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diff --git a/old/67374-0.txt b/old/67374-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index d0e937a..0000000 --- a/old/67374-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,8044 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of Caleb Conover, Railroader, by Albert -Payson Terhune - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and -most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions -whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms -of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at -www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you -will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before -using this eBook. - -Title: Caleb Conover, Railroader - -Author: Albert Payson Terhune - -Release Date: February 11, 2022 [eBook #67374] - -Language: English - -Produced by: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading - Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from - images generously made available by The Internet Archive) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CALEB CONOVER, -RAILROADER *** - - -[Illustration: Something swished through the air from behind Clive’s -head. Page 137.] - - - - - Caleb Conover, Railroader - - - By - ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE - - _Author of “Syria from the Saddle,” “Dr. Dale” (in collaboration with - Marion Harland), “Columbia Stories,” Etc._ - - - NEW YORK - CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY - Publishers - - - - - COPYRIGHT, 1907, BY - ALBERT PAYSON TERHUNE. - - - _Entered at Stationers’ Hall._ - _All rights reserved._ - - - - - CONTENTS - - - CHAPTER PAGE - - I. CALEB CONOVER RECEIVES 5 - - II. CALEB CONOVER MAKES A SPEECH 27 - - III. CALEB CONOVER REGRETS 44 - - IV. IN TWO CAMPS 74 - - V. A MEETING, AN INTERRUPTION AND A LETTER 90 - - VI. CALEB WORKS AT LONG RANGE 115 - - VII. CALEB UNDERGOES A “HOME EVENING” 145 - - VIII. CALEB CONOVER LISTENS AND ANSWERS 173 - - IX. A CONVENTION AND A REVELATION 193 - - X. ANICE INTERVENES 207 - - XI. CALEB CONOVER MAKES TERMS 227 - - XII. CALEB CONOVER FIGHTS 247 - - XIII. THE FOURTH MESSENGER OF JOB 272 - - XIV. CALEB CONOVER LOSES AND WINS 291 - - XV. DUNDERBERG SOLVES THE DIFFICULTY 314 - -[Illustration: (FACSIMILE PAGE OF MANUSCRIPT FROM CALEB CONOVER, -RAILROADER)] - - - - - CALEB CONOVER, - RAILROADER - - - - - CHAPTER I - CALEB CONOVER RECEIVES - - -“The poor man!” sighed Mrs. Greer. “He must think he’s a cemetery!” - -The long line of carriages was passing solemnly through a mighty white -marble arch, aglare with electric light, leading into the “show place” -of Pompton Avenue. - -Athwart the arch’s pallid face, in raised letters a full foot in length -were the words: - - “CALEB CONOVER, R.R., 1893.” - -In the ghastly, garish illumination, above the slow-moving procession of -sombre vehicles, the arch and its inscription gave gruesome excuse for -Mrs. Greer’s comment. She herself thought the phrase rather apt, and -stored it away for repetition. - -Her husband, a downy little man, curled up miserably in the other corner -of the brougham, read her thought, from long experience, and twisted -forward into what he liked to think was a commanding attitude. - -“Look here!” he protested. “You’ve got to stop that. It’s bad enough to -have to come here at all, without your spoiling everything with one of -those Bernard Shawisms of yours. Why, if it ever got back to Conover’s -ears——” - -“He’d withdraw his support? And then good-by to Congress for the -unfortunate Talbot Firth Greer?” - -“Just that. He’ll stand all sorts of criticism about his start in life. -In fact, he revels in talking of his rise to anyone who’ll listen. But -when it comes to guying anything in his present exalted——” - -“What does the ‘R. R.’ at the end of his name over the gate stand for? -I’ve seen the inscription often enough, but——” - -“‘Railroader.’ He uses it as a sort of title. Life for him is one long -railroad, and——” - -“And now we’re to do him honor at the terminus?” - -“If you like to put it that way. Perhaps ‘junction’ would hit it closer. -It was awfully good of you, Grace, to come. I——” - -“Of course it was. If I didn’t want a try at Washington I’d never have -dared it. It will be in all the papers to-morrow. He’ll see to that. And -then—I hate to think what everyone will say. I suppose we’re the first -civilized people who ever passed under that atrocious hanging mortuary -chapel, aren’t we?” - -“Hardly as bad as that. If it’s any comfort to you, there are plenty -more in the same box as ourselves, to-night.” - -“But surely everybody in Granite can’t want to run for Congress?” - -“No. But enough people have axes of their own to grind to make it worth -their while to visit the Conover whetstone. When a man who can float -companies at a word, boom or smash a dozen different stocks, swing the -Legislature, make himself heard from here to Washington, and carries -practically every newspaper in the Mountain State in his vest pocket; -when——” - -“When such a man whistles, there are some people who find it wise not to -be deaf. But what on earth does he _want_ us for?” - -“The world-old ambition that had its rise when Cain and Abel began -moving in separate sets. The longing to ‘butt in,’ as Caleb himself -would probably call it. He has everything money and political power can -give. And now he wants the only thing left—what he terms ‘social -recognition.’” - -“And we are to help——” - -“No. We’re to let him _think_ we help. All the king’s horses and all the -king’s men, assisted by a score of Conover’s own freight derricks, -couldn’t hoist that cad into a decent crowd. He’s been at it ever since -he got his first million and married poor little Letty Standish. She was -the fool of her family, and a broken family at that. But still it was a -family. Yet it didn’t land Caleb anywhere. Then, when that unlicked cub -of a son of his grew up, he made another try. But you know how that -turned out. Now that his daughter’s captured a more or less authentic -prince, I suppose he thinks the time has come. Hence to-night’s——” - -“What a blow to his hopes it must have been to have the girl marry in -Paris instead of here at Granite! But I suppose the honeymoon in America -and this evening’s reception are the next best thing. Are we never to -get there?” - -“Soon enough, I’m afraid. Conover boasts that he’s laid out his grounds -so that the driveway is a measured half-mile. We’ll be there in another -minute or so.” - -Mrs. Greer laughed a little nervously. - -“It’ll be something to remember anyway,” said she. “I suppose all sorts -of horrible people will be there. I read a half-page account of it this -morning in the _Star_, and it said that ‘while the proudest families of -Granite would delight to do Mr. Conover honor, the humbler associates of -political and business life would also be present.’ Did you ever hear -anything more delicious? And in the _Star_, too!” - -“His own paper. Why not? I suppose _we’re_ the ‘proudest families’; and -the ‘humbler associates’ are some of the choice retinue of heelers who -do his dirty work. Lord! what a notice of it there’ll be in to-morrow’s -papers! Washington will have to be very much worth while to make up for -this. If only I——” - -“Hush!” warned Mrs. Greer, as the carriage lurched to a halt, in the -pack before a great _porte-cochère_. “We’re actually here at last. See! -There goes Clive Standish up the steps with the Polissen girls and old -Mr. Polissen. There are a _few_ real human beings here, after all. Why -do you suppose——?” - -“H’m!” commented Greer, “Polissen’s ‘long’ on Interstate Canal, the -route Conover’s C. G. & X. Road is threatening to put out of business. -But why young Standish——” - -“Why not? Letty Conover’s own nephew. Though I did hear he and the -Conovers were scarcely on speaking terms. He——” - -“I fancy that’s because Standish’s ‘Mayflower’ back is too stiff to bend -at the crack of Caleb’s whip. He could have made a mighty good thing of -his law business if Conover had backed him. But I understand he refuses -to ally himself with his great relative-in-law, and prefers a good -social position and a small law practice——” - -“Rather than go to Congress?” finished his wife with such sweet -innocence that Greer could only glare at her with flabby helplessness. -Before he could think of an apt retort, the brougham was at the foot of -the endless marble steps, and its late occupants were passing up a wide -strip of velvet between rows of vividly liveried footmen. - - -Caleb Conover, Railroader, was standing just within the wide doorway of -a drawing-room that seemed to stretch away into infinity. Behind rose an -equally infinite vista of heads and shoulders. But the loudly blended -murmur of many voices that is the first thing to strike the ear of -arriving guests at such functions was conspicuously absent. The -scarce-broken hush that spread through the chain of rooms seemed to bear -out still further Mrs. Greer’s mortuary simile. - -But the constraint in no way extended to the host himself. The strong, -alert face, with its shrewd light eyes and humorous mouth, was wreathed -in welcoming smiles that seemed to ripple in a series of waves from the -close-cut reddish hair to the ponderous iron jaw. The thickset form of -the Railroader, massive of shoulder and sturdily full of limb, was ever -plunging forward to grip some favored newcomer by the hand, or darting -to one side or the other as he whispered instructions to servant or -relative. - -“I congratulate you on your friend’s repose of manner!” whispered Mrs. -Greer, as she and her husband awaited their turn. “He has all the calm -self-assurance of a jumping jack.” - -“But there are springs of chilled steel in the jumping jack,” whispered -Greer. “He’s out of his element, and he knows it. But he isn’t so badly -confused for all that. If you saw him at a convention or a board -meeting, you wouldn’t know him for the same——” - -“And there’s his poor little wife, looking as much like a rabbit as -ever! She’s a cipher here; and even her husband’s figure in front of her -doesn’t raise the cipher to the tenth power. I suppose that is the -daughter, to Mrs. Conover’s left? The slender girl with the rust-colored -hair and the brown eyes? She’s prettier and more of a thoroughbred in -looks than I should have——” - -“That’s not his daughter. That’s Miss Lanier, Conover’s secretary. His -daughter is the——” - -“His secretary? Why, is she receiving?” - -“She is his secretary and everything else. She came here three years ago -as Blanche’s governess. To give the poor girl a sort of winding-up -polish before Caleb sent her to Europe. She made all sorts of a hit with -Conover. Principally because she’s the only person on earth who isn’t -afraid of him, so I hear. And now she is secretary, and major domo, and -‘right-hand man,’ and I don’t know what not else. Mrs. Conover’s only a -‘cipher,’ as you say, and Miss Alice Lanier—not Caleb—is the ‘figure’ in -front of her. That’s the new-made princess, to the right. The tall one -with the no-colored hair. I suppose that’s the Prince d’Antri beside -her.” - -“He’s too handsome to be a very real prince. What a face for a sculptor -or——” - -“Or a barber. A beard like that——” - -A gorgeously apparelled couple just in front of the Greers, in the line, -moved forward within the zone of Conover’s greeting. Caleb nodded -patronizingly to the man, and more civilly to the woman. - -“Mr. Conover,” the latter was murmuring in an anguish of respectful -embarrassment, “’tis a great honor you do me and the man, askin’ us here -to-night with all your stylish friends, an’——” - -“Oh, there’s more than your husband and me, here, who’d get hungry by -habit if they heard a noon whistle blow,” laughed Conover, as with a -jerk of his red head and a word of pleasant welcome, he passed them on -down the reception line. Then the Railroader’s light, deep-set eyes fell -on Greer, and he stepped forward, both hands outstretched. - -“Good evening, Greer!” he cried, and there was a subcurrent of latent -power in his hearty voice. “Good evening! Pleased to see you in my -house. Mrs. Greer, I presume? Most kind of you to come, ma’am. Proud to -make your acquaintance. Letty!”—summoning with a jerk of the head an -overdressed, frightened-looking little woman from the line behind -him—“Letty, this is my very good friend, Mr. Talbot Firth Greer—Mrs. -Conover—Mr. and Mrs. Greer. Mr. Greer is the next Congressman from the -Eleventh District. (That’s a little prophecy, Mr. Greer. You can gamble -on its coming true.) My daughter, Princess d’Antri—Mr. and Mrs. Greer. -Prince Amadeo d’Antri. My secretary, Miss Anice Lanier—Mr. and Mrs.