"Because that's the best graft," explained he."It means the most money, and the most influence.The coyotes that raid the sheep fold don't get the big share--though they may get a good deal.No, it's the shepherds and the owners that pull off the most.I've been leader of coyotes.I'm graduating into shepherd and proprietor.""I see," said Susan."You make it beautifully clear."He bowed and smiled."Thank you, kindly.Then, I'll go on.
I'm deep in the contracting business now.I've got a pot of money put away.I've cut out the cards--except a little gentlemen's game now and then, to help me on with the right kind of people.Horses, the same way.I've got my political pull copper-riveted.It's as good with the Republicans as with Democrats, and as good with the reform crowd as with either.My next move is to cut loose from the gang.I've put a lot of lieutenants between me and them, instead of dealing with them direct.I'm putting in several more fellows I'm not ashamed to be seen with in Delmonico's.""What's become of Jim?" asked Susan.
"Dead--a kike shot him all to pieces in a joint in Seventh Avenue about a month ago.As I was saying, how do these big multi-millionaires do the trick? They don't tell somebody to go steal what they happen to want.They tell somebody they want it, and that somebody else tells somebody else to get it, and that somebody else passes the word along until it reaches the poor devils who must steal it or lose their jobs.Istudied it all out, and I've framed up my game the same way.
Nowadays, every dollar that comes to me has been thoroughly cleaned long before it drops into my pocket.But you're wondering where _you_ come in.""Women are only interested in what's coming to them," said Susan.
"Sensible men are the same way.The men who aren't--they work for wages and salaries.If you're going to live off of other people, as women and the rich do, you've got to stand steady, day and night, for Number One.And now, here's where _you_come in.You've no objection to being respectable?""I've no objection to not being disreputable.""That's the right way to put it," he promptly agreed.
"Respectable, you know, doesn't mean anything but appearances.
People who are really respectable, who let it strike in, instead of keeping it on the outside where it belongs--they soon get poor and drop down and out."Palmer's revelation of himself and of a philosophy which life as it had revealed itself to her was incessantly urging her to adopt so grappled her attention that she altogether forgot herself.A man on his way to the scaffold who suddenly sees and feels a cataclysm rocking the world about him forgets his own plight.Unconsciously he was epitomizing, unconsciously she was learning, the whole story of the progress of the race upward from beast toward intellect--the brutal and bloody building of the highway from the caves of darkness toward the peaks of light.The source from which springs, and ever has sprung, the cruelty of man toward man is the struggle of the ambition of the few who see and insist upon better conditions, with the inertia and incompetence of the many who have little sight and less imagination.Ambition must use the inert mass--must persuade it, if possible, must compel it by trick or force if persuasion fails.But Palmer and Susan Lenox were, naturally, not seeing the thing in the broad but only as it applied to themselves.
"I've read a whole lot of history and biography, " Freddie went on, "and I've thought about what I read and about what's going on around me.I tell you the world's full of cant.The people who get there don't act on what is always preached.
The preaching isn't all lies--at least, I think not.But it doesn't fit the facts a man or a woman has got to meet.""I realized that long ago," said Susan.
"There's a saying that you can't touch pitch without being defiled.Well--you can't build without touching pitch--at least not in a world where money's king and where those with brains have to live off of those without brains by making 'em work and showing 'em what to work at.It's a hell of a world, but __I__ didn't get it up.""And we've got to live in it," said she, "and get out of it the things we want and need.""That's the talk!" cried Palmer."I see you're `on.' Now--to make a long story short--you and I can get what we want.We can help each other.You were better born than I am--you've had a better training in manners and dress and all the classy sort of things.I've got the money--and brains enough to learn with--and I can help you in various ways.So--I propose that we go up together.""We've got--pasts," said Susan.
"Who hasn't that amounts to anything? Mighty few.No one that's made his own pile, I'll bet you.
I'm in a position to do favors for people--the people we'd need.And I'll get in a position to do more and more.As long as they can make something out of us--or hope to--do you suppose they'll nose into our pasts and root things up that'd injure them as much as us?""It would be an interesting game, wouldn't it?" said Susan.
She was reflectively observing the handsome, earnest face before her--an incarnation of intelligent ambition, a Freddie Palmer who was somehow divesting himself of himself--was growing up--away from the rotten soil that had nourished him--up into the air--was growing strongly--yes, splendidly!
