ns, stared
incredulously. "Well, I'll be damned!" he commented. "They've got a
nerve! What?"

"I've been talking to this fellow Klemm of the twentieth," said Mr.
Tiernan, sardonically. "Say, he's a real one! I met him over at the
Tremont talkin' to Hvranek. He shakes hands like a dead fish. Whaddye
think he had the nerve to say to me. 'This isn't the Mr. Tiernan of
the second?' he says.

"'I'm the same,' says I.

"'Well, you don't look as savage as I thought you did,' says he.
Haw-haw! I felt like sayin', 'If you don't go way I'll give you a
slight tap on the wrist.' I'd like just one pass at a stiff like that
up a dark alley." (Mr. Tiernan almost groaned in anguish.) "And then he
begins to say he doesn't see how there can be any reasonable objection
to allowin' various new companies to enter the street-car field. 'It's
sufficiently clear,' he says, 'that the public is against monopolies in
any form.'" (Mr. Tiernan was mocking Mr. Klemm's voice and language.)
"My eye!" he concluded, sententiously. "Wait till he tries to throw
that dope into Gumble and Pinski and Schlumbohm--haw, haw, haw!"

Mr. Kerrigan, at the thought of these hearty aldermen accustomed to all
the perquisites of graft and rake-off, leaned back and gave vent to a
burst of deep-chested laughter. "I'll tell you what it is, Mike," he
said, archly, hitching up his tight, very artistic, and almost English
trousers, "we're up against a bunch of pikers in this Gilgan crowd, and
they've gotta be taught a lesson. He knows it as well as anybody else.
None o' that Christian con game goes around where I am. I believe this
man Cowperwood's right when he says them fellows are a bunch of
soreheads and jealous. If Cowperwood's willing to put down good hard
money to keep 'em out of his game, let them do as much to stay in it.
This ain't no charity grab-bag. We ought to be able to round up enough
of these new fellows to make Schryhart and MacDonald come down good and
plenty for what they want. From what Gilgan said all along, I thought
he was dealing with live ones. They paid to win the election. Now let
'em pay to pull off a swell franchise if they want it, eh?"

"You're damn right," echoed Tiernan. "I'm with you to a T."

It was not long after this conversation that Mr. Truman Leslie
MacDonald, acting through Alderman Klemm, proceeded to make a count of
noses, and found to his astonishment that he was not as strong as he
had thought he was. Poli