Mike Flannery | Page 8

Flannery, pulling away from the inspector's grasp.
"Wan minute! I have a hint there be a long-haired cat near by. Wance
ye have been near wan av thim ye can niver mistake thim Angora cats.
I w'u'd know th' symbol av thim with me eyes shut. 'T is a signal ye
c'u'd tell in th' darrk."
He hurried to the back door. The cat was there, all right. A little deader
than it had been, perhaps, but it was there on the step, long hair and all.
"Hurroo!" shouted Flannery. "An' me thinkin' I w'u'd niver see it again!
Can ye smell th' proof, Misther Inspictor? 'T is good sthrong proof fer
ye! An' I sh'u'd have knowed it all th' while. Angora cats I know not be
th' spicial species, an' th' long-haired breed av cats is not wan I have
associated with much, an' cats so dang dead as this wan I do not kape
close in touch with, ginerally, but all cats have a grrand resimblance t'
cats. Look at this wan, now. 'T is just like a cat. It kem back."

II
THE THREE HUNDRED
There was a certain big sort of masterfulness about the president of the
Interurban Express Company that came partly from his natural force of
character and partly from the position he occupied as head of the
company, and when he said a thing must be done he meant it. In his
own limited field he was a bigger man than the President of the United
States, for he was not only the chief executive of the Interurban Express
Company, but he made its laws as well. He could issue general orders
turning the whole operation of the road other end to as easily as a
national executive could order the use of, let us say, a simplified form
of spelling in a few departments of the Government. He sat in the head
office of the company at Franklin and said "Let this be done," and, in

every suburban town where the Interurban had offices, that thing was
done, under pain of dismissal from the service of the company. Even
Flannery, who was born rebellious, would scratch his red hair in the
Westcoate office and grumble and then follow orders.
Old Simon Gratz came into the president's office one morning and sat
himself into a vacant chair with a grunt of disapprobation, the same
grunt of disapprobation that had been like saw-filing to the nerves of
the president for many years, and the president immediately prepared to
contradict him, regardless of what it might be that Simon Gratz
disapproved of. It happened to be the simplified spelling. He waved the
morning paper at the president and wanted to know what he thought of
this outrageous thing of chopping off the tails of good old English
words with an official carving-knife, ruining a language that had been
fought and bled for at Lexington, and making it look like a dialect story,
or a woman with two front teeth out.
It rather strained the president sometimes to think of a sound train of
argument against Simon Gratz at a moment's notice. Sometimes he had
to abandon the beliefs of a lifetime in order to take the other side of a
proposition that Simon Gratz announced unexpectedly, and it was still
harder to get up an enthusiasm for one side of a thing of which he had
never heard, as he sometimes had to do; but he was ready to meet
Simon Gratz on either side of the simplified spelling matter, for he had
read about it himself in the morning paper. It had seemed a rather
unimportant matter until Simon Gratz mentioned it, but now it
immediately became a thing of the most intimate concern.
"What do I think?" he asked. "I think it is the grandest thing--the most
sensible thing--the greatest step forward that has been taken for
centuries. That is what I think. It is a revolution! That is what I think,
Mr. Gratz."
He swung around in his chair and struck his desk with his fist to
emphasize his words. Mr. Gratz, whose opinions were the more
obnoxious because he was a stockholder of the company, sniffed. The
way he had of sniffing was like a red rag to a bull, and he meant it as
such. The president accepted it in the spirit in which it was meant. He

said: "Bah!"
"I will tell you what it is," said Mr. Gratz, pushing his chin up at the
president. "It is the most idiotic--"
[Illustration: "_'I will tell you what it is,' said Mr. Gratz_"]
"Don't tell me!" cried Mr. Smalley. "I don't want you to tell me
anything! What do you know about the English language, anyhow?
'Gratz!' That is a