During that same day, Keighley received various hints, from various
go-betweens, that the men in power were prepared to forgive and forget
if he would take the first opportunity to “make himself solid” and come
into the fold. He “jollied them along,” gave them evasive answers,
or turned stupid and failed to understand what they were proposing.
(The weather aided him, by making activity uncomfortable even for
politicians.) He had the sure hope that the courts would dismiss the
charges against Chief Borden and compel his reinstatement under the
Civil Service laws. He heard rumors that the Fire Commissioner had
had a falling out with “the Boss;” and he expected that with the
autumn there might be changes in the department that would settle the
whole quarrel. Meanwhile, it was his best policy--and his natural
inclination--to stand firm. “I got nuthin’ against the ‘Jiggers,’” he
replied to their emissaries. “I never did anythin’ to ’em. There’s no
trouble here at all.” And if they pressed upon him the advantages of
“getting square up above,” he said, “Well, I’ll think it over. I’ll
think it over.”
He even received with such evasions “Tim” Noonan, the leader of the
“Sixt’”--Noonan of the suave Irish diplomacy--Noonan who had served
with him as a fire laddie in the red-shirt days of the volunteer
fire brigade. Wherever Noonan went, he closed the doors behind him;
Keighley heard him in a silence that was irritating; and Noonan, in the
breathless office, soon arrived at a blood-hot exasperation that kept
boiling up red in his face.
“Well,” Keighley promised placidly, for the fourth time, “I’ll think it
over.”
Noonan plucked from between his teeth the frayed butt of a cigar chewed
to tatters. “Now look a-here,” he said hoarsely, “I’m yer friend I’m
tellin’ yeh, Dan; but I can’t go back with no such answer. An’ _you_
know it. Take it er leave it. There’s promotion in it the one way, an’
there’s trouble th’ other. Are yeh with us, er are yeh not, now?”
Keighley looked out the window and scratched the back of his hand.
“This crew,” he said, “when I took a hold here, it was the makin’
of a mince-pie. An’ it’d ’a’ been the worst mess o’ nuthin’ in the
whole department if I’d run it Jigger er anti-Jigger er anythin’ else
but straight bus’ness to put out fires. I got nuthin’ against the
actin’-chief ner his gang. They ain’t botherin’ me any.”
Noonan had a long, round upper lip that met a round, protruding under
one in a mouth like a rent in a rubber ball. He opened it, and then
shut it again in a politic effort to control his temper, “Dan,” he
said at last, “I like a joke, but I’m no more a damn fool than y’ are
yerself,--mind that now! Yeh’ve been fightin’ half yer comp’ny fer
the month gone, an’ yeh think yeh’ve won. They ain’t botherin’ y’ any
now--no. Yeh think they’ve had enough--an’ mebbe they have. Mebbe they
have. But there’s them that ain’t!” He stopped himself. He plugged
his mouth with his cigar again, and puffed it till it crackled. “Have
sense, now,” he said. “Have sense, man. Here’s yer chance to get the
best that’s goin’. Will yeh take it er leave it?”
Keighley had turned to listen to the tinkle of a telephone bell in the
sitting room where the apparatus of the fire alarm was stationed.
“Will yeh take it er leave it?” Noonan demanded.
Keighley did not answer. He swung around in his swivel chair. Some one
rapped at the door, and he called, “Come!”
Lieutenant Moore looked in to report, “A telephone call from
headquarters. Soap works afire at Nohunk. They want us to keep it off
the coal docks.”
They were the department’s coal docks.
Keighley ordered, “Cast off.” He turned to Noonan. “Better come along
with us,” he said. “It’ll be cooler outside.”
Noonan had found it hot work trying to lead old obstinacy in the
office. The boat looked inviting. There were two chairs under an awning
in the fantail. “All right,” he said, and went sulkily aboard.
Keighley took him to the wheelhouse, instead of to the stern. There
was, of course, a pilot at the wheel; and Noonan waited in impatient
expectation that the captain would give his orders there and then go
aft to finish their conversation. But as soon as the boat was under
way, the men, clearing the decks for action, began to roll up the
awning and carry the chairs below; and Noonan looked at the captain
with the expression of a man who had been tricked.
With his gray side-whiskers and his long lip, he was the sort of
Irishman who would have made an amiable parish priest if circumstances
had not made him a ward leader--the sort of man to whom politics is a
benevolent affair of “gettin’ jobs” for his friends and loyally keeping
them from his enemies. The only dishonesty in public office that he
understood was the dishonesty of treason to the “organization,” and he
despised the political renegade as he would have despised the turncoat
who deserts his church.
Jigger and anti-Jigger were, as has been said so often, merely factions
of the organization, and he could come to Keighley with a charitable
desire to convince the captain that he was standing in his own light.
Keighley and he had been young together. They were old friends, though
they had not met for some time. Yet Keighley received him without
trust, and held him off.
He smoked resentfully; and the head wind, through the open window of
the wheelhouse, blew the cigar ashes in his eyes.
Keighley stood at the pilot’s shoulder, his hands behind him,
pretending that he was watching innocently the course they steered. He
said, at last, “Volunteer firemen up to Nohunk.”
Noonan blinked and grunted.
Keighley glanced at him slyly. After a pause he added, “It’ll remind y’
of ol’ times.”
[Illustration: _He began to screw out the tortuous scrawl of his report_