“Reassuring!” exclaimed Mr. Plimpton, whose customary noonday hunger was lacking, “I wish you could have heard him say it!”

“The wicked,” remarked the lawyer, “flee when no man pursueth.  Don’t shoot the pianist!” Langmaid set down his beer, and threw back his head and laughed.  “If I were the Reverend Mr. Hodder, after such an exhibition as you gave, I should immediately have suspected the pianist of something, and I should have gone off by myself and racked my brains and tried to discover what it was.  He’s a clever man, and if he hasn’t got a list of Dalton Street property now he’ll have one by to-morrow, and the story of some of your transactions with Tom Beatty and the City Council.”

“I believe you’d joke in the electric chair,” said Mr. a Plimpton, resentfully.  “I’ll tell you this,—­and my experience backs me up, —­if you can’t get next to a man by a little plain talk, he isn’t safe.  I haven’t got the market sense for nothing, and I’ll give you this tip, Nelson,—­it’s time to stand from under.  Didn’t I warn you fellows that Bedloe Hubbell meant business long before he started in? and this parson can give Hubbell cards and spades.  Hodder can’t see this thing as it is.  He’s been thinking, this summer.  And a man of that kind is downright dangerous when he begins to think.  He’s found out things, and he’s put two and two together, and he’s the uncompromising type.  He has a notion that the Gospel can be taken literally, and I could feel all the time I was talking to him he thought I was a crook.”

“Perhaps he was right,” observed the lawyer.

“That comes well from you,” Mr. Plimpton retorted.

“Oh, I’m a crook, too,” said Langmaid.  “I discovered it some time ago.  The difference between you and me, Wallis, is that I am willing to acknowledge it, and you’re not.  The whole business world, as we know it, is crooked, and if we don’t cut other people’s throats, they’ll cut ours.”

“And if we let go, what would happen to the country?” his companion demanded.

Langmaid began to shake with silent laughter.

“Your solicitude about the country, Wallis, is touching.  I was brought up to believe that patriotism had an element of sacrifice in it, but I can’t see ours.  And I can’t imagine myself, somehow, as a Hercules bearing the burden of our Constitution.  From Mr. Hodder’s point of view, perhaps,—­and I’m not sure it isn’t the right one, the pianist is doing his damnedest, to the tune of—­Dalton Street.  We might as well look this thing in the face, my friend.  You and I really don’t believe in another world, or we shouldn’t be taking so much trouble to make this one as we’d like to have it.”

“I never expected to hear you talk this way,” said Mr. Plimpton.

“Well, it’s somewhat of a surprise to me,” the lawyer admitted.