In
the evening he sat in his flat overlooking Jackson Park and listened
to his daughter play on the piano. With all his heart he hated his
place in life and as he rode back and forth to town on the Illinois
Central trains he stared at the lake and dreamed of owning a farm and
living a free life in the country. In his mind he could see the
merchants standing gossiping on the sidewalk before the stores in an
Ohio village where he had lived as a boy and in fancy saw himself
again a boy, driving cows through the village street in the evening
and making a delightful little slap slap with his bare feet in the
deep dust.
It was Henry Hunt in his secret office as collector and lieutenant to
the "boss" of the first ward who shifted the scenes for McGregor's
appearance as a public character in Chicago.
One night a young man--son of one of the city's plunging millionaire
wheat speculators--was found dead in a little blind alley back of a
resort known as Polk Street Mary's place. He lay crumpled up against a
board fence quite dead and with a bruise on the side of his head. A
policeman found him and dragged him to the street light at the corner
of the alley.
For twenty minutes the policeman had been standing under the light
swinging his stick. He had heard nothing.
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