"Huh!" grunted Wilkinson, "don't know but I'll do it now, and take you with me, Colonel."
"Don't care if you do. It would end my troubles."
Wilkinson tapped the Colonel on the knee.
"Tell me, Colonel, how much money does that blatherskite get a year?"
"Gilchrist--the chap that had the nerve to sentence me."
Morehead told him; Wilkinson opened wide his eyes.
"You don't mean to tell me that's all he makes--his salary?"
"And do you mean to tell me that a man who only gets that much a year has the power to put away a man like me--can do a thing like that? What are we coming to in the United States?"
"That man Gilchrist is a marked man from now on," went on Wilkinson. "His degradation has begun. He sentenced me all right; and I've sentenced him. I'll see to it that he's hounded out of New York. Any man that tries to set himself up before me--may stand up for five minutes or so, but he'll go down as sure as death and taxes. Every man that's prosecuted me, touched me, laid his hands on me physically or figuratively, is going to get it. I've got a heavy hand, Morehead, and they're going to feel it. They're going to know it's me. Gilchrist will get his, first."
The lawyer sniffed the breeze and closed his eyes in ecstasy.
"Oh, come now, Peter ...! I haven't enjoyed a day like this in years."
"You don't suppose I brought you along to have you enjoy yourself?" bluntly.
"No, I wouldn't credit you with that nobility of character, Peter. But I'm here no matter what your purpose may have been, and I propose to enjoy myself."
The multi-millionaire received this remark in silence. Colonel Morehead was one of the few independent men he had ever met. Wilkinson could never quite make him out, and therefore was afraid of him. As a matter of fact, Morehead's code was a simple one: he merely did his duty towards his clients in his own way; and if they didn't like it, that was their affair and not his. His acquired indifference was his greatest capital.
"At any rate," growled his host, "I suppose I'm paying you by the minute all the time you're here."
"Presume you are, Peter," sweetly answered the Colonel; "and that's a pleasure, too, to both of us, I'm sure."
"Business before pleasure is my motto, you know," resumed Wilkinson. "I brought you out here to have a quiet talk where even Flomerfelt or Patrick Durand cannot hear it. I haven't been able to pin you down to my case since my conviction. Look here, Morehead," he went on appealingly, "we'll reverse this sentence a hundred times over, eh?"