As it was, the Judge didn't drop dead. And his face didn't show a thing. But I felt him stiffen. You turn to shut a door some night and find somebody standing there out of the dark, and you'll take a jump, too.
"No," the Boss said, easy and grinning, taking his hat off his head and stepping inside just as though he'd been invited, which he hadn't been, "no, Jack isn't in any trouble. Not that I know of. Nor me either."
The Judge was looking at me now. "I beg your pardon," he said to me, in a voice he knew how to make cold and rasping like an old phonograph needle scraping on an old record, "I had forgotten for the moment how well your needs are provided for."
"Oh, Jack's making out," the Boss said.
"And you, sir–" the Judge turned on the Boss, and slanted his yellow eyes down on him–for he was a half a head taller–and I could see the jaw muscles twitch and knot under the folds of red-rusty and seamed skin on his long jaw, "do you wish to say something to me?"
"Well, I don't know as I do," the Boss remarked offhand. "Not at the moment."
"Well," the Judge said, "in that case–"
"Oh, something might develop," the Boss broke in. "You never can tell. If we get the weight off our arches."
"In that case," the Judge resumed, and it was an old needle and an old record and it was scraping like a file on cold tin and nothing human, "I may say that I was about to retire."
"Oh, it's early yet," the Boss said, and took his time giving Judge Irwin the once-over from head to toe. The Judge was wearing an old-fashioned velvet smoking jacket and tuxedo pants and a boiled shirt, but he had taken off his collar and tie and the collar button was shining just under the big old red Adam's apple. "Yeah," the Boss went on, after he'd finished the once-over, "and you'll sleep better if you wait before going to bed and give that fine dinner you had a chance to digest."
And he just began walking down the hall toward the door where the light was, the door to the library.
Judge Irwin looked at the Boss's back as the Boss just walked away, the Palm Beach coat all crumpled up where it had crawled on the Boss's shoulders and the old sweat-stains of the afternoon showing dark at the armpits. The Judge's yellow eyes were near to popping out of his face and the blood was up in his face till it was the color of calf's liver in a butcher shop. Then he began to walk down the hall after the Boss.
I followed the pair of them.
The Boss was already sitting in a big old scuffed leather easy chair when I went in. I stood there against the wall, under the bookshelves that went up to the ceiling, full of old leather books, a lot of them law books, that got lost in the shadows up above and made the room smell musty like old cheese. Well, the room hadn't changed any. I could remember that smell from the long afternoons I had spent in that room, reading by myself or hearing the Judge's voice reading to me, while a log crackled on the hearth and the clock in the corner, a big grandfather's clock in the corner, a big grandfather's clock, offered us the slow, small, individual pellets of time. It was the same room. There were the big steel engravings on the wall–by Piranesi, in the heavy, scrollwork frames, the Tiber, the Colosseum, some ruined temple. And the riding crops on the mantel and on the desk, and the silver cups the Judge's dogs had won in the field trials and the Judge had won shooting. The gun rack, over in the shadow by the door, was out of the light from the big brass reading on the desk, but I knew every gun in it, and knew the gun's feel.
The Judge didn't sit down. He stood in the middle of the floor and looked down at the Boss, who had his legs stuck out on the red carpet. And the Judge didn't say anything. Something was going on inside his head. You knew that if he had a little glass window in the side of that tall skull, where the one-time thick, dark-red, mane-like hair was thinned out now and faded, you could see inside and see the wheels and springs and cogs and ratchets working away and shining like a beautiful lot of well-kept mechanism. But maybe somebody had pushed the wrong button. Maybe it was just going to run on and on till something cracked or the spring ran down, and nothing was going to happen.
But the Boss said something. He jerked his head sideways to indicate the silver tray with the bottle and the pitcher of water and a silver bowl and two used glasses and three or four clean ones which sat on the desk, and said, "Judge, I trust you don't mind Jack pouring me a slug? You know Southern hospitality."
Judge Irwin didn't answer him. He turned to me, and I said, "I didn't realize, Jack, that your duties included those of a body servant, but, of course, if I am mistaken–"
I could have slapped his face. I could have slapped that God-damned handsome, eagle-beaked, strong-boned, rubiginous-hided, high old face, in which the eyes weren't old but were hard and bright without any depth to them and were an insult to look into. And the Boss laughed, and I could have slapped his God-damned face. I could have walked right out and felt the two of them there, alone in that cheese-smelling room together till hell froze over, and just kept on walking. But I didn't, and perhaps it was just as well, for maybe you cannot ever really walk away from the things you want most to walk away from.
"Oh, nuts," the Boss said, and stopped laughing, and heaved himself up out of the leather chair, and made a pass at the bottle and sloshed out some whisky into a glass and poured in some water. Then he turned round, and grinning up to the Judge, stepped toward me and held out the glass. "Here, Jack," he said, "have a drink."
I can't say that I took the drink. It got shoved into my hand, and I stood there holding it, not drinking it, and watched the Boss look up at the Judge Irwin and say, "Sometimes Jack pours me a drink, and sometimes I pour him a drink and–" he stepped toward the desk again–"sometimes I pour myself a drink."
He poured the drink, added water, and looked again at the Judge, leering with a kind of comic cunning. "Whether I'm asked or not," he said. And added, "There's lots of things you never get, Judge, if you wait till you are asked. And I am an impatient man. I am a very impatient man, Judge. That is why I am not a gentleman, Judge."
"Really?" replied the Judge. He stood in the middle of the floor and studied the scene beneath him.
From my spot by the wall, I looked at both of them. _To hell with them__, I thought, _to hell with both of them__. When they talked like that, it was to hell with both of them.
"Yeah," the Boss was saying, "you're a gent, and so you don't ever get impatient. Not even for your likker. You aren't even impatient for your drink right now and it's likker your money paid for. But you'll get a drink, Judge. I'm asking you to have one. Have a drink with me, Judge."
Judge Irwin didn't answer a word. He stood very erect in the middle of the floor.
"Aw, have a drink," the Boss said, and laughed, and sat again in the big chair and stuck out his legs on the red carpet.
The Judge didn't pour himself a drink. And he didn't sit down.
The Boss looked up at him from the chair and said, "Judge, you happen to have an evening paper round here?"
The paper was lying over on another chair by the fireplace, with the Judge's collar and tie on top of it, and his white jacket hung on the back of the chair. I saw the Judge's eyes snap over there to it, and then back at the Boss.
"Yes," the Judge said, "as a matter of fact, I have."
"I haven't had a chance to see one, rushing around the country today. Mind if I take a look?"
"Not in the slightest," Judge Irwin said, and the sound was the file scraping on that cold tin again, "but perhaps I can relieve your curiosity on one point. The paper publishes my endorsement of Callahan for the Senate nomination. If that is of interest to you."
"Just wanted to hear you say it, Judge. Somebody told me, but you know how rumor hath a thousand tongues, and how the newspaper boys tend to exaggeration, and the truth ain't in 'em."