to fire the scabs?"
"Not till hell freezes over!"
Mr. Driscoll's eyes clicked, and he banged his pudgy fist upon his desk.
"Then the men'll go back to work on the day hell freezes over," returned Foley, rising to go. "But I have an idea youse'll want to see me a day or two before then. I've come to youse this time. The next time we talk, youse'll come to me. There's my card." And he went out with the triumphant feeling of the man who can guide events.
At ten o'clock the next morning he clambered again to the top of the St. Etienne Hotel. The Italian and Swede were still at work.
"Lay down your tools, boys!" he called out to the two gangs. "The job's struck!"
The men crowded around him, demanding information.
"Driscoll won't fire the scabs," he explained.
"Kick 'em off, – settle it that-a-way!" growled one of the men. "We can't afford to lose wages on account o' two scabs."
"That'd only settle this one case. We've got to settle the scab question with Driscoll for good an' all. It's hard luck, boys, I know," he said sympathetically, "but we can't do nothin' but strike. We've got to lick Driscoll into shape."
Leaving the men talking hotly as they changed their clothes for the street, Foley went down the ladder to bear the same message and the same comfort to the riveters.
The next morning the general contractor for the building got Mr. Driscoll on the telephone. "Why aren't you getting that ironwork up?" he demanded.
Mr. Driscoll started into an explanation of his trouble with Foley, but the general contractor cut him short. "I don't care what the trouble is. What I care about is that you're not getting that ironwork up. Get your men right back to work."
"How?" queried Mr. Driscoll sarcastically.
"That's your business!" answered the general contractor, and rang off.
Mr. Driscoll talked it over with the "Co.," a young fellow of thirty or thereabouts, of polished manner and irreproachable tailoring. "See Foley," Mr. Berman advised.
"It's simply a game for graft!"
"That may be," said the junior partner. "But what can you do?"
"I won't pay graft!"
Mr. Berman shrugged his shapely shoulders and withdrew. Mr. Driscoll paced his office floor, tugged at his whiskers, and used some language that at least had the virtue of being terse. With the consequence, that he saw there was nothing for him but to settle as best as he could. In furious mortification he wrote to Foley asking him to call. The answer was a single scrawled sentence: "If you want to see me, I live at – West One Hundred and Fifteenth Street."
The instant after this note was read its fragments were in Mr. Driscoll's waste basket. He'd suffer a sulphurous fate before he'd do it! But the general contractor descended upon him 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.
