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His ordeal took place in a large, low-ceiled room illuminated by five very plain, thin, two-armed gas-jets suspended from the ceiling and adorned by posters of prizefights, raffles, games, and the "Simon Pinski Pleasure Association" plastered here and there freely against dirty, long-unwhitewashed walls.
"There's Johnnie Dowling, that big blond fellow with the round head; there's Pinski look at the little rat; there's Kerrigan. Get on to the emerald. Eh, Pat, how's the jewelry? You won't get any chance to do any grafting to-night, Pat. You won't pass no ordinance to-night."
Pinski is escorted out by friends completely surrounded amid shrieks and hisses, cat-calls, cries of "Boodler!" "Thief!" "Robber!" There were many such little dramatic incidents after the ordinance had been introduced.
He stood on the low raised platform at the back of the room, surrounded by a score or more of his ward henchmen, all more or less reliable, all black-frocked, or at least in their Sunday clothes; all scowling, nervous, defensive, red-faced, and fearing trouble. Mr. Pinski has come armed.
The Five Hundred. "Ho! look at the scoundrel! He's afraid to say. He don't know whether he'll do what the people of this ward want him to do. Kill him! Brain him!" A Voice from Behind. "Aw, stand up, Pinski. Don't be afraid." "If the people don't want me to do it, of course I won't do it. Why should I? Ain't I their representative?" A Voice.
"I don't see what we can do," said Alderman Pinski to Alderman Hvranek, his neighbor. "It looks to me as if we might just as well not try." At this point arose Alderman Gilleran, small, pale, intelligent, anti-Cowperwood. By prearrangement he had been scheduled to bring the second, and as it proved, the final test of strength to the issue.
"Yes, when you think you're going to get the wadding kicked out of you." Another Voice. "You wouldn't be honest with your mother, you bastard. You couldn't be!" Pinski. "If one-half the voters should ask me not to do it I wouldn't do it." A Voice. "Well, we'll get the voters to ask you, all right. We'll get nine-tenths of them to sign before to-morrow night."
This talk of the mayor's concerning guns, ropes, drums, marching clubs, and the like has been given very wide publicity, and the public seems rather eager for a Chicago holiday in which the slaughter of an alderman or so might furnish the leading and most acceptable feature. "Hey, Pinski!" yells some one out of a small sea of new and decidedly unfriendly faces.
Nothing much came of this conference, except that they sat about discussing in a general way wards, pluralities, what Zeigler was likely to do with the twelfth, whether Pinski could make it in the sixth, Schlumbohm in the twentieth, and so on. New Republican contestants in old, safe Democratic wards were making things look dubious.
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