——” - -A new batch of guests swarmed down the hall toward the host, and the -ordeal was over. The Greers, swept on in the rush, did not hear -Conover’s next greeting. This was rather a pity, since it differed -materially from that lavished upon themselves. - -Its recipient was a big young man, with a shock of light hair and quiet, -dark eyes. He wore his clothes well, and looked out of place in his -vulgar, garish surroundings. Caleb Conover, Railroader, eyed the -newcomer all over with a cold, expressionless glance. A glance that no -seer on earth could have read; the glance that had gained him more than -one victory when wits and concealment of purpose were rife. Then he held -out a grudging hand. - -“Well, Mr. Clive Standish,” he observed, “it seems the lion and the lamb -lie down together, after all—a considerable distance this side of the -millennium. And the lamb inside, at that. To think of a clubman and a -cotillon leader, and a first-families scion and a Civic Leaguer and all -that sort of thing condescending to honor my poor shanty——” - -“My aunt, Mrs. Conover, wrote, asking me especially to come, as a favor -to her,” replied the younger man stiffly. “I thought——” - -“And you were O. K. in thinking it. I know Letty wrote, because I -dictated the letter. I wanted to count you in with the rest to-night, -and I had a kind of bashful fear that your love for me, personally, -might not be strong enough to fetch you. You’ve got too much sense to -think the invite will score either way in our feelings to each other, or -that I’m going back on what I said to you four years ago. Now that -you’re here, chase in and enjoy yourself. This place is like heaven, -to-night, in one way. You’ll see a whole lot of people here you never -expected to, and you’ll miss more’n a few you thought would sure belong. -Good-by. Don’t let me block your job of heavenly recognition.” - -The wilful coarseness and brutality of the man came as no surprise to -Standish. He had expected something of the sort, and had braced himself -for it. To please his aunt, whom he sincerely pitied, he had entered the -Conover house to-night for the first time since the Homeric quarrel, -incident on his refusal to avail himself of Caleb’s prestige in his law -work, and, incidentally to enroll himself as one of the Railroader’s -numberless political vassals. That the roughness to which Conover had -just subjected him was no more a part of the former’s real nature than -had been the nervous effusiveness of his greeting to the Greers, Clive -well knew. It had been intended to cover any embarrassing memories of a -former and somewhat less strained acquaintanceship; and as such it—like -most of Conover’s moves—had served its turn. - -So, resisting his first impulse to depart as he had come, Standish moved -on. The formal receiving phalanx was crumpling up. He paused for a -moment’s talk with little Mrs. Conover, exchanged a civil word or two -with his cousin Blanche and her prince, and then came to where Anice -Lanier was trying to make conversation for several awed-looking, -bediamonded persons who were evidently horribly ill at ease in their -surroundings. - -At sight of the girl, the formal lines about Clive’s mouth were broken -by a smile of very genuine pleasure. A smile that gave a younger aspect -to his grave face, and found ready answer in the brown eyes that met -his. - -“Haven’t you toiled at a forlorn hope long enough?” he asked, as the -awed beings drifted away into the uncomfortable crowd, carrying their -burden of jewels with them. - -“A forlorn hope?” she queried, puzzled. - -“You actually seemed to be trying to galvanize at least a segment of -this portentous gathering into a semblance of life. Don’t do it. In the -first place you can’t. Saloonkeepers and Pompton Avenue people won’t -blend. In the second place, it isn’t expected of you. The papers -to-morrow will record the right names just as jealously as if every one -had had a good time. Suppose you concentrate all your efforts on me. -Come! It will be a real work of charity. For Mr. Conover has just shown -me how thoroughly I’m the prodigal. And he didn’t even hint at the -whereabouts of a fatted calf. Please be merciful and make me have a good -time. It’s months since I’ve seen you to talk to.” - -“Then why don’t you come here oftener?” she asked, as they made their -way through the press, and found an unoccupied alcove between two of the -great rooms. “I’m sure Mrs. Conover——” - -“My poor aunt? She’d be frightened to death that Conover and I would -quarrel. No, no! To-night is an exception. The first and the last. I -persuaded myself I came because of Aunt Letty’s note. But I really came -for a chat with you.” - -She looked at him, doubting how to accept this bald compliment. But his -face was boyish in its sincerity. - -“You and I used to be such good friends,” he went on, “and now we never -see any more of each other. Why don’t we?” - -“I think you know as well as I. You no longer come here—you have not -come, I think, since a year before I arrived. And I go almost nowhere -since——” - -“Since you gave up all your old world and the people who cared for you -and became a drudge in the Conover household? If you were to be found -anywhere else, you would see so much of me that I’d bore you to -extinction. But it would be even unpleasanter for you than for me if I -were to call on you here. I miss our old-time talks more than I can -say.” - -“I miss them, too. Do you remember how we used to argue over politics, -and how you always ended by telling me that there were two things no -woman could understand, and that politics was one and finance the -other?” - -“And you would always make the same retort: That woman’s combined -ignorance of politics and finance were pure knowledge as compared with -the men’s ignorance of women. It wasn’t especially logical repartee, but -it always served to shut me up.” - -“I wish we had time for another political spat. Some day we must. You -see, I’ve learned such a lot about politics—and finance, too—_practical_ -politics and finance—since I came here.” - -“Decidedly ‘practical,’ I fancy, if Mr. Conover was your teacher. He -doesn’t go in much for idealism.” - -“And you?” asked Anice, ignoring the slur. “Are you still as rabid as -ever in your ideas of reform? But, of course, you are. For I read only -last week that you had been elected President of the Civic League. I -want to congratulate you. It’s a splendid movement, even though Mr. -Conover declares it’s hopeless.” - -“Good citizenship is never quite hopeless, even in a boss-ridden -community like Granite, and a boss-governed commonwealth like the -Mountain State. The people will wake up some day.” - -“Their snores sound very peaceful and regular just now,” remarked Anice, -with a flippancy whereof she had the grace to be ashamed. - -“Perhaps,” he smiled, “the sounds you and Conover mistake for snores may -possibly be groans.” - -“How delightfully dramatic! That would sound splendidly on the stump.” - -“It may have a chance to.” - -“What do you mean? Are you going to——” - -“No. I am going to run for governor this fall.” - -“WHAT?” - -“Do you know,” observed Standish, “when you open your eyes that way you -really look——” - -“Never mind how I look! Tell me about——” - -“My campaign? It is nothing yet. But the Civic League is planning one -more effort to shake off Conover’s grip on the throat of the Mountain -State—another good ‘stump’ line, by the way. And I have been asked to -run for governor.” - -“But——” - -“Oh, yes, I know. Conover holds the Convention in the hollow of his -hand. He owns the delegates and the newspapers and the Legislature as -well as the railroads. And no sane man would dream of bucking such a -combination. But maybe I’m not quite sane. For I’m going to try it. Now -laugh all you like.” - -“Laugh? I feel more like crying. It’s—it’s knightly and _splendid_ of -you, Clive! And—perhaps it may prove less crazy than you think.” - -“You mean?” - -“I mean nothing at all. I wish you luck, though. All the luck in the -world. Tell me more.” - -“There is no more. Besides, I’d rather talk about _you_. Tell me of your -life here.” - -“There’s nothing to tell. It’s work. Pleasant enough work, even though -it’s hard. Everyone is nice to me. I——” - -“That doesn’t explain your choosing such a career out of all that were -open to you. Why did you take it?” - -“I’ve often explained it to you, but you never seem to understand. When -father died, he left me nothing. I had my living to make, and——” - -“But surely there were a thousand easier, pleasanter ways of earning it -than to kill yourself socially by becoming an employee in such a family -as this. It can’t be congenial——” - -The odd smile in her eyes checked him and gave him a vague sense of -uneasiness. - -“It _is_ congenial,” said the girl after a pause. “I have my own suite -of rooms, my own hours, my own way. I have a natural bent for finance, -and business association with Mr. Conover is a real education. The -salary is good. My word in all household matters is law. Mr. Conover -knows I understand how things should be conducted, and he has grown to -rely on me. I am more mistress here than most women in their own homes. -Mrs. Conover is ill so much—and Blanche being away——” - -“Anice,” he broke in, “I’ve known you since you first went into long -dresses. And I know that the reasons you’ve just given are none of them -the sort that appeal to a girl like you. To some women they might. But -not to you. Why did you come here, and why do you stay? There is some -reason you haven’t——” - -“’Scuse me, Miss Lanier,” said a voice at the entrance of the alcove, -“the Boss sent me to ask you would you come to the drorin’-room. He says -the supper-room’s open, an’ he’d like you to soop’rintend things. I’ve -been lookin’ everywhere for you. Gee, but goin’ through a bunch of cops -in a pool-room raid is pie alongside of workin’ a way through this -push.” - -The speaker was a squat, swarthy little man on whom his ready-made -evening clothes sat with the grace and comfort of a set of thumb screws. -Clive recognized him with difficulty as the usually self-assured “Billy” -Shevlin, Conover’s most trusted political henchman. - -“Very well,” replied Anice Lanier, rising to obey the summons. She noted -the dumb misery in Billy’s face, and paused to ask: - -“Aren’t you having a good time, Mr. Shevlin?” - -“A good time? _Me?_ Oh, yes. _Sure_, I am. I only hope no one’ll mistake -me in this open-face suit for a senator or a mattinay idol. That’s all -that’s botherin’ me. I’ve been rubbin’ elbows with the Van Alstynes that -own half of Pompton Av’no and live in Yoorup, and with Slat Kerrigan’s -wife, who used to push coffee and sinkers at Kerry’s beanery. Oh, I’m in -sassiety all right. An’ I feel like a pair of yeller shoes at a -fun’ral.” - -“Never mind!” laughed Anice. “The supper-room’s open, and you’ll enjoy -that part of the evening, at any rate.” - -“I will, eh? Not me, Miss! The Boss’s passed the word that the boys is -to hold back, and kind of make a noise like innercent bystanders till -the swell push is all fed. So it’s me for the merry outskirts while -they’re gettin’ their money’s wort’.” - -Clive Standish watched them thread their way through the crowd, until -Anice’s dainty little head with its crown of shimmering bronze hair was -lost to sight. Then he sat looking moodily out on the heterogeneous, -ill-assorted company before him. - -Now that he had talked with Anice he no longer regretted the impulse -that had led him to accept Mrs. Conover’s invitation. The girl had -always exerted a subtle charm, a nameless influence, over him. Years -before, when he was struggling, penniless, to make a living in a city -where his family name opened every door to him, yet where it was more of -an impediment than otherwise in his task of bread winning; even then he -had worked with a vague, half-formed hope of Anice Lanier sharing his -final victory. - -Then had come her own financial reverses, her father’s death, and her -withdrawal from the world that had known them both. Since that time -circumstances had checked their growing intimacy. It was pleasant to -Standish to feel that that intimacy and understanding were now renewed -almost just where they had left off. His battle for livelihood and -success had beaten from him much of the buoyancy that had once been his -charm. Anice seemed the one link connecting him with Youth—the link -whereby he might one day win his way back to that dear lost country of -his boyish hopes and dreams. It would be good to forget, with her, the -dreary uphill struggle that was so bitter and youth-sapping when endured -alone. Then he laughed grimly at his own silly fantasy, and came back to -every-day self-control. - -The rooms were clearing. Clive got to his feet and followed the general -drift toward the enormous ball-room in the rear of the mansion that had -for the occasion been converted into a banquet hall. - -On the way he encountered a long, lean, pasty-faced young man who hailed -him with a weary: - -“Hello, Standish! Didn’t expect to see you here. Beastly bore, isn’t it? -And the governor dragged me all the way from New York to show up at it.” - -“You spend most of your time in New York nowadays, don’t you, Jerry?” -said Clive. - -“Say, old chap,” protested young Conover, “cut out the ‘Jerry,’ can’t -you? My Christian name’s Gerald. ‘Jerry’ was all right enough when I was -a kid in this one-horse provincial hole. But it would swamp a man of my -standing in New York.” - -Clive had a fair idea of the “standing” in question. A half-baked lad, -turned out of Harvard after two years of futile loafing, sent on a trip -around the world (that culminated in a delightfully misspent year in -Paris), at last coming