rest,—­I’ve only filled my jug.  Well, these fellows are going to have a regular roof-raising campaign, take the lid off of everything, dump out the red-light district some of our friends are so fond of.”

“Dump it where?” I asked curiously.

“Oh,” answered Ralph, “they didn’t say.  Out into the country, anywhere.”

“But that’s damned foolishness,” I declared.

“Didn’t say it wasn’t,” Ralph admitted.  “They talked a lot of that, too, incidentally.  They’re going to close the saloons and dance halls and make this city sadder than heaven.  When they get through, it’ll all be over but the inquest.”

“What did Perry do?” I asked.

“Well, he opened the meeting,—­made a nice, precise, gentlemanly speech.  Greenhalge and a few young highbrows and a reformed crook named Harrod did most of the hair-raising.  They’re going to nominate Greenhalge for mayor; and he told ’em something about that little matter of the school board, and said he would talk more later on.  If one of the ablest lawyers in the city hadn’t been hired by the respectable crowd and a lot of other queer work done, the treasurer and purchasing agent would be doing time.  They seemed to be interested, all right.”

I turned over some papers on my desk, just to show Ralph that he hadn’t succeeded in disturbing me.

“Who was in the audience? anyone you ever heard of?” I asked.