He looked sixty-five, though he may have been ten years younger, and the years had served to parch rather than to mellow him. His unkempt hair, to the extent that it had survived, was a dingy yellow-white which had probably been sandy in its youth; a mustache of the same hue except where tobacco had stained it a richer shade, straggled over withered lips. His forehead was low, narrow, and of an almost reptilian flatness; his nose was long and pinched and drooping below flat, lusterless eyes of faded, unrecognizable color; his chin was frankly receding.
In his thick-soled boots he would have stood less than five and a half feet — say, just a trifle above the Senator’s shoulder — and the beam of scales set at a hundred and five pounds would have been undisturbed by his presence. He wore a baggy suit of a once-snuff color, and a soft black hat lay on the floor beside his chair.
The pipe loaded, he turned to the table, filled a glass from the bottle, and drained it with neither the shudder nor the appreciative grimace which usually accompanies the drinking of straight whiskey. Then, disregarding the matches on the stand beside him, he felt in the pockets of his vest, brought out a match with the common brown head so seldom seen nowadays, ignited it sputteringly on the sole of a boot, and lighted, the pipe.
His glance never for an instant rested on any of the furnishings of the luxurious room; it ranged from the Senator to the pipe, to the hat on the floor occasionally, and then back to the Senator.
Obviously unused to the elegance among which he found himself, that little man was not comfortable, not at home; hut his attitude was certainly not one of awe — rather he seemed to disapprove of the sybaritic apartment, and, disapproving, to ignore it altogether, as something unworthy of a man’s attention.
The Senator chewed a cigar, frowned at his feet, and talked. He was counted in political circles a reticent man, one who expressed himself crisply and concisely, with a great economy of words. But his conversation now was at variance with that reputation.
He talked desultorily, letting his sentences lose themselves half-formed, their logical endings being replaced by irrelevancies or not at all. The little man answered now and then with drawled monosyllables in a dry, reedy voice; he was plainly not engrossed by his host’s words. It was clear that the Senator had not sent for him to discuss crops and the political situation in Sudlow County.
The Senator wasted three-quarters of an hour in this nervous dalliance. Then he threw his cold cigar into the fire-place and slid his chair forward to within a foot of his guest’s. He leaned still closer, the lines between his eyebrows deepening.
“But all this isn’t what I wanted to see you for, Inch,” he said, his deep voice impressive even in its half-whisper. “I am in trouble. I need a man’s help.”
Gene Inch nodded his head slightly, waiting.
“Can I count on you?” And then, as the meaningless nod came again, “You know I pardoned Tom when I was governor.”
It was true enough that the impetus behind that pardoning had been political expediency; but what of it? He had pardoned Tom Inch!
Gene Inch took the pipe from his mouth and said:
“Yeah, I know you pardoned Tom. You don’t have to remind a Inch of his debts.”
“You’ll help me, then?” the Senator insisted.
“Uh-huh. Who do you want killed?”
The Senator quailed and his eyes widened.
“Killed?” he repeated in a tone of horror. “Killed?”
Inch bared his stained and broken teeth in an evil grin.
“I hope it ain’t no worse than that,” he said. “But supposing you tell me what’s what.”
The Senator laid an unsteady hand on the other’s bony knee.
“I’m being blackmailed. It has been going on for years, since shortly after I came to Sudlow County. All the years I was in the State legislature, when I was governor, and now since I have been senator, I have been paying — paying more and more every year. And now... now I’ve got to stop it. Inch, I have made a lot of friends since I have been here in Washington, and they are talking of running me for the presidency in 1924. But I can’t go ahead unless I shake this blackmailer off. I must shake him off, or I am stopped! The more prominent I become, the more insolent he is — it strengthens his hand just that much more — and if I should he elected president of this country... I can’t try unless I get rid of him!”
Inch’s face hadn’t lighted up at mention of either the blackmailer or the Senator’s presidential hopes, and his eyes were as void of fire as ever.
“Where’ll I find this fellow?” he asked laconically.
“Wait, Gene,” the Senator said. “We must be careful. There must be no scandal or my position will be even worse than now. I want you to fix it so he won’t bother me, but I don’t want anything done that will bring on worse trouble.”
Inch let a shade of his contempt for this nicety show in the lift of his lips, and then he said:
“Well, I reckon you better tell me more about it, then.”
The Senator’s eyes narrowed. He spoke aloud, but more to himself than to his guest:
“I pardoned your boy Tom when he was serving life for killing Dick Haney... All right!
“I came to Sudlow County nearly twenty years ago, remember? Well, I came there after escaping from the California State prison at San Quentin. I got in a fight in Oakland one night and killed a man. I wasn’t know in Oakland and I gave a false name when I was arrested. I took my real name again after I escaped — I don’t know of anybody else who ever did it from there. I was sentenced to thirty years, but after a year and a half I escaped. About two years after I had settled in Sudlow County a man who had been in San Quentin with me recognized me. Frank McPhail was his name, but he goes by the name of Henry Bush now. I’ve been paying him every cent I could scrape together ever since.”
Inch twisted the end of his long nose between a scrawny thumb and finger, reflectively.
“Any chance of facing it down? I mean, can he prove anything?”
“The fingerprints — they are still on file at San Quentin.”
“Do you reckon there’s anybody in on it besides this Bush?”
The Senator shook his head.
“I am reasonably certain that he hasn’t told anyone else” — bitterly — “or I should have heard from them, too.”
“Where does this Bush live at? And what does he look like?”
“Wait, Gene!” the Senator pleaded. “You can’t walk up and shoot him. He is well known here in Washington, and he is known for a friend of mine — he has boasted enough of our intimacy! No matter how careful you were, if you killed him something would leak out, and I’d be worse off than I am now. And, besides, I can’t stomach murder!”
Inch tweaked his nose thoughtfully again and focused his flat eyes on the dirty bowl of bis pipe.
“What’s the next nearest city to here?” he asked.
“Baltimore is only forty miles away.”
“Do you reckon this Bush is known much in Baltimore?”
“I don’t think he is. Why?”
Inch thrust the pipe into his pocket and picked up his hat.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said.
II
The following evening Gene Inch called upon the Senator again. He stayed but a few minutes, talking to the Senator in the reception hall.
“You tell this Bush you want him to come see you tomorrow in Baltimore; that you’ll be waiting for him in room 411 at the Strand hotel between ten and eleven at night; that he’s to come right up to the room and not ask for you at the desk, because you ain’t going to be registered under you own name. Can you make him swallow it?”
“I think so,” the Senator said hesitantly, “but he’ll be suspicious and come prepared for trouble. What are you going to do, Gene? You aren’t doing to—”
“You leave me be,” Inch said querulously. “I’m going to fix this thing. Do as I tell you. It don’t make no difference what he thinks, or how suspicious he is, get him over there and I’ll get you out of your troubles.”