“On the morning they go out, I’ll send you my check for five hundred.”

“For the union?”

“I’ll send it to you, and you can use it as you see fit.  On Monday morning, then.”

“Sure thing.”

They smoked for a while.  Suddenly McQuade laid a bulky envelope on the table, got up and went out.  Morrissy weighed the envelope carefully, thrust it into his pocket, and also departed.

“Five hundred now, and five hundred on Monday.  I can see him sending a check.  It will be bills.  Bah!  I should have called out the boys anyhow.”

McQuade hurried home.  He had another appointment, vastly more important than the one he had just kept.  Bolles had returned from New York.  It was easy enough to buy a labor union, but it was a different matter to ruin a man of Warrington’s note.  Bolles had telegraphed that he would be in Herculaneum that night.  That meant that he had found something worth while.  Each time the car stopped to let passengers on or off, McQuade stirred restlessly.  He jumped from the car when it reached his corner, and walked hurriedly down the street to his house, a big pile of red granite and an architectural nightmare.  He rushed up the steps impatiently, applied his latch-key and pushed in the door.  He slammed it and went directly to his study.  Bolles was asleep in a chair.  McQuade shook him roughly.  Bolles opened his eyes.

“You’ve been on a drunk,” said McQuade, quickly noting the puffed eyes and haggard cheeks.

“But I’ve got what I went after, all the same,” replied Bolles truculently.

“What have you got?  If you’ve done any faking, I’ll break every bone in your body.”

“Now, look here, Mr. McQuade; don’t talk to me like that.”

“What have you got, then?”

“Well, I’ve got something that’s worth five hundred; that’s what.  I worked like a nigger for a month; pumped everybody that ever knew him.  Not a blame thing, till night before last I ran into the janitor of the apartments where Warrington lived.”

“Go on.”

“He’d been fired, and I got him drunk.  I asked him if any women had ever gone up to Warrington’s rooms.  One.  He was sitting in the basement.  It was a hot night, and he was sitting up because he could not sleep.  At midnight a coupe drove up, and Warrington and a woman alighted.  From the looks of things she was drunk, but he found out afterward that she was very sick.  The woman remained in Warrington’s apartments till the following morning.”

“When was all this?”

“About four years ago.  She left very early.”

“Hell!” roared McQuade, doubling his fists.  “And I’ve been sending you money every week for such news as this!  I want something big, you fool!  What earthly use is this information to me?  I couldn’t frighten Warrington with it.”

“I haven’t told you the woman’s name yet,” said Bolles, leering.

“The woman’s name?  What’s that got to do with it?”