Page:The gold brick (1910).djvu/186

 *moved his cigar from his lips, and a short goatee at which he plucked incessantly with his fingers. When his cigar was in his mouth, he rolled it about and ground it between his teeth. At times he spat pieces of the tobacco leaves fiercely into the grate. The cigar was burning unevenly, and fuming so that the little man winked his little eyes. On a table in the room, littered with the inevitable Chicago papers, and strewn with poker chips, stood an empty whisky glass. The rumpled counterpane of the bed showed that the little man had been tossing upon it. As he paced up and down he talked to himself, and at times swore.

"Hell," he would say, "why the devil doesn't he come!"

Occasionally he would draw out his watch, and scowl at its face. Then he would look at the old-*fashioned brass crank on the wall, beside the door, which sometimes pulled a call-bell in the office below, and sometimes did not, but he did not ring it. He ran his fingers through his tumbled hair, and paced up and down.

The little man was William Grigsby, and he was the attorney-general of the state of Illinois. He had