home with a well-grounded contempt for his native -city, and turned loose at his own request on long-suffering New York, -with more money than belonged to him and fewer brains than sufficed to -keep it. This in a nutshell was the history—so far as the world at large -knew—of Caleb Conover’s only son. - -From time to time newspaper accounts of beaten cabmen, suppers that -ended in police stations, and similar feats of youthful gayety and -culture had floated to Granite. Yet Caleb Conover, otherwise so rigid in -the matter of appearances, read such accounts with relish, and boasted -loudly of the swath his son was cutting in Gotham society. For, on -Gerald’s word, Conover was firmly assured that this was the true career -of a young man of fashion. It represented all he had missed in his own -poverty-fighting early manhood, and he rejoiced in his son’s good times. - -Getting rid of Gerald as soon as he decently might, Standish made his -way to the supper-room. At a hundred tables sat more or less bored -guests. Waiters swirled wildly to and fro. In a balcony above blared an -orchestra. At the doors and in a fringe about the edges of the room were -grouped the Conover political and business hangers on. The place was hot -to suffocation and heavy with the scent of flowers. - -Suddenly, through the volume of looser sound, came a succession of sharp -raps. The orchestra stopped short. The guests ceased speaking, and -craned their necks. - -At the far end of the room, under a gaudy floral piece, a man had risen -to his feet. - -“Speech!” yelled Shevlin, enthusiastically, from a doorway. Then, made -aware of his breach of etiquette by a swift but awful glance from his -chief, he wilted behind a palm. - -But Shevlin had read the signs aright. - -Caleb Conover, Railroader, was about to make a speech. - - - - - CHAPTER II - CALEB CONOVER MAKES A SPEECH - - -Conover had broken, that night, two rules that had for years formed -inviolate tenets of his life creed. In the first place, he—whose battles -had for the most part been won by the cold eye that told nothing, and by -the colder brain that dictated the words of his every-day speech as -calculatingly as a diplomat dictates a letter of state—he had forced -himself to throw away his guard and to chatter and make himself -agreeable like any bargain counter clerk. The effort had been irksome. - -In the second, he had departed from his fixed habit of total abstinence. -The love of strong drink ran high in his blood. Early in life he had -decided that such indulgence would militate against success. So he had -avoided even the mildest potations from thenceforward. To-night (his -usually stolid nerves tense with the excitement of the grand cast he was -making for “social recognition”) he had felt, as never before in -campaign or in business climax, the need for stimulant to enable him to -play his awkward rôle. Moreover—he had his son, Gerald’s, high authority -for the statement—total abstinence was no longer in vogue among the -elect. - -As soon, therefore, as he had taken his seat in the supper-room he had -braced himself by a glass of champagne. The unwonted beverage sent a -delicious glow through him. His puzzled brain cleared, his last doubts -of the entertainment’s success began to fade. - -An obsequious waiter at his elbow hastened to refill the glass, and -Conover, his eyes darting hither and thither among the guests to single -out and dwell on the various faces he had so long and so vainly yearned -to see in his house, absent-mindedly emptied it and another after it. He -was talking assiduously to Mrs. Van Alstyne, whom at first he had found -somewhat frigid and difficult; but who, he now discovered to his -surprise, it was growing momentarily easier to entertain. He had had no -idea of his own command of language. - -Supper was still in its early stages when a fourth glass of heady -vintage champagne followed the other three. From doorways and walls his -political followers looked on with amaze. To them the sight of the Boss -drinking was the eighth wonder of the world. They nudged each other and -muttered awed comments out of the corners of their mouths. - -But Caleb heeded this not at all. He was happy. Very happy. The party -over which he had suffered such secret qualms and to secure the desired -guests for which he had strained every atom of his vast political and -business influence, was proving a marvellous success. At last he was in -society. And he had thought the barriers of that Body so impassable! He -was in society. At last. And talking with delightful, brilliant fluency -with one of its acknowledged leaders. He had conquered. - -The waiter filled his glass for the fifth time. After all, champagne had -an effect whiskey could never equal. The fifth draught (for he allowed -but one swallow to the goblet) seemed to inspire him even more than had -its predecessors. - -Then it was that fifty generations of Irishmen who, under the spell of -liquor, acquired a flow of language not their own, clamored for voice in -this their latest and greatest descendant. Now that he was in so -foreign, brilliant a mood, what more apt than a graceful little speech -of greeting to those his fellow-townsmen who had flocked thither to do -him honor? The idea was sublime. Conover rose to his feet and rapped for -silence. He would speak while the gift of eloquence was still strong -upon him. - -“Ladies and gentlemen,” began Caleb, clearing his voice and looking down -the great room across the concourse of wondering, amused, or expectant -faces that gently swayed in a faint haze before his eyes, “I guess you -all know, without my telling you, how glad I am to see you here -to-night, and I want you should enjoy every minute of your evening. Some -of you are old friends of mine. There’s more’n a few here to-night that -remembers me when I was barefooted Cale Conover, without a dollar to my -name nor any very hectic prospects of getting one. - -“But there’s a lot more of you here that I hadn’t the honor of knowing -then, nor for that matter of meeting at all till to-night. It’s to -these, mostly, that I’m talking now. For I want ’em to know me better -and like me better. Maybe if they hear more about me they will. That’s -why I’m on my feet now. - -“I b’lieve it isn’t customary to make a speech any more at parties. But -you’ll have to forgive me. I’m not much onto the latest frills and -fashions. But give me a chance, and I’ll learn as easy as a Chinaman. It -came to me all of a sudden to say what I’ve got to say, right here and -now, even if it’s at the expense of a little etiquette. I’ve asked you -here to-night, mainly, of course, for the pleasure of entertaining you, -and I hope you’re all having a real good time. But I had another reason, -too.” - -The men at the tables looked perplexed. Was this the Caleb Conover they -had met and cringed to in the outer world, this garrulous, rambling man -with the flushed face? - -“You see, I’ve come to be a kind of a feature of this city of ours and -of the State, too. I’m here to stay. And I want that my towns-folks and -my fellow-residents of the Mountain State should know me. Many of ’em -do. There’s a full half-million folks in this city and State that know -all about Caleb Conover. They know he’s on the square, that he’ll look -after their interests, that he’s a white man. They know he’s a man they -can trust in their public life and welcome in their homes. And, as I -said, there’s a lot of these people here to-night. - -“But there’s a lot of other folks here who only know me by what slander -and jokes they’ve picked up around town or in the out-of-State -newspapers. It’s these latter folks I’m talking to now. I want them to -know the _real_ me; not the uneducated crook and illiterate feller my -p’litical enemies have made me out. They can’t think I’m _all_ bad, or -they wouldn’t be my guests. Would they, now? And a little frankness -ought to do the rest. - -“Some people say I’ve risen from the gutter. Well, I’ve _risen_ from it, -haven’t I? A lot of men on Pompton Avenue and in the big clubs are just -where they started when they were born. Not a step in advance of where -their fathers left ’em. Swell chance _they’d_ have had if their parents -had started ’em in the gutter as mine did, wouldn’t they? Where’d they -be now? - -“What does the start amount to? The finish line’s where the score’s -counted. Gutter or palace. - -“‘A man’s a man for a’ that,’ says a poet by the name of R. Burns. And -he was right, even if he did waste his time on verse-stringing. Only it -always seemed a pity to me those words wasn’t said by someone bigger’n a -measly poet. Someone whose name carried weight, and whose words would be -quoted more. Because then more folks might hear of it and believe it. I -don’t suppose one person in fifty’s ever heard of this R. Burns person. -(I never did, myself, till I bought a Famous Quotation book to use in -one of my campaigns. That’s how I got familiar with the writings of R. -Burns and Ibid and Byron and all those rhymer people.) Now, if some -public character like Tom Platt, or Matt Quay, or someone else that -everybody’s heard of, had said that quotation about a man being a man——” - -Caleb paused to gather up the loose threads of his discourse. This -caused him a moment of dull bewilderment, for he was not accustomed to -digress, either in mind or talk, and the phenomenon puzzled him. He -rallied and went on: - -“But that isn’t the point. I was telling you about myself. I started in -the gutter, just as the ‘knockers’ say I did. Or down by the freight -yards, and that’s about the same thing. My mother took in washing—when -she could get it. My father went to the penitentiary for freight-lifting -when I was ten—he was a stevedore—and he died there. I was brought up on -a street where the feller—man or boy—who couldn’t fight had to stay -indoors. And indoors was one place I never stayed. I began as coal boy -in the C. G. & X. elevators; then I got a job firing on a fast freight, -and from that I took to braking on a local passenger run. Then I was -yardmaster, and then in the sup’rintendent’s office, and then came the -job of sup’rintendent and after that general manager, and I worked my -way up till I ran the C. G. & X. road single-handed. Meantime I was -looking after your city’s interests. Three times as Alderman and then -once as Mayor, for the boys knew they could bank on me. I got hold of -interests here and interests there. Cheap, run-down interests they were, -for the most part, but I built ’em up. Take the C. G. & X., for -instance. Biggest road in the State to-day. How’d it get so? _I_ made -it. It was all run down, and on its last legs when I took hold. I -acquired it and——” - -He paused once more, fighting back that queer tendency to let slip his -grasp on his subject. - -“I remember that C. G. & X. deal,” whispered Greer to his wife. “He -juggled shares and pulled wires and spread calamity rumors till he was -able to smash the stock down to a dollar-ten per. He scared out all the -other big holders, gobbled their stock, reorganized, and reaped a clean -five million on the deal.” - -“Hush!” retorted Mrs. Greer. “This is too rich to miss. I must remember -it all, to——” - -“—So, you see,” Caleb was continuing, “I fought my way up. Every move -was a fight, and every fight was a win. That’s my motto. Fight to win. -An’ if you _don’t_ win, let it be your executor, not you, that knows you -lost. But the biggest fight of all was to come. I controlled the city. I -helped control the State. I had all the money any man needed, and I was -spending it right here in the town where it was earned. I was a -successful man. But the man who’s satisfied with success would be -satisfied with failure. And I wasn’t satisfied. - -“There was still one thing I couldn’t get. I couldn’t get one set of -people to recognize me when they met me in the street, to ask me to -their houses, to come to _my_ house. Why? I don’t know. Maybe _they_ -don’t know. Maybe they didn’t _want_ to know. There’s a lot of things -society folks don’t seem to want to know. And one of those things was -me. I couldn’t win ’em over. I built this house. Cost $200,000 more’n -any other house in town. If you doubt it, step down to the Building -Commissioner’s and look over the specifications. Built it on the most -fash’nable avenue, too. But still society wouldn’t say: ‘Pleased to know -you!’ ‘Maybe it’s my lack of blue blood,’ thinks I. ‘Though my pile’s -been made a good deal cleaner than many an aristocrat’s.’ I married a -lady of the first families here”—a ripple of unintelligible surprise -broke in on his ears, but quickly died. “What was the result? She was -asked out and I wasn’t. But I kept on fighting. And at last I’m in the -winning stride. - -“I’m not a college man myself. All my education’s hand-made and since I -was thirty. But I was bound my son should be one. And he is. He’s in -society, too. The best New York affords, I’m told. My girl’s had -advantages, too, and you see the result. Do unto others what you can’t -do for yourself. That’s worth remembering sometimes. And now at last I -get my comeback for all my outlay. - -“To-night I guess I cover the final lap of the race. For the bluest -blood of Granite is—are—is among my guests here, and I’m meeting ’em on -equal terms. All this talk, maybe, isn’t what the etiquette books call -‘good form.’ But if you knew how many years I’ve worked for what I’ve -won to-night, you’d sympathize with me for wanting to crow just a -little.” - -“Heavens!” murmured Mrs. Greer, “does the creature think anyone’s going -to regard this as his ‘début’? And the awful part of it is, the whole -speech will be in every paper to-morrow. Oh, if only the reporters will -get our names wrong!” - -“No fear of that,” answered Greer. “The typewritten list is probably -being put in print even now. But what ails Conover?” - -“So,” resumed Caleb, beaming about him, “I wanted the chance to let you -all know me as I really am. Not what my enemies say about me. Is there -any reason why I shouldn’t be your friend and entertain you often? None -in the least, you’ll all say. It seems a little thing, perhaps, to you -who’ve been in the game always. But it’s meant a lot to me!” - -He paused. There seemed nothing more to say, yet he longed to end with a -climax. A glorious, dazzling inspiration came, and he hurried on: - -“And now, in honor of this little meeting between friends, let me tell -you all a secret. It won’t be a secret to-morrow, but you can always be -able to say you were the first who was told. I have at last yielded to -the earnest entreaties of my constituents and friends and party in -general, and have consented to accept the nomination for Governor at the -coming convention.” - -From the proletariat fringing the walls and blocking the doorway arose -an excited, exultant hum. Only the wild efforts of certain efficient, if -unofficial, sergeants-at-arms prevented a mighty yell of applause. At -the tables, however, the women looked bored or puzzled; while the men -glanced at each other with the blank look of people who, out for a day’s -jolly hunting, find themselves caught unexpectedly in a bear trap. - -“Good Lord!” grunted Greer, “I hope our being here doesn’t commit any of -us! To think of Conover, of all men, as governor! This’ll be a bombshell -with a vengeance.” - -“I have heretofore,” went on Caleb, after allowing the impression of his -words to sink in, “refused all State offices. But now I feel it a social -as well as a political duty that I owe. And I shall be grateful to you -for your honest support.” - -He had rehearsed this last sentence many times for campaign speeches. It -seemed to him to have the true oratorical ring, and to be singularly -appropriate. He prepared to sit down, then checked himself. - -“Some men,” he added, as an afterthought, “are in politics for a ‘holy’ -purpose. Some for what’s in it for them. I find the result’s usually -pretty much the same in both cases. As governor I shall do my best for -Granite and for the Mountain State. Thank you.” - -Caleb bowed, reseated himself and swallowed another glass of champagne -at a gulp. He was not ill pleased with himself. He had risen merely to -thank his guests for their presence. Little by little he had drifted -further than he had at first intended. Yet, he was glad he had yielded -to this unprecedented, unaccustomed yearning to expand; to show himself -at his best before these people with whom he now firmly believed himself -on a footing of friendly equality. Yes, on the whole, he was convinced -of his success. - -He glanced about him. The buzz of talk had recommenced; it seemed to him -more loudly, more interestedly, with less of constraint than before. -Dozens of eyes were upon him, not with the bored coldness of the earlier -evening, but with curiosity and open interest. He had put people at -their ease. They were accepting him as one of themselves, and behaving -as he had heard they did at other functions. - -Caleb was glad. - -Then his complacent glance fell on his wife. She was very red in the -face, and was bending over her plate, eating fast. - -“Proud of the old man, poor little thing!” mused Conover, a twinge of -affection for his scared, invertebrate spouse sending a softer light -into his strenuous, lean face. His gaze next travelled to Blanche, his -daughter. She, too, was red of face, and was talking hard, as if against -time. Somehow Caleb was less assured as to the cause of her flush. -Perhaps in Europe such speeches were not customary. He could explain to -her later. - -Anice Lanier, alone, met his eye with the frank, honest, unafraid look -that was her birthright, and which made her the only living person he -instinctively felt he could not bully. In her look he read, now, a mute -question. He could not fathom the expression. - -Caleb left his place and made his way among the tables to where she sat. - -“How’d it go?” he asked. “It seemed to take ’em.” - -“I think it did,” she replied, noting the flush on his cheek and the -brightness of his gaze, and wondering thereat. - -“Wasn’t too long to hold their interest?” - -“No. They seemed interested.” - -“You think so? Good! Do you know, if I’d had time to think, I’d rather -have made fifty campaign speeches than that one. I’d have been rattled -to death. But it was easier than any speech I ever made. Good climax, -eh, that announcement?” - -“How long ago did you make up your mind to run for Governor?” - -“Think it’s queer that, as my secretary, you hadn’t heard of it? Well, -I’ll tell you. I decided it just about seven minutes ago. It came to me -like a flash, plumb in the middle of my speech. I figgered out all at -once that if there was any flaw in my plans so far, the governorship was -dead sure to cinch me in society. Folks’ll think twice before they turn -up their noses at a governor. It came as an inspiration. A genuine -hunch. I never have one of them but what it wins. Why, when——” - -“But can you get the nomination?” - -“Can I get it? _Can_ I get it? Say, Miss Lanier, haven’t you learned yet -that there isn’t a thing in the city of Granite or in the Mountain State -that Caleb Conover, Railroader, can’t get if he wants it bad enough? -To-night ought to have showed you that. Why, with the legislature and -every newspaper, and the railroad system and every decent State job -right here safe between my fingers, all I’ve got to do is to turn the -wheel, and the little ball will drop into the governor’s chair all -right, all right.” - -The girl’s big brown eyes were vaguely troubled. The reserve habitual to -her when in her employer’s society deepened. She thought of Clive -Standish and his aspirations. What would become of the young lawyer’s -already desperate hope, now that the Boss himself—and not some mere -puppet of the latter’s—was to be his opponent? - -“Say,” sighed Caleb Conover in perfect content, “this is the happiest -night ever! I’ve got everything there is in life for a man. All the -money I want, the running of the State, a place in society at last, a -daughter that’s a princess, a boy that’s making his mark in the biggest -city in America, and now—the governorship. Lord! but I’m a lucky man. -And that speech—I didn’t think I had it in me. Of course, I know those -snobs from the Pompton Avenue crowd were dragged here by the ears. I had -to drag pretty hard, too, in most cases. But they’re _here_. And they -listened to me. They had to. And they can’t ever look on me just as they -did before.” - -“No,” assented Anice, “they can’t.” - -To her there was something impersonally pathetic in the way this usually -keen, stern man had unbent and made himself ridiculous. She was the only -person living in whose presence, as a rule, he expanded. She was used to -the semi-occasional talkative, boastful moods of this Boss whom all the -rest of the world deemed as sharp, and concise as a steel trap—and as -deadly. Yet never had even she seen him like this before. - -It was sad, she mused, that Samson, shorn of his locks of self-restraint -and of his calculating coolness, should thus have made sport for the -Philistines. That he had perhaps done so for a purpose—even though for -once in his life it was a futile purpose—rendered his folly no less -humiliating. - -“Yes,” reiterated Conover, as he prepared to return to his own table. -“It was an inspiration. And an ounce of inspiration discounts a half-ton -of any other commodity that ever passed over the counter.” - - “What was it like?” rhapsodized Billy Shevlin at 2 A.M., as he gazed -loftily upon a semicircle of humbler querists in the back room of -Kerrigan’s saloon. “It was like the King of England an’ one of them -Fashion Joinals an’ a lake of $4-a-bottle suds, all mixed; with a Letter -Carriers’ Ball on the side. And”—he added, in a glow of divine -memories—“_I_ was ace-high with the biggest of the push. If I hadn’t a’ -been, would the Van Alstyne dame a’ stood for it so civil when I treads -on the train of her Sunday regalia and rips about ten yards of the fancy -tatting off’n it?” - - -“What was it like?” echoed Mrs. Greer to a query of one of her daughters -who had sat up to await the parental home-coming. “It was something -clear outside the scriptural prohibition of swearing. For it was like -nothing in ‘the heavens above, or the earth beneath, or the waters under -the earth.’” - - -“What was it like?” thought Clive Standish drowsily as he fell asleep. -“A dozen people are certain to ask me that to-morrow. It—her—her eyes -have that same old queer way—of making me feel as if—I were in church.” - - - - - CHAPTER III - CALEB CONOVER REGRETS - - -Caleb Conover, Railroader, was in a humor when all the household thought -well to tread softly. - -It was the morning after his “début.” He paced his study intermittently, -stopping now and again at a window to watch laborers at work in the -grounds below, dismantling the strings of Chinese lanterns, and carting -away other litter of the festivities. A pile of newspapers filled one of -the study chairs. On the front page of each local journal was blazoned a -garish account of the Conover reception. Yet Caleb, eager as he had once -been to read every word concerning the fête, had not so much as glanced -at any of the papers. In fact, he seemed, in his weary pacing to and -fro, to avoid the locality of the chair where they lay. - -For an hour—in fact, ever since he had left his bedroom—he had paced -thus. And none had dared disturb him. For the evil spirit was heavy upon -Saul, and the javelin of wrath, at such times, was not prone to tarry in -its flight. - -Caleb’s black mood this morning came from within, not from objective -causes. He was travelling through that deepest, most horrible of all the -multi-graded Valleys of Humiliation—the Vale of Remembered Folly. Let a -man recall a crime, and—especially if he be troubled at the time with -indigestion—remorse of a smug if painful sort will be his portion. Let -him recall a misfortune, and a wave of gentle, self-pitying grief will -lave his heart, soothing the throb of an old sting into soft regret. But -let him awake to the fact that he has made himself sublimely -ridiculous—and that in the presence of the multitude—and his -self-torture can be lashed to a pitch that shames the Inquisition’s most -zealous efforts. Therein lies the True Valley of Humiliation, the ravine -where no sunlight of redeeming circumstances shines, where no refreshing -rill of excuse and palliation flows. And it was in this unrelieved, arid -gorge of self-contempt that Caleb Conover now wallowed. - -He had made a fool of himself. An arrant fool. He had drunk until he was -drunken. And in that drunkenness he had spoken blatant words of idiocy. -He had made himself ridiculous in the eyes of the very class he had -sought to cultivate. His had not been the besottedness that babbles, -sleeps and forgets. Even as his drink-inspired tongue had betrayed no -thickness nor hiatus during his drivelling speech, so the steady brain -had, on waking, remorselessly told him of his every word. - -Thirty years before, in a drunken spree, he had been seized with a -fervor of patriotism and had enlisted in the army. On coming to himself -it had cost him nearly every dollar he possessed to get himself free. -After a similar revel, a year later, he had stampeded a meeting of the -local “machine” by making a tearful speech in favor of reform and purity -in politics. The oration had cost him his immediate chances of political -preferment. After that he had done away with this single weakness in his -iron nature and had drunk no more. The sacrifice had been light for so -strong a man, once he forced himself to make it. - -Last night—secure in his impregnable self-trust—he had broken his -inviolable rule. As a result he had become a laughing-stock for the -people whose favor he so unspeakably desired to win. As to his own -adherents, he gave their possible opinions not one thought. Whatever the -Boss said “went” with them. Had he declared himself a candidate for holy -orders, or blurted out the innermost secrets of the “machine,” they -would probably have believed he was acting for the best. But those -others——! - -[Illustration: She was very pretty and dainty and young, in her simple -white morning frock. Page 47.] - -And, over and above all, his declaration of candidacy for Governor—— - -A knock at the door of his study broke in on the audible groan of -self-contempt this last and ever-recurrent thought wrung from