“No, thanks, Paul.”
“Well, be good.” The blond man turned towards Janet Henry, stopped, and addressed Ned Beaumont again: “How far do you think I ought to go with M’Laughlin this first time?”
Ned Beaumont moved his shoulders a little. “As far as you want, so long as you don’t put anything in plain words. They scare him. But you could hire him to commit murders if you put it to him in a long-winded way, like: ‘If there was a man named Smith who lived in such and such a place and he got sick or something and didn’t get well and you happened to drop in to see me some time and just by luck an envelope addressed to you had been sent there in care of me, how would I know it had five hundred dollars in it?’.”
Madvig nodded. “I don’t want any murders,” he said, “but we do need that railroad vote.” He frowned. “I wish you were up, Ned.”
“I will be in a day or two. Did you see the Observer this morning?”
“No.”
Ned Beaumont looked around the room. “Somebody’s run off with it. The dirt was in an editorial in a box in the middle of the front page. ‘What are our city officials going to do about it? A list of six weeks’ crimes to show we’re having a crime-wave. A lot smaller list of who’s been caught to show the police aren’t able to do much about it. Most of the squawking done about Taylor Henry’s murder.”
When her brother was named, Janet Henry winced and her lips parted in a little silent gasp. Madvig looked at her and then quickly at Ned Beaumont to move his head in a brief warning gesture.
Ned Beaumont, ignoring the effect of his words on the others, continued: “They were brutal about that. Accused the police of deliberately keeping their hands off the murder for a week so a gambler high in political circles could use it to square a grievance with another gambler– meaning my going after Despain to collect my money. Wondered what Senator Henry thought of his new political allies’ use of his son’s murder for this purpose.”
Madvig, red of face, fumbling for his watch, said hastily: “I’ll get a copy and read it. I’ve got to–”
“Also,” Ned Beaumont went on serenely, “they accuse the police of raiding–after having protected them for years–those joints whose owners wouldn’t come across with enormous campaign-contributions. That’s what they make of your fight with Shad O’Rory. And they promise to print a list of the places that are still running because their owners did come across.”
Madvig said, “Well, well,” uncomfortably, said, “Good-by, have a nice visit,” to Janet Henry, “See you later,” to Ned Beaumont, and went out.
Janet Henry leaned forward in her chair. “Why don’t you like me?” she asked Ned Beaumont.
“I think maybe I do,” he said.
She shook her head. “You don’t. I know it.”
“You can’t go by my manners,” he told her. “They’re always pretty bad.”
“You don’t like n-me,” she insisted, not answering his smile, “and I want you to.”
He was modest, “Why?”
“Because you are Paul’s best friend,” she replied.
“Paul,” he said, looking obliquely at her, “has a lot of friends: he’s a politician.”
She moved her head impatiently. “You’re his best friend.” She paused, then added: “He thinks so.”
“What do you think?” he asked with incomplete seriousness.
“I think you are,” she said gravely, “or you would not be here now. You would not have gone through that for him.”
His mouth twitched in a meager smile. He did not say anything.
When it became manifest that he was not going to speak she said. earnestly: “I wish you would like me, if you can.”
He repeated: “I think maybe I do.”
She shook her head. “You don’t.”
He smiled at her. His smile was very young and engaging, his eyes shy, his voice youthfully diffident and confiding, as he said: “I’ll tell you what makes you think that, Miss Henry. It’s–you see, Paul picked me up out of the gutter, as you might say, just a year or so ago, and so I’m kind of awkward and clumsy when I’m around people like you who belong to another world altogether–society and roto-sections and all–and you mistake that uh–gaucherie for enmity, which it isn’t at all.”