The Walking Delegate. Scott Leroy
in person, and there was a bitter half hour. The result was that late Saturday afternoon Mr. Driscoll locked his pride in his desk, put his checkbook in his pocket, and set forth for the number on West One Hundred and Fifteenth Street.
A large woman, of dark voluptuous beauty, with a left hand like a jeweller's tray, answered his knock and led him into the parlor, on whose furnishings more money than taste had been spent. The room was a war of colors, in which the gilt of the picture frames, enclosing oblongs of high-hued sentiment, had the best of the conflict, and in which baby blue, showing in pictures, upholstery and a fancy lamp shade, was an easy second, despite its infantility.
Foley sat in a swinging rocker, reading an evening paper, his coat off, his feet in slippers. He did not rise. "Hello! Are they havin' zero weather in hell?"
Mr. Driscoll passed the remark. "I guess you know what I'm here for."
"If youse give me three guesses, I might be able to hit it. But chair bottom's as cheap as carpet. Set down."
Mr. Driscoll sank into an upholstered chair, and a skirmish began between his purple face and the baby blue of the chair's back. "Let's get to business," he said.
"Won't youse have a drink first?" queried Foley, with baiting hospitality.
Mr. Driscoll's hands clenched the arms of the chair. "Let's get to business."
"Well, – fire away."
"You know what it is."
"I can't say's I do," Foley returned urbanely.
The contractor's hands dug again into the upholstery. "About the strike you called on the St. Etienne."
"Oh, that! – Well?"
Mr. Driscoll gulped down pride and anger and went desperately to the point. "What'll I have to do to settle it?"
"Um! Le's see. First of all, youse'll fire the scabs?"
"Yes."
"Seems to me I give youse the chance to do that before, an' end it right there. But it can't end there now. There's the wages the men's lost. Youse'll have to pay waitin' time."
"Extortion, you mean," Mr. Driscoll could not refrain from saying.
"Waitin' time," Foley corrected blandly.
"Well, – how much?" Mr. Driscoll remarked to himself that he knew what part of the "waiting time" the men would get.
Foley looked at the ceiling and appeared to calculate. "The waitin' time'll cost youse an even thousand."
"What!"
"If youse ain't learnt your lesson yet, youse might as well go back." He made as if to resume his paper.
Mr. Driscoll swallowed hard. "Oh, I'll pay. What else can I do? You've got me in a corner with a gun to my head."
Foley did not deny the similitude. "youse're gettin' off dirt cheap."
"When'll the men go back to work?"
"The minute youse pay, the strike's off."
Mr. Driscoll drew out his check-book, and started to fill in a check with a fountain pen.
"Hold on there!" Foley cried. "No checks for me."
"What's the matter with a check?"
"Youse don't catch me scatterin' my name round on the back o' checks. D'youse think I was born yesterday?"
"Where's the danger, since the money's to go to the men for waiting time?" Mr. Driscoll asked sarcastically.
"It's cash or nothin'," Foley said shortly.
"I've no money with me. I'll bring it some time next week."
"Just as youse like. Only every day raises the price."
Mr. Driscoll made haste to promise to deliver the money Monday morning as soon as he could get it from his bank. And Foley thereupon promised to have the men ready to go back to work Monday afternoon. So much settled, Mr. Driscoll started to leave. He was suffocating.
"Won't youse have a drink?" Foley asked again, at the door.
Mr. Driscoll wanted only to get out of Foley's company, where he could explode without having it put in the bill. "No," he said curtly.
"Well! – now me, when I got to swallow a pill I like somethin' to wash it down."
The door slammed, and Mr. Driscoll puffed down the stairs leaving behind him a trail of language like a locomotive's plume.
Chapter III
THE RISE OF BUCK FOLEY
Tom glared at Foley till the walking delegate had covered half the distance to the ladder, then he turned back to his supervision, trying to hide the fires of his wrath. But his soul flamed within him. All that Foley had just threatened, openly and by insinuation, was within his power of accomplishment. Tom knew that. And every other man in the union was as much at his mercy, – and every man's family. And many had suffered greatly, and all, except Foley's friends, had suffered some. Tom's mind ran over the injustice Foley had wrought, and over Foley's history and the union's history during the last few years … and there was no sinking of the inward fire.
And yet there was a long period in the walking delegate's history on which Tom would not have passed harsh judgment. Very early in his career, in conformity with prevailing custom, Buck Foley had had a father and a mother. His mother he did not remember at all. After she had intimated a preference for another man by eloping with him, Buck's father had become afflicted with almost constant unsteadiness in his legs, an affliction that had before victimized him only at intervals. His father he remembered chiefly from having carried a tin pail to a store around the corner where a red-faced man filled it and handed it back to him over a high counter; and also from a white scar which even now his hair did not altogether conceal. One day his father disappeared. Not long after that Buck went to live in a big house with a great lot of boys, the little ones in checked pinafores, the big ones in gray suits. After six years of life here, at the age of twelve, he considered that he was fit for graduation, and so he went out into the world, – this on a very dark night when all in the big house were fast asleep.
For three years Buck was a newsboy; sleeping in a bed when he could afford one, sleeping in hallways, over warm gratings, along the docks, when he could not; winning all the newsboy's keen knowledge of human nature. At fifteen the sea fascinated him, and he lived in ships till he was twenty. Then a sailor's duties began to irk him. He came back to New York, took the first job that offered, driving a truck, and joined a political club of young men in a west side ward. Here he found himself. He rose rapidly to power in the club. Dan McGuire, the boss of the ward, had to take notice of him. He left his truck for a city job with a comfortable salary and nothing to do. At twenty-five he was one of McGuire's closest aids. Then his impatient ambition escaped his control. He plotted a revolution, which should overthrow McGuire and enthrone himself. But the Boss had thirty years of political cunning, and behind him a strong machine. For these Buck was no match. He took again to the sea.
Buck shipped as second mate on a steamer carrying steel for a great bridge in South Africa. Five years of authority had unfitted him for the subordinate position of second mate, and there were many tilts with the thick-headed captain. The result was that after the steamer had discharged her cargo Foley quitted his berth and followed the steel into the interior. The contractors were in sore need of men, and, even though Foley was not a bridgeman, they gladly gave him a job. His service as a sailor had fitted him to follow, without a twinge of fear, the most expert of the bridgemen in their daring clambering about cables and over narrow steel beams; and being naturally skillful he rapidly became an efficient workman.
Of the men sent out to this distant job perhaps one-half were union members. These formed a local branch of their society, and this Foley was induced to join. He rapidly won to influence and power in the affairs of the union, finding here the same keen enjoyment in managing men that he had first tasted in Dan McGuire's ward. After the completion of this job he worked in Scotland and Brazil, always active in the affairs of his union. At thirty-two he found himself back in New York, – a forceful leader ripe for an opportunity.
He