Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/411

 But sensing this note of self-pity on Boland's part, Henry was instantly fierce. "Because you made it happen!" he snapped out.

"I? . . . How could I have helped it?" fended Two Blades, forgetting his penitence, leaning on the old fallacies again.

"By being what you seemed to be—an honest, benevolent-hearted man!" retorted Henry, direct and painful as a poke to the nose.

Boland winced. "But I've stood for the law!" he urged.

"Law?" scorned Harrington, wrathfully. There was something he had been waiting the longest days of his life to say to this old half-devil, who was trying to repent and couldn't quite make the grade; and here was his opportunity. "Boland," he began hotly, "I told you once you must make the law respectable if you wanted people to respect it. Your regard for law has been pretense only. You have made the law a convenient weapon—a pistol to make the world stand still while you picked pockets."

Boland lifted a hand in pained protest, but Henry blazed along: "By the subtlest forms of bribery, Boland, by the most skilful appeals to self-interest, you have corrupted this whole community. Councils, legislatures, yes, and the very voters, have framed the laws to suit your purposes. District attorneys, sheriffs, tax-assessors, juries and judges have bent the laws to suit your will—because you had enlisted them all in a selfish partnership."

"But it was a partnership for the common good," labored J. B., when Henry had stopped to breathe.

"It was a partnership in selfish lawlessness," in-