less than his usual self in
height, weight, and thickness. Cowperwood had seen him more than once
on various political platforms, but he had never met him. When the
troubled mayor entered he arose courteously and waved him to a chair.

"Sit down, Mr. Sluss," he said, genially. "It's a disagreeable day
out, isn't it? I suppose you have come in regard to the matter we were
discussing this morning?"

Nor was this cordiality wholly assumed. One of the primal instincts of
Cowperwood's nature--for all his chicane and subtlety--was to take no
rough advantage of a beaten enemy. In the hour of victory he was
always courteous, bland, gentle, and even sympathetic; he was so
to-day, and quite honestly, too.

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 collaps