"The Interurban," I said.
"A dummy company?" said Mr. Jason.
"Lively enough to bid something over a hundred thousand to the city for
its franchise," I replied.
Judd Jason, with a queer look, got up and went to a desk in a dark
corner, and after rummaging for a few moments in one of the pigeon-holes,
drew forth a glass cylinder, which he held out as he approached me.
"You get it, Mr. Paret," he said.
"What is it?" I asked, "a bomb!"
"That," he announced, as he twisted the tube about in his long fingers,
holding it up to the light, "is the finest brand of cigars ever made in
Cuba. A gentleman who had every reason to be grateful to me--I won't say
who he was--gave me that once. Well, the Lord made me so's I can't
appreciate any better tobacco than those five-cent 'Bobtails' Monahan's
got downstairs, and I saved it. I saved it for the man who would put
something over me some day, and--you get it."
"Thank you," I said, unconsciously falling in with the semi-ceremony of
his manner. "I do not flatter myself that the solution I have suggested
did not also occur to you."
"You'll smoke it?" he asked.
"Surely."
"Now? Here with me?"
"Certainly," I agreed, a little puzzled. As I broke the seal, pulled out
the cork and unwrapped the cigar from its gold foil he took a stick and
rapped loudly on the floor. After a brief interval footsteps were heard
on the stairs and Mike Monahan, white aproned and scarlet faced, appeared
at the door.
"Bobtails," said Mr. Jason, laconically.
"It's them I thought ye'd be wanting," said the saloon-keeper, holding
out a handful. Judd Jason lighted one, and began smoking reflectively.
I gazed about the mean room, with its litter of newspapers and reports,
its shabby furniture, and these seemed to have become incongruous, out of
figure in the chair facing me keeping with the thoughtful figure in the
chair facing me.
"You had a college education, Mr. Paret," he remarked at length.
"Yes."
"Life's a queer thing. Now if I'd had a college education, like you, and
you'd been thrown on the world, like me, maybe I'd be livin' up there on
Grant Avenue and you'd be down here over the saloon."
"Maybe," I said, wondering uneasily whether he meant to imply a
similarity in our gifts. But his manner remained impassive, speculative.
"Ever read Carlyle's 'French Revolution'?" he asked suddenly.
"Why, yes, part of it, a good while ago."
"When you was in college?"
"Yes."
"I've got a little library here," he said, getting up and raising the
shades and opening the glass doors of a bookcase which had escaped my
attention. He took down a volume of Carlyle, bound in half calf.
"Wouldn't think I cared for such things, would you?" he demanded as he
handed it to me.
"Well, you never can tell what a man's real tastes are until you know
him," I observed, to conceal my surprise.
"That's so," he agreed. "I like books--some books. If I'd had an
education, I'd have liked more of 'em, known more about 'em. Now I can
read this one over and over. That feller Carlyle was a genius, he could
look right into the bowels of the volcano, and he was on to how men and
women feet down there, how they hate, how they square 'emselves when they
get a chance."
He had managed to bring before me vividly that terrible, volcanic flow on
Versailles of the Paris mob. He put back the book and resumed his seat.
"And I know how these people fed down here, below the crust," he went on,
waving his cigar out of the window, as though to indicate the whole of
that mean district. "They hate, and their hate is molten hell. I've been
through it."
"But you've got on top," I suggested.
"Sure, I've got on top. Do you know why? it's because I hated--that's
why. A man's feelings, if they're strong enough, have a lot to do with
what he becomes."
"But he has to have ability, too," I objected.
"Sure, he has to have ability, but his feeling is the driving power if he
feels strong enough, he can make a little ability go a long way."
I was struck by the force of this remark. I scarcely recognized Judd
Jason. The man, as he revealed himself, had become at once more sinister
and more fascinating.
"I can guess how some of those Jacobins felt when they had the
aristocrats in the dock. They'd got on top--the Jacobins, I mean. It's
human nature to want to get on top--ain't it?" He looked at me and
smiled, but he did not seem to expect a reply. "Well, what you call
society, rich, respectable society like you belong to would have made a
bum and a criminal out of me if I hadn't been too smart for 'em, and it's
a kind of satisfaction to have 'em coming down here to Monahan's for
things they can't have without my leave. I've got a half Nelson on 'em. I
wouldn't live up on Grant Avenue if you gave me Scherer's new house."