his tight -lips. Caleb stopped midway down the room, his short red hair bristling -with fury at the interruption. - -“What do you want?” he snarled. - -The door opened and Anice Lanier came in. She was very pretty and dainty -and young, in her simple white morning frock. She carried a set of -tablets whereon it was her custom to transcribe notes of Caleb’s morning -instructions for reference or for later amplification by his two -stenographers. - -“Well!” roared Conover, glowering across the room at her, “what in hell -do _you_ want?” - -“To tender my resignation,” was the unruffled reply. - -“Your _what_?” he gasped, stupidly. - -“My resignation,” in the same level, impersonal tones. “To take effect -at once. Good morning.” - -She was half-way out of the room before her employer could hurry after -and detain her. - -“What’s—what’s the meaning of this?” asked Caleb, the brutal -belligerency trailing out of his voice. Then, before she could answer, -he added: “Because I spoke like that just now? Was that it? Because I -said—And you’d throw over a good job just because of a few cranky words? -Yes, I believe you would. You’d do it. It isn’t a bluff. Maybe that’s -why you make such a hit with me, Miss Lanier. You’re not scared every -time I open my mouth. And you stand up for yourself.” - -He eyed her in a quizzically admiring fashion, as one might a beautiful -but unclassified natural history specimen. She made no reply, but stood -waiting in patience for him to move from between her and the door. - -Caleb grinned. - -“Want me to apologize, I s’pose?” he grumbled. - -“A gentleman would not wait to ask.” - -“Maybe you think a gentleman wouldn’t of said what I did, in the first -place, eh?” - -“Yes, I do think so. Don’t you?” - -“Well, I’m sorry. Let it go at that. Now let’s get to work. Say”—as they -moved across to their wonted places at the big centre table, “you -oughtn’t to take offence at anything about me this morning. You must -know how sore I am.” - -“What’s the matter?” - -“As if you didn’t know! You saw how many kinds of a wall-eyed fool I -made of myself last night. Isn’t that enough to make a man sore? And to -think of it being taken down by those newspaper idiots and printed all -over the country!” - -He gave the nearby chair a kick, avalanching the morning papers to the -floor. - -“Have you read those?” queried Anice. - -“No. Why should I rub it in? I know what they——” - -“Why not look at them before you lose your temper?” - -Caleb snatched up the _Star_, foremost journal of Granite. He glanced -down the last column of the front page, and over to the second. - -“Here’s the story of the show just as we dictated it beforehand,” he -commented. “List of guests—Where in thunder is that measly speech? Have -they given it a column to itself? Oh—way down at the bottom. ‘In a -singularly happy little informal address at the close of the evening Mr. -Conover mentioned his forthcoming candidacy for governor.’ Is that all -any of them have got about it?” - -“They have your pledge to run for Governor blazoned over two columns of -the front page of nearly all the papers. But nothing more about the -speech itself.” - -“But how——” - -“I took the liberty of stopping the reporters before they left the -house, and telling them it would be against your wish for any of your -other remarks to be quoted.” - -“You did that? Miss Lanier, you’re fine! You’ve saved me a guying in -every out-of-State paper in the East. I want to show my appreciation——” - -“If that means another offer to raise my salary, I am very much obliged. -But, as I’ve told you several times before, I can’t accept it. Thank you -just the same.” - -“But why not? I can afford——” - -“But I can’t. Don’t let’s talk of it, please.” - -“And every other soul in my employ spraining his brain to plan for a -raise! The man who understands women—if he’s ever born—won’t need to -read his Bible, for there’ll be nothing that even the Almighty can teach -him.” - -“Shan’t we begin work? About this Fournier matter. He refuses to pay the -$30,000, and we can’t even get him to admit he owes it. Shall I——” - -“Write and tell him unless he pays that $41,596 within thirty days——” - -“But it’s $30,000, not $41,000. He——” - -“I know that. And he’ll write us so by return mail. That’ll give us the -acknowledgment we want of the $30,000 debt. What next?” - -“The Curtis-Bayne people of Hadley are falling behind on their contract -with the C. G. & X.” - -“I guess they are,” chuckled Caleb. “They’re beginning to see a great -light, just as I figured out. Well, let ’em squirm a bit.” - -“But the contract—you may remember Mr. Curtis asked to look at our copy -of it when he was in Granite. He said he wanted to verify a clause he -couldn’t quite recollect. You told me to send it to him, and I did.” - -“Yes, I remember.” - -“Well, he never returned it. And this morning we get this letter from -him: ‘_In regard to your favor of the 9th inst., in which you speak of a -contract, we beg to state you must have confused us with some other of -your road’s customers. The Curtis-Bayne Company has no contract with the -C. G. & X., and can find no record of one. If you have such a document -kindly produce it._’” - -“Well, well, well!” gurgled Caleb. “To think how that wicked old Curtis -fox has imposed on my trust in human nature! He’s got us, eh?” - -“It looks so, I’m afraid.” - -“Looks so to him, too. It’ll keep on looking so till I shove him into -court and make him swear on the witness stand that no contract ever -existed. Then it’ll be time enough to produce the certified copy I had -made just after I got his request to send the original to his hotel. -Poor old Curtis! Please write him a very blustering, scared, appealing -kind of letter. Next?” - -“O’Flaherty’s sent another begging note, about that claim of his against -the road. It begins: ‘_Dear Mr. Conover: As you know, I’ve seen better -days_’——” - -“Tell him I can’t be held accountable for the weather. And—say, Miss -Lanier, let all the rest of this routine go over for to-day. I’ve a -bigger game on, and I’ve got to hustle. That Governorship business——” - -“Yes?” - -“That was the foolest thing I ever did. It seemed to me at the minute a -grand idea as a wind-up for my crazy speech. But I guess I’ll have to -pay my way all right before I’m done with last evening. The free list’s -suspended as far’s I’m concerned.” - -“You mean there’s some doubt of your getting the nomination?” she asked, -a sudden hope making her big eyes lustrous. - -“Doubt? _Doubt?_ Say, I thought you knew me better than that. Why, the -nomination’s right in front of me on a silver salver and trimmed with -blue ribbons. And the election, too, for that matter.” - -“Then”—the hope dying—“why do you speak as you did just now?” - -“It’s this way: I’ve held Granite and the Mountain State by the nape of -the neck for ten years. I’m the Boss. And when I give the word folks -come to heel. But all this time I’ve been standing in the background -while I pulled the strings. It was safer that way and pleasanter. I’d a -lot rather write the play than be just a paid actor in it. But now I’ve -got to jump out of my corner in the wings and take the centre of the -stage. There’s a lot more glory on the stage than in the wings, but -there’s lots more bad eggs and decayed fruit drifting in that direction, -too. If the audience don’t like the actor they hiss him. The man in the -wings don’t get any of that. All he has to do is to call off that actor -and put on another the crowd’ll like better, or maybe a new play if it -comes to the worst. - -“But here I’m to take the stage and get the limelight and the newspaper -roasts—outside the State—and not an actor can I shunt it off on. That’s -why I’ve never took public office since I was Mayor. And then it was -only a stepping-stone to the Leadership. Now I’ve got to leave the -background and pose in the Capitol. There’s nothing in it for me, except -a better social position. That’s a lot, I know. But I’m not so sure that -even such a raise is worth the price.” - -“Then why not withdraw?” - -“Not me! Withdraw, and be laughed at by my own crowd as well as the -society click? It’d smash me forever. It’s human nature to love a -criminal and to hate a four-flusher. And cold feet ain’t good for the -circulation of the body politic. It’s apt to end by freezing its -possessor out. No, sir! I’m in it, and I got to swim strong. The -nomination and the election’s easy enough. But just a ‘won handily’ -won’t fill the bill. I’ve got to sweep the State with the all-firedest -landslide ever slidden since U. S. Grant ran around the track twice -before Horace Greeley got on speaking terms with his own stride. It’s -got to be a case of ‘the all-popular Governor Conover.’ I’ve got to go -in on the shoulders of that rampant steed they call ‘The Hoorah!’ -That’ll settle forever any doubts of my fitness, and it’ll stop all -laughs at what I said last night. When a man’s the people’s unanimous -choice, the few stray knocks that happen at intervals do him more good -than harm. But if it was just touch-and-go, everybody’d be screeching -about fraud and boss rule winning over honest effort. These Civic -Leaguers are too noisy, as it is. I’ve got to start in right away.” - -“Any orders?” - -“Yes. When you go down stairs, please send for Shevlin and Bourke and -Raynor and the rest on this list, and telephone the editors I’d like to -see ’em this afternoon. I’ll have the ball rolling by night. Say, Miss -Lanier, the campaign’ll mean extra work for you. I want to make it worth -your while. Come now, don’t be silly. Let me make your salary——” - -“I beg you won’t speak of that any more. I cannot accept a raise of -salary from you.” - -“But why not? You earn more and——” - -“I earn all I get. And, as I’ve told you before, my reasons for -accepting no larger stipend than you offered publicly for a governess -for Blanche three years ago, are my own. I consider them good. I am glad -to get the money I do. I believe I more than earn it. But I can accept -no more, and I can take no presents nor favors of any sort from you. I -can’t explain to you my reasons. But I believe they are good.” - -“But it’s so absurd! I——” - -“Have you ever found me shirking my work or disloyal in any way to your -interests, on account of the smallness of my salary? I have handled -business and political secrets of yours that would have involved -millions in loss to you if I had betrayed you. I have been loyal to -those interests. I have done your work satisfactorily. I could have done -no more on three times my pay. There let the matter rest, please.” - -“Just as you like!” grumbled Conover. “Lord! how the crowd’d stare if it -heard Caleb Conover teasing anyone to take more of his money!” - -“Money won’t buy everything.” - -“No? Well, it gives a pretty big assortment to choose from. And——” - -The door was flung unceremoniously open, and Gerald slouched in, his -pasty face unwontedly sallow from last night’s potations. For, with a -few of the mushroom crop of the _jeunesse dorée_ of Granite, he had -prolonged the supper-room revels after the departure of the other -guests. - -“Hello, Dad!” he observed. “Thought I’d find you alone.” - -Caleb, his initial ill-temper softened by his talk with Anice, greeted -his favorite child with a friendly nod. - -“Sit down,” he said. “I’ll be at leisure in a few moments. And, say, -throw that measly blend of burnt paper and Egyptian sweepings out of the -window. Why a grown man can’t smoke man’s-sized tobacco is more’n I can -see.” - -The lad, with sulky obedience, tossed away the cigarette and came back -to the table. - -“Hear the news?” he asked. “It seems you’ve got a rival for the -nomination.” - -“Hey?” - -“Grandin was telling me about it last night. His father’s one of the big -guns in the Civic League, you know. It seems the League’s planning to -spring Clive Standish on the convention.” - -“Clive Standish? That kid? For governor? Lord!” - -“Good joke, isn’t it? I——” - -“Joke? _No!