e threat."

"Hardly a threat, Mr. Worthington." Houston was speaking coldly,
incisively. "Merely what I have heard you often call in court a
statement of fact. In case it wasn't repeated to you correctly, I'll
bore you with it again. I said that if you didn't see me immediately,
there would be something extremely distasteful to you in the morning
papers."

"Well? I've seen you. Now--"

"Wait just a moment, Mr. Worthington. I thought it was only civil
lawyers who indulged in technicalities. I didn't know that criminal,"
and he put emphasis on the word, then repeated it, "that criminal
lawyers had the habit also."

"If you'll cease this insulting--"

"Oh, I think I have a right to that. To tell the truth, I've only
begun to insult you. That is--if you call this sort of a thing an
insult. To get at the point of the matter, Mr. Worthington, I want to
be fair with you. I've come here to ask something--I'll admit
that--but it is something that should benefit you in a number of ways.
But we'll speak of that later. The main point is this: I am thinking
very seriously of suing the city of Boston for a million dollars."

"Well? What's that to me?" Worthington sighed, with a bit of relief,
Houston thought, and walked back to the table for a cigarette. "I
haven't anything to do with the city. Go as far as you like. I'm out
of politics; in case you don't know, I'm in business for myself and
haven't the least interest in what the city does, or what any one does
to it."

"Even though you should happen to be the bone of contention--and the
butt of what may be a good deal of unpleasant newspaper notoriety?"

"You're talking blackmail!"

"I beg your pardon. Blackmail is something by which one extorts money.
I'm here to try to give you money--or at least the promise of it--and
at the same time allow you to make up for something that should,
whether it does or not, weigh rather heavily on your conscience."

"If you'll come to the point."

"Exactly. Do you remember my case?"

"In a way. I had a good many of them."

"Which, I hope, you did not handle in the same way that you did mine.
But to recall it all to your recollection, I was accused of having
killed my own cousin, Tom Langdon, with a mallet."

"Yes--I remember now. You two had some kind of a drunken fight."

"And you, at the time, if I remember correctly, had a fight of your
own. It was nearing election time."

"Correct. I remember now."