“I do. I owe you more than that, Ned. I wish you’d take it.”
Ned Beaumont said, “All right, thanks,” and put the check in his pocket.
Madvig drank beer, ate a pretzel, started to drink again, set his seidel down on the table, and asked: “Was there anything on your mind–any kick–besides that back in the Club this afternoon?”
Ned Beaumont shook his head. “You don’t talk to me like that. Nobody does.”
“Hell, Ned, I didn’t say anything.”
Ned Beaumont did not say anything.
Madvig drank again. “Mind telling me why you think I handled O’Rory wrong?”
“It wouldn’t do any good.”
“Try.”
Ned Beaumont said: “All right, but it won’t do any good.” He tilted his chair back, holding his seidel in one hand, some pretzels in the other. “Shad’ll fight. He’s got to, You’ve got him in a corner. You’ve told him he’s through here for good. There’s nothing he can do now but play the long shot. If he can upset you this election he’ll be fixed to square anything he has to do to win. If you win the election he’s got to drift anyhow. You’re using the police on him. He’ll have to fight back at the police and he will. That means you’re going to have something that can be made to look like a crime-wave. You’re trying to re-elect the whole city administration. Well, giving them a crime-wave–and one it’s an even bet they’re not going to be able to handle–just before election isn’t going to make them look any too efficient. They–”
“You think I ought to’ve laid down to him?” Madvig demanded, scowling.
“I don’t think that. I think you should have left him an out, a line of retreat. You shouldn’t have got him with his back to the wall.”
Madvig’s scow-I deepened. “I don’t know anything about your kind of fighting. He started it, All I know is when you got somebody cornered you go in and finish them. That system’s worked all right for me so far.” He blushed a little. “I don’t mean I think I’m Napoleon or something, Ned, but I came up from running errands for Packy Flood in the old Fifth to where I’m sitting kind of pretty today.”
Ned Beaumont emptied his seidel and let the front legs of his chair come down on the floor. “I told you it wouldn’t do any good,” he said. “Have it your own way. Keep on thinking that what was good enough for the old Fifth is good enough anywhere.”
In Madvig’s voice there was something of resentment and something of humility when he asked: “You don’t think much of me as a big-time politician, do you, Ned?”
Now Ned Beaumont’s face flushed. He said: “I didn’t say that, Paul.”
“But that’s what it amounts to, isn’t it?” Madvig insisted.
“No, but I do think you’ve let yourself be outsmarted this time. First you let the Henrys wheedle you into backing the Senator. There was your chance to go in and finish an enemy who was cornered, but that enemy happened to have a daughter and social position and what not, so you–‘,
“Cut it out, Ned,” Madvig grumbled.
Ned Beaumont’s face became empty of expression. He stood up saying, “Well, I must be running along,” and turned to the door.
Madvig was up behind him immediately, with a hand on his shoulder, saying: “Wait, Ned.”
Ned Beaumont said: “Take your hand off me.” He did not look around.
Madvig put his other hand on Ned Beaumont’s arm and turned him around. “Look here, Ned,” he began.
Ned Beaumont said: “Let go.” His lips were pale and stiff.
Madvig shook him. He said: “Don’t be a God-damned fool. You and I–”
Ned Beaumont struck Madvig’s mouth with his left fist.
Madvig took his hands away from Ned Beaumont and fell back two steps. While his pulse had time to beat perhaps three times his mouth hung open and astonishment was in his face. Then his face darkened with anger and he shut his mouth tight, so his jaw was hard and lumpy. He made fists of his hands, hunched his shoulders, and swayed forward.
Ned Beaumont’s hand swept out to the side to grasp one of the heavy glass seidels on the table, though he did not lift it from the table. His body leaned a little to that side as he had leaned to get the seidel. Otherwise he stood squarely confronting the blond man. His face was drawn thin and rigid, with white lines of strain around the mouth. His dark eyes glared fiercely into Madvig’s blue ones.