As Luke entered the door of the Broadway building in which the Municipal Reform League had its headquarters, he came up with Venable also going in. The old man’s hand trembled as he greeted the candidate.
"We seem to have raised a real thunderstorm," said Luke, smiling. "I hope it’ll clear the atmosphere."
"Then you know?" asked Venable. "You’ve seen it in the papers?"
"How could I help it?" said Luke. "It’s all over them."
"That and this strike at the Forbes factory, yes."
"I didn’t mean those things," said Venable. "I meant this."
He took from his coat-pocket a folded newspaper open at the financial and real estate page. He pointed a shaking finger at first one and then another obscure paragraph, both printed in small type and far separated.
Luke read the paragraphs. Each applied to the same block of an uptown street. The former said that a new branch of an elevated railroad would be run through this street, and the latter curtly announced that two of the apartment houses in the block were about to be converted into tenements for negroes.
"My apartment house," said Venable simply, "the one that all my money is invested in, will have those ’L’-tracks running in front of its second-floor windows. It is just between the two houses that are to to be made into tenements."
"You know what influences control that elevated road," said Venable.
"You get out of this," he commanded. "Leave the League and go to them; they’ll change their plans: that’s why they’ve made their plans the way they have."
"No," said Venable, "I won’t do it. I can’t. I’m pretty old to be poor, but I’m too old to change my opinions."
He was still talking in this manner when they entered the League’s quarters and were greeted with the news that burglars had been there the night before.
"Nothin’s been touched in any of the offices but yours, Mr. Huber," said the breathless clerk who poured out this story to them; "but there the safe’s been blown open, and I don’t know what’s missin’. I sent for the police right away."
"The police?" said Luke. "Stop your joking, Charley."
"I’m not jokin’, Mr. Huber. I did send for them. They’ve been here. They said they’d have a detective over from headquarters before long."
Luke hurried to his office. Bits of charred blanket and several match-ends lay about the floor. The door of the safe swung lamely upon a single hinge. Inside was a tumbled mass of papers. Otherwise the room seemed undisturbed.