Mayor Sluss put down the high sugar-loaf hat he wore and said, grandiosely, as was his manner even in the direst extremity: "Well, you see, I am here, Mr. Cowperwood. What is it you wish me to do, exactly?"
"Nothing unreasonable, I assure you, Mr. Sluss," replied Cowperwood.
"Your manner to me this morning was a little brusque, and, as I have always wanted to have a sensible private talk with you, I took this way of getting it. I should like you to dismiss from your mind at once the thought that I am going to take an unfair advantage of you in any way. I have no present intention of publishing your correspondence with Mrs. Brandon." (As he said this he took from his drawer a bundle of letters which Mayor Sluss recognized at once as the enthusiastic missives which he had sometime before penned to the fair Claudia. Mr. Sluss groaned as he beheld this incriminating evidence.) "I am not trying," continued Cowperwood, "to wreck your career, nor to make you do anything which you do not feel that you can conscientiously undertake. The letters that I have here, let me say, have come to me quite by accident.
I did not seek them. But, since I do have them, I thought I might as well mention them as a basis for a possible talk and compromise between us."
Cowperwood did not smile. He merely looked thoughtfully at Sluss; then, by way of testifying to the truthfulness of what he had been saying, thumped the letters up and down, just to show that they were real.
"Yes," said Mr. Sluss, heavily, "I see."
He studied the bundle--a small, solid affair--while Cowperwood looked discreetly elsewhere. He contemplated his own shoes, the floor. He rubbed his hands and then his knees.
Cowperwood saw how completely he had collapsed. It was ridiculous, pitiable.
"Come, Mr. Sluss," said Cowperwood, amiably, "cheer up. Things are not nearly as desperate as you think. I give you my word right now that nothing which you yourself, on mature thought, could say was unfair will be done. You are the mayor of Chicago. I am a citizen. I merely wish fair play from you. I merely ask you to give me your word of honor that from now on you will take no part in this fight which is one of pure spite against me. If you cannot conscientiously aid me in what I consider to be a perfectly legitimate demand for additional franchises, you will, at least, not go out of your way to publicly attack me. I will put these letters in my safe, and there they will stay until the next campaign is over, when I will take them out and destroy them. I have no personal feeling against you--none in the world. I do not ask you to sign any ordinance which the council may pass giving me elevated-road rights. What I do wish you to do at this time is to refrain from stirring up public sentiment against me, especially if the council should see fit to pass an ordinance over your veto.
Is that satisfactory?"
"But my friends? The public? The Republican party? Don't you see it is expected of me that I should wage some form of campaign against you?" queried Sluss, nervously.
"No, I don't," replied Cowperwood, succinctly, "and, anyhow, there are ways and ways of waging a public campaign. Go through the motions, if you wish, but don't put too much heart in it. And, anyhow, see some one of my lawyers from time to time when they call on you. Judge Dickensheets is an able and fair man. So is General Van Sickle. Why not confer with them occasionally?--not publicly, of course, but in some less conspicuous way. You will find both of them most helpful."
Cowperwood smiled encouragingly, quite beneficently, and Chaffee Thayer Sluss, his political hopes gone glimmering, sat and mused for a few moments in a sad and helpless quandary.
"Very well," he said, at last, rubbing his hands feverishly. "It is what I might have expected. I should have known. There is no other way, but--" Hardly able to repress the hot tears now burning beneath his eyelids, the Hon. Mr. Sluss picked up his hat and left the room. Needless to add that his preachings against Cowperwood were permanently silenced.
