However, in the midst of this uproar the goings to and fro of Gilgan, Edstrom, Kerrigan, and Tiernan were nor fully grasped. A more urbanely shifty pair than these latter were never seen. While fraternizing secretly with both Gilgan and Edstrom, laying out their political programme most neatly, they were at the same time conferring with Dowling, Duvanicki, even McKenty himself. Seeing that the outcome was, for some reason--he could scarcely see why --looking very uncertain, McKenty one day asked the two of them to come to see him. On getting the letter Mr. Tiernan strolled over to Mr. Kerrigan's place to see whether he also had received a message.
"Sure, sure! I did!" replied Mr. Kerrigan, gaily. "Here it is now in me outside coat pocket. 'Dear Mr. Kerrigan,"' he read, "'won't you do me the favor to come over to-morrow evening at seven and dine with me? Mr. Ungerich, Mr. Duvanicki, and several others will very likely drop in afterward. I have asked Mr. Tiernan to come at the same time. Sincerely, John J. McKenty.' That's the way he does it," added Mr. Kerrigan; "just like that.
He kissed the letter mockingly and put it back into his pocket.
"Sure I got one, jist the same way. The very same langwidge, nearly," commented Mr. Tiernan, sweetly. "He's beginning to wake up, eh? What! The little old first and second are beginning to look purty big just now, eh? What!"
"Tush!" observed Mr. Kerrigan to Mr. Tiernan, with a marked sardonic emphasis, "that combination won't last forever. They've been getting too big for their pants, I'm thinking. Well, it's a long road, eh? It's pretty near time, what?"
"You're right," responded Mr. Tiernan, feelingly. "It is a long road. These are the two big wards of the city, and everybody knows it. If we turn on them at the last moment where will they be, eh?"
He put a fat finger alongside of his heavy reddish nose and looked at Mr. Kerrigan out of squinted eyes.
"You're damned right," replied the little politician, cheerfully.
They went to the dinner separately, so as not to appear to have conferred before, and greeted each other on arriving as though they had not seen each other for days.
"How's business, Mike?"
"Oh, fair, Pat. How's things with you?"
"So so."
"Things lookin' all right in your ward for November?"
Mr. Tiernan wrinkled a fat forehead. "Can't tell yet." All this was for the benefit of Mr. McKenty, who did not suspect rank party disloyalty.
Nothing much came of this conference, except that they sat about discussing in a general way wards, pluralities, what Zeigler was likely to do with the twelfth, whether Pinski could make it in the sixth, Schlumbohm in the twentieth, and so on. New Republican contestants in old, safe Democratic wards were making things look dubious.
"And how about the first, Kerrigan?" inquired Ungerich, a thin, reflective German-American of shrewd presence. Ungerich was one who had hitherto wormed himself higher in McKenty's favor than either Kerrigan or Tiernan.
"Oh, the first's all right," replied Kerrigan, archly. "Of course you never can tell. This fellow Scully may do something, but I don't think it will be much. If we have the same police protection--"
Ungerich was gratified. He was having a struggle in his own ward, where a rival by the name of Glover appeared to be pouring out money like water. He would require considerably more money than usual to win. It was the same with Duvanicki.
McKenty finally parted with his lieutenants--more feelingly with Kerrigan and Tiernan than he had ever done before. He did not wholly trust these two, and he could not exactly admire them and their methods, which were the roughest of all, but they were useful.
"I'm glad to learn," he said, at parting, "that things are looking all right with you, Pat, and you, Mike," nodding to each in turn.
"We're going to need the most we can get out of everybody. I depend on you two to make a fine showing--the best of any. The rest of us will not forget it when the plums are being handed around afterward."
"Oh, you can depend on me to do the best I can always," commented Mr. Kerrigan, sympathetically. "It's a tough year, but we haven't failed yet."
"And me, Chief! That goes for me," observed Mr. Tiernan, raucously.
"I guess I can do as well as I have."
"Good for you, Mike!" soothed McKenty, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder. "And you, too, Kerrigan. Yours are the key wards, and we understand that. I've always been sorry that the leaders couldn't agree on you two for something better than councilmen; but next time there won't be any doubt of it, if I have any influence then." He went in and closed the door. Outside a cool October wind was whipping dead leaves and weed stalks along the pavements.
Neither Tiernan nor Kerrigan spoke, though they had come away together, until they were two hundred feet down the avenue toward Van Buren.
"Some talk, that, eh?" commented Mr. Tiernan, eying Mr. Kerrigan in the flare of a passing gas-lamp.
"Sure. That's the stuff they always hand out when they're up against it. Pretty kind words, eh?"
"And after ten years of about the roughest work that's done, eh?
It's about time, what? Say, it's a wonder he didn't think of that last June when the convention was in session.
"Tush! Mikey," smiled Mr. Kerrigan, grimly. "You're a bad little boy. You want your pie too soon. Wait another two or four or six years, like Paddy Kerrigan and the others."
"Yes, I will--not," growled Mr. Tiernan. "Wait'll the sixth."
"No more, will I," replied Mr. Kerrigan. "Say, we know a trick that beats that next-year business to a pulp. What?"
"You're dead right," commented Mr. Tiernan.
And so they went peacefully home.