_” shouted Caleb. “It’s just the thing I wouldn’t have had -happen for a fortune. He’s poor, but he belongs to the oldest family in -the State, and his blood so blue you could use it to starch clothes -with. Just the sort of a visionary young fool a lot of cranks will -gather around. He’ll yell so loud about the ‘people’s sacred rights’ and -‘ring rule’ and all that rot, that they’ll hear him clear over in the -other States. And when they do, the out-of-State papers will all get to -hammering me again. And the very crowd I’m trying to score with, by -running for Governor, will vote for him to a man. He’s _one_ of them.” - -“So you think he has a chance of winning?” asked Anice. - -“Not a ghost of a chance. He’ll die in the convention—if he ever reaches -that far. But it will stir up just the opposition I’ve been telling you -I was afraid of. Well, if it meant work before, it means a -twenty-five-hour-a-day hustle now. I wish you’d telephone Shevlin and -the others, please, Miss Lanier. Tell ’em to be here in an hour.” - -As the girl left the room, Caleb swung about to face his son. The glow -of coming battle was in his face. - -“Now’s your chance, Jerry!” he began, hot with an enthusiasm that failed -to find the faintest reflection in the sallow countenance before him. -“Now’s your chance to get back at the old man for a few of the things -he’s done for you.” - -“I—I don’t catch your meaning,” muttered Gerald, uncomfortably. - -“You’ve got a sort of pull with a certain set of young addlepates here, -because you live in New York and get your name in the papers, and -because you’ve a dollar allowance to every penny of theirs: I want you -to use that pull. I want you should jump right in and begin working for -me. Why, you ought to round up a hundred votes in the Pompton Club -alone, to say nothing of the youngsters on the fringe outside, who’ll be -tickled to death at having a feller of your means and position notice -’em. Yes, you can be a whole lot of help to me this next few weeks. Take -off your coat and wade in! And when we win——” - -“Hold on a moment, Dad!” interrupted Gerald, whose lengthening face had -passed unnoted by the excited elder man. “Hold on, please. You mean you -want me to work for you in the campaign for Governor?” - -“Jerry, you’ll get almost human one of these days if you let your -intelligence take flights like that. Yes, I——” - -“Because,” pursued Gerald, who was far too accustomed to this form of -sarcasm from his father to allow it to ruffle him, “because I can’t.” - -“You—you—_what_?” grunted Caleb, incredulously. - -“I can’t stay here in Granite all that time. I—I must get back to New -York this week. I’ve important business there.” - -“Well, I’ll be—” gasped Conover, finding his voice at last, and with it -the grim satire he loved to lavish on this son, so unlike himself. -“Business, eh? ‘Important business!’ Some restaurant waiter you’ve got -an appointment to thrash at 2.45 A.M. on Tuesday, or a hotel window -you’ve made a date to drive through in a hansom? From all I’ve read or -heard of your life there, those were the two most important pieces of -business you ever transacted in New York. And it was _my_ money paid the -fines both times. No, no, Sonny, your ‘important business’ will keep, I -guess, till after November. Anyhow, in the meantime you’ll stay right -here and help Papa. See? Otherwise you’ll go to New York on foot, and -have the pleasure of living on what the three-ball specialists will give -you for your hardware. No work, no pennies, Jerry. Understand that? Now -go and think it over. Papa’s too busy to play with little boys to-day.” - -To Caleb’s secret delight he saw he had at last roused a spark of spirit -in the lad. - -“My business in New York,” retorted Gerald hotly, “is not with waiters -or hotels. It is with my wife.” - -Caleb sat down very hard. - -“Your—your—” he sputtered apoplectically. - -“My wife,” returned the youth, a sheepish pride in look and words. “It -was that I came up here to speak to you about this morning. You were so -busy yesterday when I got to town that——” - -[Illustration: “Are you going to tell me about this thing, or have I got -to shake it out of you?” Page 61.] - -“Jerry, you ass! Are you crazy or only drunk?” - -“Father,” protested Gerald with a petulance that only half hid his -growing nervousness, “I do wish you’d call me ‘Gerald,’ and drop that -wretched nickname. If——” - -He got no further. Conover was upon him, his tough, knotty hands -gripping the youngster’s shoulders and shaking him to and fro with a -force that set Gerald’s teeth clicking. - -“Now then!” bellowed the Railroader, mighty, masterful, terrible as he -let the breathless lad slide to the floor and towered wrathful above -him. “Are you going to tell me about this thing, or have I got to shake -it out of you? Speak up!” - -Gulping, panting, all the spirit momentarily buffeted out of him, Gerald -Conover lay staring stupidly up at the angry man. - -“I’m—I’m married!” he bleated. “I—I meant to tell you when——” - -“Who to?” demanded Caleb in an agony of self-control. - -“Miss Enid Montmorency. She——” - -“Who is she?” - -“She is—she’s my wife. Two months ago we——” - -“Who is she? Is she in society?” - -“Her family were very famous before the war. She——” - -“Is she in good New York society?” - -“She—she had to earn her own living and——” - -“And what?” - -“She—I met her at Rector’s first. Her company——” - -“Great Lord!” - -The words came like a thunderclap. Caleb Conover stepped back to the -wall, his florid face gray. - -“_You MARRIED a chorus girl?_” - -“She—her family before the war——” - -Caleb had himself in hand. - -“Get up!” he ordered. “You haven’t money enough nor earning power enough -to buy those boards you’re sprawling on. Yet you saddle yourself with a -wife—a wife you can’t support. A woman who will down all your social -hopes. And mine. You let a designing doll with a painted face dupe you -into——” - -“You shan’t speak that way of Enid!” flared up the boy, tearfully. “She -is as good and pure as——” - -“As _you_ are. And with a damned sight more sense. For she knows a legal -way of grabbing onto a livelihood; and _you_ don’t. Shut up! If you try -any novel-hero airs on me, you young skunk, I’ll break you over my knee. -Now you’ll stand still and you’ll listen to what I have to say.” - -Gerald, cowed, but snarling under his breath, obeyed. - -“I won’t waste breath telling you all I’d hoped for you,” began Conover, -“or how I tried to give you all I missed in my own boyhood. You haven’t -the brains to understand—or care. What I’ve got to say is all about -money. And I never found you too stupid to listen to that. You’ve cut -your throat. Nothing can mend that. We’ll talk about the future at -another time. It’s the present we’ve got to ’tend to now. You’re going -to be of some use to me at last. The only use you ever will be to -anyone. Your allowance, for a few months, is going on just the same as -before. But you’ve got to earn it. And you’re going to earn it by -staying right here in Granite, and working like a dog for me in this -campaign. If you stir out of this town, or if your—that woman comes -here, or if you don’t use your pull in my behalf with the sap-heads you -travel with at the Pompton Club—if you don’t do all this, I say, till -further orders—then, for now and all time, you’ll earn your own way. For -you’ll not get another nickel out of me. I guess you know me well enough -to understand I’ll go by what I say. Take your choice. You’ve got an -earning ability of about $4 a week. You’ve got an allowance of $48,000 a -year. Now, till after election, which’ll it be?” - -Father and son faced each other in silence for a full minute. Then the -latter’s eyes fell. - -“I’ll stay!” he muttered. - -“I thought so. Now chase! I’m busy.” - -Gerald slouched to the door. On the threshold he turned and shook his -fist in impotent fury at the broad back turned on him. - -“I’ll stay!” he repeated, his voice scaling an octave and breaking in a -hysterical sob, “I’ll stay! But, before God, I’ll find a way to pay you -off for this before the campaign is over.” - -Caleb did not turn at the threat nor at the loud-slamming door. He was -scribbling a telegram to his New York lawyer. - -“_Gerald in scrape with chorus girl, Enid Montmorency_,” he wrote. -“_Find her and buy her off. Go as high as $100,000._” - -“Father Healy says, ‘The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the -children,’” he quoted half-aloud as he finished; “but when they are -visited in the shape of blithering idiocy, it seems ’most like a breach -of contract.” - - -The Railroader was not fated to enjoy even the scant privilege of -solitude. He had hardly seated himself at his desk when the sacred door -was once more assailed by inquisitive knuckles. - -“The Boys haven’t wasted much time,” he thought as he growled permission -to enter. - -The tall, exquisitely-groomed figure of his new son-in-law, the Prince -d’Antri, blocked the threshold. With him was Blanche. - -“Do we intrude?” asked d’Antri, blandly, as he ushered his wife through -the doorway and placed a chair for her. Caleb watched him without reply. -The multifarious branches of social usage always affected him with -contemptuous hopelessness. He saw no sense in them; but neither, as he -confessed disgustedly to himself, could he, even if he chose, possibly -acquire them. - -“We don’t intrude, I hope,” repeated the prince, closing the door behind -him, and sitting down near the littered centre table. - -“Keep on hoping!” vouchsafed Conover gruffly. “What am I to do for you?” - -He could never grow accustomed to this foreign son-in-law whom he had -known but two days. Obedient, for once, to his wife, and to his -daughter’s written instructions, he had yielded to the marriage, had -consented to its performance at the American Embassy at Paris rather -than at the white marble Pompton Avenue “Mausoleum,” and had readily -allowed himself to be convinced that the union meant a social stride for -the entire family such as could never otherwise have been attained. - -His wife and daughter had returned from Europe just before the reception -(whose details had, by his own command, been left wholly to Caleb), -bringing with them the happy bridegroom. Caleb had never before seen a -prince. In his youth, fairy tales had not been his portion; so he had -not even the average child’s conception of a mediæval Being in -gold-spangled doublet and hose, to guide him. Hence his ideas had been -more than shadowy. What he had seen was a very tall, very slender, very -handsome personage, whose costumes and manner a keener judge of fashion -would have decided were on a par with the princely command of English: -perfect, but a trifle too carefully accentuated to appeal to Yankee -tastes. - -Beyond the most casual intercourse and table talk there had been -hitherto no scope for closer acquaintanceship between the two men. The -reception had taken up everyone’s time and thoughts. Caleb had, however, -studied the prince from afar, and had sought to apply to him some of the -numberless classifications in which he was so unerringly wont to place -his fellow-men. But none of the ready-made moulds seemed to fit the -newcomer. - -“What can I do for you?” repeated Conover, looking at his watch. “In a -few minutes I’m expecting some——” - -“We shall not detain you long. We have come to speak to you on a—a -rather delicate theme.” - -“Delicate?” muttered Caleb, glancing up from the politely embarrassed -prince to his daughter. “Well, speak it out, then. The best treatment -for delicate things is a little healthy exposure. What is it?” - -“I ventured to interrupt your labors,” said d’Antri, his face reflecting -a gentle look of pain at his host’s brusqueness, “to speak to you in -reference to your daughter’s _dot_.” - -“Her which?” queried Caleb, looking at the bride as though in search of -symptoms of some violent, unsuspected malady. - -“Amadeo means my dowry,” explained Blanche, with some impatience. “It is -the custom, you know, on the Continent.” - -“Not on any part of the Continent _I_ ever struck. And I’ve been pretty -much all over it from ’Frisco to Quebec. It’s a new one on me.” - -“In Europe,” said Blanche, tapping her foot, and gazing apologetically -at her handsome husband, “it is customary—as I thought everybody -knew—for girls to bring their husbands a marriage portion. How much are -you going to settle on me?” - -“How much what? Money? You’ve always had your $25,000 a year allowance, -and I’ve never kicked when you overdrew it. But now you’re married, I -suppose your husband——” - -“But, Mr. Conover,” broke in the prince, with more eagerness than Caleb -had ever before seen on his placid exterior, “I think you fail to -understand. I—we——” - -“What are you driving at?” snapped Conover. “Do you mean you can’t -support your wife?” - -“Papa!” cried Blanche, in distress, “for once in your life try not to be -coarse. It isn’t a question of support. It is the custom——” - -“For a father to pay a man to marry his girl? I can’t see it myself, -though now you speak about it, I seem to have read or heard something of -the sort. Well, if it’s a custom, I suppose it goes. How much?” - -The prince shivered, very gently, very daintily. - -“If it affects you that way,” growled Caleb, “I wouldn’t ’a’ brought up -the subject if I was you. Say, Blanche, if you’re too timid to make a -suggestion, how’ll this strike you? I’ll double your present -allowance—$50,000 a year, eh?” - -“Impossible!” gasped d’Antri. - -“Not on your life!” retorted Caleb. “I could double that and never feel -it. Don’t you worry about me not being able——” - -“But I cannot consent to——” - -“Who’s asked you to? It’s to be _her_ cash, ain’t it? Not yours. I don’t -think you come on in this scene at all, Prince. It seems to be up to me -and Blanche. And——” - -“Oh, you’ll _never_ understand!” cried Blanche in despair. “For the -daughter of a man of your means, and the social position I am to occupy -as Princess d’Antri, my _dot_ should be at least——” - -“Hold on!” interposed Caleb. “I think I begin to see. I——” - -“You _don’t_ see,” contradicted his daughter, pettishly; “I’ll have to -explain. It——” - -“No, you won’t. If I couldn’t understand things without waiting to have -’em explained, I’d still be braking at $50 a month. As I take it, this -prince party meets you in Yurrup, hears your father is _the_ Caleb -Conover—an old fool of an American with a pretty daughter to place on -the nobility market—and you make your bid. You marry him and he’s so -sure of his ground he don’t even hold out for an ante-wedding bonus. He -chases over here with you, and when he don’t find the dowry, or whatever -else you call it, waiting for him at the dock, he makes bold to ring the -cash register.” - -The prince was on his feet. - -“I cannot consent, sir, to listen to such——” - -“Oh, yes, you can. I’ve heard of your sort. But I somehow thought they -were all counts. I didn’t know exactly how a prince stood; but I -supposed the job carried an income with it. It seems you’re just in the -count class, after all. The kind of man that loafs about Yurrup living -on the name of some ancestor who got his title by acting as hired man to -his king or emperor or whoever ruled his two-for-a-quarter country. The -sort of man that does nothing for a living and don’t even do that well -enough to keep him in pocket money. Then some lookout makes the high -sign, ‘Heiress in sight!’ and——” - -Blanche burst into tears. Her husband threw his arm about her shoulders -in assiduous, theatrical fashion, while Caleb sat gnawing his unlighted -cigar and grimly eyeing the couple. - -“There, there, _carissima mia_!” soothed d’Antri, “your father knows no -better. In this barbarous country of his there are no leisure classes. -I——” - -“You bet there are!” snorted Caleb. “Only, here we call ’em tramps. And -we give ’em thirty days instead of our daughters. Here, stop that damned -snivelling, Blanche! You know how I hate it. I’m stung all right, and -it’s too late to squeal. The only time there’s any use in crying over -spilt milk is when there’s a soft-hearted milkman cruising around within -hearing distance. And from where I sit, I don’t see any such rushing to -my help. You’ll get your ‘_dot_’ all right. Just as you knew you would -before you put up that whimper. We’ll fix up the details when I’ve got -more time on my hands. - -“Only, I want you and me and this prince-feller of yours to understand -each other, _clear_. I’m letting myself be bled for a certain sum, -because I’ve crowed so loud about your being a princess that I can’t -back down now without raising a laugh, and without spoiling all I’ve -planned to get by this marriage. Besides, I’m going to run for governor, -and I don’t want any scandal or ‘dramatic separation for lack of cash’ -coming from my own family. I’m caught fair, and I’ll pay. But I want us -three to understand that it’s straight blackmail, and that I pay it just -as I’d pay to have any other dirty story hushed up. That’ll be all -to-day. If you want some reading matter, Prince, here’s a paper with a -list of the liners that sail for Yurrup next week. Nothing personal -intended, you know. Good-by.” - -“But, papa—” began Blanche, who, like d’Antri, had listened to this -exordium with far less natural resentment than might have been looked -for. - -“That’ll be all, I said,” repeated Conover. “You win your point. Clear -out! I’m busy.” - -The princess knew Caleb too well to press the victory further. She -tearfully left the room, d’Antri following in her wake. At the door the -latter paused, his long white fingers toying with his silky beard. - -“Sir,” he said, “you may be assured that I shall never forget your -generosity, even though it is couched in such unusual language. You -shall never regret it. I understand you have a wish to adorn the best -society and——” - -“No,” grunted Conover, “not the Best, only the Highest. And it’s no -concern of yours, either way. Good-by!” - -As the titled couple withdrew, Anice Lanier came in. - -“Mr. Shevlin, Mr. Bourke and most of the others you sent for have come,” -she reported. “Shall I send them up?” - -“Yes,” said Conover dully, “send ’em along. It’ll be good to talk to -real human beings again. Say, Miss Lanier”—as the girl started to obey -his order—“did you ever write out that measly interview of mine for the -_Star_, endorsing those new views of Roosevelt’s on race-suicide, and -saying something about a childless home being a curse to——” - -“Yes. I was just going to mail it. Shall——?” - -“Well, don’t! Tear it up. There’s no sense in a man being funny at his -own expense.” - - - - - CHAPTER IV - IN TWO CAMPS - - -In the headquarters of the Civic League sat Clive Standish. With him -were the committee chosen to conduct his campaign. Karl Ansel, a lean, -hard-headed New England giant, their chairman, and incidentally, -campaign manager, was going laboriously over a list of counties, towns -and villages, corroborating certain notes he made from time to time, by -referring to a big colored map of the Mountain State. - -“I’ve checked off the places that are directly under the thumb of the C. -G. & X.,” Ansel was explaining as the rest of the group leaned over to -watch the course of his pencil along the map. “I’m afraid they are as -hopelessly in Conover’s grip as Granite itself. It’s in the rural -districts, and in the towns that aren’t dependent on the main line, that -we must find our strength. It’s an uphill fight at best, with——” - -“With a million-and-a-half people who are paying enormous taxes for -which they receive scant value, who have thrust on them a legislature -and other officials they are forced to elect at the Boss’s order!” -finished Standish. “Surely, it’s an uphill fight that’s well worth -while, if we can wake men to a sense of their own slavery and the frauds -they are forced to connive at. And that’s what we’re going to do.” - -The more experienced, if less enthusiastic, Ansel scratched his chin -doubtfully. - -“The people, as a mass, are slow to wake,” he observed. “Oftener they -just open one eye and growl at being bothered, and then roll over and go -happily to sleep again while the Boss goes through their pockets. Don’t -start this campaign too optimistically, Mr. Standish. And don’t get the -idea the people are begging to be waked. If you wake them you’ve got to -do it against their will. Not with any help of theirs. Maybe you can. -Maybe you can’t. As you say, it’s perhaps worth a try. Even if——” - -“But they’ve been waked before,” insisted Standish. “And when they do -awaken, there are no half-measures about it. Look how Jerome, on an -independent fight, won out against the Machine in 1905. Why should the -Mountain State——” - -“The people are sleepy by nature,” laughed Ansel. “They wake up with a -roar, chase the Boss out of their house, smash the Machine and then go -back to bed again with the idea they’re heroes. As soon as their eyes -are shut, back strolls the Boss, mends his Machine and reopens business -at the old stand. And that’s what you have to look forward to. But we’ve -been all over this sort of thing before. I’ll have your ‘speech-route’ -made out in an hour, and start a man over it this afternoon to arrange -about the halls and the ‘papering’ and the press work. Speaking of press -work, I had your candidature telegraphed to New York to the Associated -Press early this morning. There’ll be a perfect cloud of reporters up -here before night. We must arrange to see them before the Conover crowd -can get hold of them. Sympathy from out-of-State papers won’t do us any -harm. The country at large has a pretty fair idea of the way Conover -runs the Mountain State. And the country likes to watch a good fight -against long odds. There’s lots of sympathy for the under dog—as long as -the sympathizer has no money on the upper one.” - -“How about the sketch of the situation that you were having Craig write -out, telling about the stolen franchises, the arbitrary tax-rate, the -machine-made candidates, the railroad rule and all that? It ought to -prove a good campaign document if he handles the subject well.” - -“Oh, he’s handled it all right. I’ve read the rough draft. Takes Conover -from the very start. Tells of his boyhood in the yards of the C. G. & -X., and how he bullied and schemed until he got into the management’s -offices, the string of saloons he ran along the route and the -drink-checks he made the men on his section cash in for liquor at his -saloons, and all that. Then his career as Alderman, when he found out -beforehand where the new reservoir lands and City Hall site were to be, -and his buying them up, on mortgage, and clearing his first big pile. -And that deal he worked in ‘bearing’ the C. G. & X. stock to $1.10, and -scaring everyone out and scooping the pot; that’s brought in, too. And -he’s got the story of Conover’s gradually working the railroad against -the State and the State against the road, till he had a throat grip on -both, and——” - -“Wait a moment!” interrupted Standish. “Is all the sketch made up of -that sort of thing?” - -“Most of it. Good, red-hot——” - -“It must be done all over, then. We are not digging up Conover’s -personal past, but his influence on the State and on the Democratic -Party. I’m not swinging the muckrake or flinging dirt at my opponent. -That sort of vituperation——” - -“But it’s hot stuff, I tell you, that sort of literature! It helps a -lot. You can’t hope to win if you wear kid gloves in a game like this.” - -“What’s the use of arguing?” said Standish pleasantly. “If the League -was rash enough to choose me to represent it, then the League must put -up with my peculiarities. And I don’t intend to rise to the Capitol on -any mud piles. If you can show me how Conover’s early frauds and his -general crookedness affect the issues of the campaign, then I’ll give -you leave to publish his whole biography. But till then let’s run clean, -shan’t we?” - -“‘_Clean?_’” echoed Ansel aghast. “I’ve been in this business a matter -of twenty-five years, and I never yet heard of a victory won by -drawing-room methods. But have your own way. I suppose you know, though, -that they’ll rake up every lie and slur against you they can get their -hands on?” - -“I suppose so. But _that_ won’t affect the general issue either. You -don’t seem to realize, Ansel, that this isn’t the ordinary routine -campaign. It’s an effort to throw off Boss rule and to free a State. -Politics and personalities don’t enter into it at all. I’d as soon have -run on the Republican as the Democratic ticket if it weren’t that the -Republican Party in this State is virtually dead. The Democratic nominee -for governor in the Mountain State is practically the governor-elect. -That is why I——” - -“Excuse me, Mr. Standish,” said a clerk, entering from the outer office, -“Mr. Conover would like a word with you.” - -The committee stared at one another, unbelieving. - -“H’m!” remarked Ansel, breaking the silence of surprise, “I guess the -campaign’s on in earnest, all right. Shall you see him?” - -“Yes. Show him in, please, Gardner.” - -“He says, sir, he wants to speak with you alone,” added the clerk. - -“Tell him the League’s committee are in session, and that he must say -whatever he has to say to me in their presence.” - -The clerk retired and reappeared a few moments later, ushering in—Gerald -Conover. - -A grunt of disappointment from Ansel was the first sound that greeted -the long youth as he paused irresolute just inside the committee-room -door. - -“Good morning, Gerald,” said Standish, rising to greet the unexpected -visitor; “we thought it was your father who——” - -“No. And he didn’t send me here, either,” blurted out Gerald. His pasty -face was still twitching, and his usually immaculate collar awry from -the recent paternal interview. - -“I came here on my own account,” he went on, with the peevish wrath of a -child. “I came here to tell you I swing over a hundred votes. Maybe a -hundred more. My father says so himself. And I’ve come to join your -League.” - -A gasp of amazement ran around the table. Then, with a crow of delight, -Ansel sprang up. - -“Great!” he shouted. “His _son_! It’s good for more votes than you know, -Standish! Why, man, it’s a bonanza! When even a man’s own son can’t——” - -Standish cut him short. - -“Are you drunk, Gerald?” he asked. - -“No, I’m not!” vociferated the lad. “I’m dead cold sober, and I’m doing -this with my eyes open. I want to join your League, and I’ll work like a -dog for your election.” - -“But why? You and I have never been especially good friends. You’ve -never shown any interest in politics or ref——” - -“Well, I will now, you bet! I’ll make the old man wish he’d packed me -off to New York by the first train. He’ll sweat for the way he treated -me before he’s done. I suppose I’ve got to work secretly for you, so he -won’t suspect. But I’ll do none the less work for that; and I can keep -you posted on the other side’s moves, too. If I’m to be tied to this -damned one-horse town by Father’s orders till after election, I’ll make -him sorry he ever——” - -“Good for you!” cried Ansel. “You’ve got the spirit of a man, after all. -Here’s a bunch of our membership blanks. Fill this one out, and give the -rest to your club friends. We—why, Standish!” he broke off, furious and -dumbfounded; for Clive had calmly stepped between the two, taken the -membership blank from Gerald’s shaky hand and torn it across. - -“We don’t care for members of your sort, Gerald,” he said, with a cold -contempt that was worse than a kick. “This League was formed to help our -City and State, not to gratify private grudges; for white men, not for -curs who want to betray their own flesh and blood. Get out of