And as to his own disaster, he
was less than accurate when he said that the whole town was seething
with indignation. The members of the North Side set, to be sure, were
seething furiously, but a flippant element of the baser sort was quite
openly rejoicing. As at the time of that most slanderous minstrel
performance, it was said that the Bohemian set had again, if I have
caught the phrase, "put a thing over upon" the North Side set. Many
persons of low taste seemed quite to enjoy the dreadful affair, and
the members of the Bohemian set, naturally, throughout the day had
been quite coarsely beside themselves with glee.
Little they knew, I reflected, what power I could wield nor that I had
already set in motion its deadly springs. Little did the woman dream,
flaunting her triumph up and down our main business thoroughfare, that
one who watched her there had but to raise his hand to wrest the
victim from her toils. Little did she now dream that he would stop at
no half measures. I mean to say, she would never think I could bowl
her out as easy as buying cockles off a barrow.
At the hour for our conference Belknap-Jackson arrived at my chambers
muffled in an ulster and with a soft hat well over his face. I
gathered that he had not wished to be observed.
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