He gave me a sleepy greeting, but roused himself to attention at my account of the Nob Hill meeting, the midnight session of the Council of Nine, the morning meeting in Bolton’s office, and the warning from Big Sam.
"Hm-m! Well, put on enough watchmen to see that we don’t wake up to find our throats cut," he said. "I dare say P. Bolton is egging them on all around to do something for their money. But so far as the business goes, I think I’ve got everything shipshape and ready for storm. The syndicate is strong enough to protect the market, and the police can handle the Cheap John revolution, and I don’t believe anybody is going to attack the house; so there’s nothing to worry about. But you’d better keep in touch with your anarchist friends a little closer than you’ve been doing. If we can get warning over night of any particular deviltry they are going to start, it might be worth a hundred thousand dollars. Hallo! what’s this?" he cried as a servant brought him a card. "Show him in." And before I could escape, General Wilson bustled through the door, his ruddy face aglow in the frame of his bristling yellow-gray side-whiskers, and his short stout frame radiating energy at every step.
"Why, God bless my soul! Kendrick--Hampden--I find you with your heads together like a pair of conspirators in the theater. Hope I don’t interrupt. It does me good, Hampden, to see you youngsters pulling along in double harness with the war-horses like Kendrick and me; and you can’t find a better one to pull with than Kendrick; he’s the salt of the earth."
I professed myself glad to see the general, and Wharton Kendrick greeted him jovially.
"I don’t believe in doing business on Sunday," said General Wilson. "In fact, I lost a million-dollar trade with Jim Fisk once, because I wouldn’t sign the contract on the Sabbath, and on Monday Jim was chasing after something else. But I thought you’d like to know that I got a telegram from my people about that swamp-land deal. Here it is, and you see they’ll come up to that eight hundred thousand dollar offer. That’s the limit, and it won’t last long at that. I don’t like to boast, Kendrick, but I’ll tell you that there isn’t another man on the footstool that could have got ’em up to that point--I’m the only one that could do it; and, by George, I’m astonished at my own success, the way things are looking in the East with those confounded railroad strikes and rumors of riot. Now, I want you to understand that I’m not asking you to take up with the offer to-day, for of course you remember the Sabbath just as I do. But you can have a good chance to think it over. You know well enough that you’re going to take the offer, so I’ll warn you that I’ll drop around in the morning and get your acceptance."