Free The Glass Key by Dashiell Hammett Page A

of a sight," but still not enough to make much of a dent in the opposition. While he talked his eyes kept crawling sidewise to the door.
    Ned Beaumont sat astride his chair by the window again smoking a cigar.
    Madvig addressed to another man a question having to do with the size of the campaign-contribution to be expected from a man named Hartwick. This other man kept his eyes from the door, but his reply lacked coherence.
    Neither Madvig's and Ned Beaumont's calmness of mien nor their business-like concentration on campaign-problems could check the growth of tension in the room.
    After fifteen minutes Madvig rose and said: "Well, we're not on Easy Street yet, but si-me's shaping up. Keep hard at it and we'll make the grade." He went to the door and shook each man's hand as they went out. They went out somewhat hurriedly.
    Ned Beaumont, who had not left his chair, asked, when he and Madvig were the only ones in the room: "Do I stick around or beat it?"
    "Stick around." Madvig crossed to the window and looked down into sunny China Street.
    "Both hands working?" Ned Beaumont asked after a little pause.
    Madvig turned from the window nodding. "I don't know anything else"-he grinned boyishly at the man straddling the chair-"except maybe the feet too."
    Ned Beaumont started to say something, but was interrupted by the noise the turning door-knob made.
    A man opened the door and came in. He was a man of little more than medium height, trimly built with a trimness that gave him a deceptively frail appearance. Though his hair was a sheer sleek white he was probably not much past his thirty-fifth year. His eyes were a notable clear grey-blue set in a rather long and narrow, but very finely sculptured, face. He wore a dark blue overcoat over a dark blue suit and carried a black derby hat in a black-gloved hand.
    The man who came in behind him was a bow-legged ruffian of the same height, a swarthy man with something apish in the slope of his big shoulders, the length of his thick arms, and the flatness of his face. This one's hat-a grey fedora-was on his head. He shut the door and leaned against it, putting his hands in the pockets of his plaid overcoat.
    The first man, having advanced by then some four or five steps into the room, put his hat on a chair and began to take off his gloves.
    Madvig, hands in trousers-pockets, smiled amiably and said: "How are you, Shad?"
    The white-haired man said: "Fine, Paul. How's yourself?" His voice was a musical barytone. The faintest of brogues colored his words.
    Madvig indicated with a small jerk of his head the man on the chair and asked: "You know Beaumont?"
    O'Rory said: "Yes."
    Ned Beaumont said: "Yes."
    Neither nodded to the other and Ned Beaumont did not get up from his chair.
    Shad O'Rory had finished taking off his gloves. He put them in an overcoat-pocket and said: "Politics is politics and business is business. I've been paying my way and I'm willing to go on paying my way, but I want what I'm paying for." His modulated voice was no more than pleasantly earnest.
    "What do you mean by that?" Madvig asked as if he did not greatly care.
    "I mean that half the coppers in town are buying their cakes and ale with dough they're getting from me and some of my friends."
    Madvig sat down by the table. "Well?" he asked, carelessly as before.
    "I want what I'm paying for. I'm paying to be let alone. I want to be let alone."
    Madvig chuckled. "You don't mean, Shad, that you're complaining to me because your coppers won't stay bought?"
    "I mean that Doolan told me last night that the orders to shut up my places came straight from you."
    Madvig chuckled again and turned his head to address Ned Beaumont: "What do you think of that, Ned?"
    Ned Beaumont smiled thinly, but said nothing.
    Madvig said: "You know what I think of it? I think Captain Doolan's been working too hard. I think somebody ought to give Captain Doolan a nice long leave of absence. Don't let me forget it."
    O'Rory said: "I bought