Page:Paine--J Archibauld McKaney collector of whiskers.djvu/111

  told him not a tinker's damn, and that I would gladly be blown up in sections if it were in company with a crowned head or a capitalist. In fact, I believe I swore I was thirsting for just such a chance. It was all for the sake of his whiskers, may Heaven forgive me!

To pass over this painful recollection as hastily as possible, I won the madman's implicit confidence. It seems that while ashore he had got wind of the intended sailing of Jordan and Packard and the other trust magnates aboard. As he figured it, here was the chance of the age to bag most of the arch-demons of commercial oppression at one fell swoop. Nothing like it was likely ever to come his way again. He had invented a most damnably clever infernal machine, and somehow had managed to smuggle two of them into the holds of the ship, concealed in harmless looking packages of freight.

Try to picture my emotions when Pebotsky calmly informed me that both infernal machines were timed to explode on the morrow. [93