Marching Men eBook

The thought that had flashed into the mind of Henry Hunt as he sat in the office of the soft-voiced boss was the making of an opportunity for McGregor.  For months he and Andrew Brown had been friends.  The yeggman, a strongly built slow talking man, looked like a skilled mechanic of a locomotive engineer.  Coming into O’Toole’s in the quiet hours between eight and twelve he sat eating his evening meal and talking in a half bantering humorous vein to the young lawyer.  In his eyes lurked a kind of hard cruelty tempered by indolence.  It was he who gave McGregor the name that still clings to him in that strange savage land—­“Judge Mac, the Big ’un.”

When he was arrested Brown sent for McGregor and offered to give him charge of his case.  When the young lawyer refused he was insistent.  In a cell at the county jail they talked it over.  By the door stood a guard watching them.  McGregor peered into the half darkness and said what he thought should be said.  “You are in a hole,” he began.  “You don’t want me, you want a big name.  They’re all set to hang you over there.”  He waved his hand in the direction of the First.  “They’re going to hand you over as an answer to a stirred up city.  It’s a job for the biggest and best criminal lawyer in town.  Name the man and I’ll get him for you and help raise the money to pay him.”

Andrew Brown got up and walked to McGregor.  Looking down at him he spoke quickly and determinedly.  “You do what I say,” he growled.  “You take this case.  I didn’t do the job.  I was asleep in my room when it was pulled off.  Now you take the case.  You won’t clear me.  It ain’t in the cards.  But you get the job just the same.”

He sat down again upon the iron cot at the corner of the cell.  His voice became slow and had in it a touch of cynical humour.  “Look here, Big ’un,” he said, “the gang’s picked my number out of the hat.  I’m going across but there’s good advertising in the job for some one and you get it.”

CHAPTER V

The trial of Andrew Brown was both an opportunity and a test for McGregor.  For a number of years he had lived a lonely life in Chicago.  He had made no friends and his mind had not been confused by the endless babble of small talk on which most of us subsist.  Evening after evening he had walked alone through the streets and had stood at the door of the State Street restaurant a solitary figure aloof from life.  Now he was to be drawn into the maelstrom.  In the past he had been let alone by life.  The great blessing of isolation had been his and in his isolation he had dreamed a big dream.  Now the quality of the dream and the strength of its hold upon him was to be tested.

McGregor was not to escape the influence of the life of his day.  Deep human passion lay asleep in his big body.  Before the time of his Marching Men he had yet to stand the most confusing of all the modern tests of men, the beauty of meaningless women and the noisy clamour of success that is equally meaningless.