here!” - -“Standish!” protested the horrified Ansel, “you’re crazy! You’re -throwing away our best chance. You are——” - -“If this apology for a human being is ‘our best chance,’ I’ll throw him -out bodily, unless he goes at once,” retorted Clive, advancing on the -cowering and utterly astonished boy. - -“Why!” sputtered Gerald, as he backed doorward, before the menacing -approach of the Leaguer, “I thought you’d want me— I— Oh, I’ll go, then, -if you’ve no more sense than that! But I’ll find a way of downing the -old man in spite of you! Maybe you’ll be glad enough to get my help when -the time comes! I——” - -His heels hit against the threshold in his retrograde march. Still -declaiming, he stepped over the sill into the outer office, and Clive -Standish slammed the door upon him, breaking off his threats in the -middle of their fretful outpouring. - -“There,” said Clive, returning to the gaping, frowning committeemen, -“that’s off our hands. Now let’s get down to business.” - -“Mr. Standish,” remarked Ansel, after a moment’s battle with words he -found hard to check, “you’re the most Quixotic, impractical idealist -that ever got hold of the foolish idea he had a ghost of a chance for -success in politics. And,” he added, after a pause, “I’m blest if I -don’t think I’d rather lose with a leader like you than win with any -other man in the Mountain State.” - - -Meanwhile, at the head of the great study table in his Pompton Avenue -“Mausoleum” sat Caleb Conover, Railroader. And about him, on either side -of the board, like feudal retainers of old, were grouped the pick of his -lieutenants and henchmen. A rare coterie they were, these Knights of -Graft. Separated by ten thousand varying interests, social strata and -aspirations, they were as one on the main issue—their blind adherence to -the Boss and to the lightest of his orders. - -This impelling force was difficult of defining. Love, fear, trust, -desire for spoils? Perhaps a little of all four; perhaps much; perhaps -an indefinable something apart from these. For the power that draws and -holds men to a political leader who possesses neither eloquence, charm -nor the qualities of popularity has never been—can never be—clearly -defined. Not one great Boss in ten can boast these qualities. - -Yet, whatever the reason of Caleb Conover’s dominance, none could for a -moment doubt its presence. So ever-present was it that it had long since -choked down all opposition from within his own ranks. Once, years -before—as the story is still related—when he had first claimed, fought -for and won his party preëminence, certain district leaders, eight in -all, had plotted his downfall, and had privately selected one of their -number to fill his shoes. News of the closed-door meeting which was to -ratify this deposition was brought to Caleb by faithful Shevlin. The -Railroader, without a word, had started for the back room of the saloon -where the conference was in progress. Stalking in on the conspirators, -he had gained the centre of their circle before they were well aware of -his presence. Hat on head, cigar in mouth, he had swept the ring of -faces with his light, steely eyes, noting each man there in one -instant-brief glance as he did so. Then, twisting the cigar into one -corner of his mouth, he had brought down his fist on the table and -demanded: - -“How many of you people are with ME?” - -Like a pack of eager schoolboys the entire eight were upon their feet, -clamoring their fealty. Then, without another word or look, the Master -had stamped out of the room; leaving the erstwhile malcontents, as one -of them afterward expressed it: - -“Standin’ there like a bunch of boiled sheepsheads without a thought but -to shake hands with ourselves for havin’ such a grand Boss as Caleb -Conover.” - -At the Boss’s right in to-day’s conclave sat Billy Shevlin, most trusted -and adoring of all his followers. At his left was Guy Bourke, Alderman -and the Boss’s jackal. Next to Billy was Bonham, Mayor of Granite, and -next Giacomo Baltazzi, who held the whole Italian section force of the -C. G. & X. and the Sicilian quarter of Granite in the hollow of his -unwashed hand. Beyond was Nicholas Caine, proprietor of the _Star_, and -to his right Beiser, the Democratic State Chairman. Between a second -newspaper editor and the President of the Board of Aldermen lounged -Kerrigan, the Ghetto saloon-keeper. A sprinkling of railroad men, -heelers and district leaders made up the remainder. Conover was -speaking: - -“And that’s the layout,” said he. “And that’s why I’m not content for -this to be just a plain ‘win.’ Two years ago I thought Shearn would be -our best man for governor. So I gave the word, and Shearn got in with a -decent majority. But it’s got to be a landslide this time, and not a -trick’s to be overlooked in the whole hand. Nick, you know the line of -editorial policy to start in to-morrow’s _Star_. And be on the lookout -for the first break in any of the League’s speeches. It’s easier to -think of a fool thing than not to say it, and those Reform jays are -always putting their feet in their mouths when they try to preach -politics. And, knowing nothing about the game, they’re sure to talk a -heap. They never seem to realize that the man who really practices -politics hasn’t time to preach it.” - -“I understand,” answered Caine. “Print, as usual, a ‘spread’ on the -windy, blundering speeches, and forget to report the others. Same as -when——” - -“Sure. And pass the ‘press-gag’ sign up-State, too. Standish is certain -to make a tour. Beiser,” turning to the portly State Chairman, “I want -the county caucuses two weeks from Saturday. I’ve an idea we can work -the same old ‘snap’ move in more’n half of them. Pass it on to the -county chairman to treble last year’s floaters, and to work the ‘back -door’ the way we did in Bowden County in ’97. They understand their -business pretty well, most of ’em. And I’ll have Shevlin and Bourke jack -up those that don’t, and learn ’em their little lines. Two weeks from -Saturday, then. That’s understood? It’ll give us all the time we need, -if we hustle. Never mind the other State or city candidates or -Congressmen. Those jobs’ll take care of themselves. If the wrong men get -into the Assembly or Congress, they’ll get licked into shape quick -enough. We’re all right there. I want the whole shove to be made on the -Governorship this year. Pass it on! Baltazzi, I hear those dagoes of -yours are grouching again. What’s——” - -“They say they don’t get nothin’. They say all the good jobs goes to the -Irish or Dutch or even Americans, and——” - -“Promise ’em something, then.” - -“I have. But——” - -“Then promise ’em something more. Don’t be stingy. If that don’t satisfy -’em, give me the tip, and I’ll have a ten per cent. drop ordered on the -foreign section gangs’ pay, and make Chief Geoghegan pass the word to -his cops to make things bad for the pushcart men and organ grinders, and -close up the dago saloons an hour early. That’ll bring ’em in a-running. -How ’bout litterchoor, Abbott?” - -“I’ll start the staff to work on songs to-night,” said a long-haired -little man, “and get out a bunch of ‘Friend of the Plain People’ tracts -and——” - -“Won’t do! ‘Man-of-Experience-and-Benefactor-of-the-State or -Ignorant-Meddling-Boy-Reformer. Which-Will-You-Vote-For?’ That’s the -racket this time. Guy the whole League crowd. ‘Silk Stockings _vs._ -Laboring Man.’ That’s the idea. Get the cartoonists at work on -pictures like Standish making the police sprinkle the streets with -Florida water while thugs break into houses, and that sort of thing. -‘What-We-May-Expect-from-Civic-League-Rule.’ Understand? Say, Caine, -detail one or two of your men, of course, to look up Standish’s past -performances in private life, too. Anything about booze or the cards -or any sort of scrape will work up fine just now. The gag’s old, but -about a reformer it always makes a hit. Even a bit of a stretch goes. -I’ll stand a libel suit or two if it comes to a show-down.” - -“How about the out-of-town papers?” queried Caine. “Our regular chain -are all right. But the rest——” - -“The C. G. & X. owns the Mountain State, don’t it? And it controls -ninety per cent. of the mileage of the other roads that run through the -State. And wherever there’s towns big enough for a paper there’s a -railroad somewhere near. And wherever there’s an editor he wants his -passes, don’t he? And a rebate on his freight? Well—don’t you lose sleep -over the ‘press-gag.’” - -“How about floaters?” asked Bourke. “Same rule and same price?” - -“Yes. Subject to change if we’re pressed. Aldermen all right, I s’pose?” - -“Haven’t had a chance to sound ’em since you declared yourself,” said -the president of that body, “but all except Fowler and Brayle are your -own crowd and——” - -“Tell Fowler the C. G. & X. will give his firm a tip on the price for -the next ‘sealed-bid’ contract for railroad ties. Give Brayle a hint -about that indictment against his brother. It was pigeonholed, but if I -tried real hard, I might induce the District Attorney to look for it. I -tell you,” went on Conover, raising his voice for the first time, and -glaring about the table, “every mother’s son, from engine-oiler to -Congressman, has got to get down to the job and hustle as he never did -before. And I’ve got the means of finding out who hustles and who -shirks. And I’ve got the means of paying both kinds. And I guess there -isn’t anyone that doubts I can do it. Pass that on, too. Caleb Conover -for Governor, and to hell with reform!” - - - - - CHAPTER V - A MEETING, AN INTERRUPTION AND A LETTER - - -The campaign was on in sober earnest. Conover, who kept as well posted -on his foe’s movements as though the League itself sent him hourly -reports, grew vaguely annoyed as, from day to day, he learned the -headway Standish was making in Granite. The better classes, almost to a -man, flocked to Clive’s standard. By a series of fiery speeches he -succeeded in rousing a certain hitherto dormant enthusiasm among the -business men of the town. They found to their surprise that he was -neither a visionary nor a mere agitator; that he based his plans not on -some Utopian Altruria of high-souled commonweal, but on a practical -basis of clean government. - -He pointed out to them how utterly the Machine ran the Mountain State; -how the railroads and the vested interests of the party clique sent -their own representatives to the Legislature, and then made them grant -fraudulent franchise after fraudulent franchise to the men who sent them -there. How the taxes were raised and so distributed that the brunt fell -upon the people who least profited by the State expenditures and by the -legalized wholesale robberies. How, in fact, the populace of Granite and -of the whole Mountain State were being ridden at will by a handful of -unscrupulous men. - -That Caleb Conover was the head and front of the clique referred to -everyone was well aware, yet Standish studiously avoided all mention of -his name, all personal vituperation. Whereat Caleb Conover wondered -mightily. Stenographic reports of Clive’s speeches and of the -increasingly large and enthusiastic meetings he addressed were carefully -conned by the Railroader. And the tolerant grin with which he read the -first of these reports changed gradually to a scowl as time went on. - -He had made no effort to suppress or in any way to molest these early -meetings. He wanted to try out his young opponent’s strength, gauge his -following and his methods. But when, to his growing astonishment, he -found Clive was actually winning a respectful, ever larger, hearing in -his home town, he decided it was high time to call a halt. Accordingly -he summoned Billy Shevlin. - -“What’s doing?” he asked curtly, as he received his henchmen in the -Mausoleum study. - -“To-night’s the big rally at Snyder’s Opera House, you know,” replied -Billy. “Standish’s booked to make his star speech before he starts on -his State tour. He’s got a team of Good Gov’ment geezers from Boston to -do a spiel, and he’s callin’ this the biggest scream of the campaign so -far. Say, that young feller’s makin’ an awful lot of noise, Boss. When -are you goin’ to give us the office to put the combination on his mouth? -On the level, he ain’t doin’ you no good. Them speeches of his means -votes. The Silk-Socks is with him already, and he’s winner with the -business bunch in fam’ly groups.” - -“Look here,” said Caleb, pointing out of the study’s north window, which -commanded a view of exclusive Pompton Avenue and its almost equally -fashionable cross streets, “how would you figure up the population of -that district?” - -“The Silk-Sockers? You know’s well as me. Thirty-eight hundred in round -numbers.” - -“And over there?” pointing east. - -“Th’ business districk? An easy 12,000.” - -“Say 16,000 in both. S’pose they are all for the young Standish. Now -look here.” - -He crossed the long room and ran up the shade of one of the south -windows. The great marble house stood on the edge of a hill-crest, -overlooking a distant vista of mean, winding streets, dirty, -interminable rows of tenements, factories and small shops. Through the -centre, like a huge snake, the tracks of the C. G. & X. wound their way, -and over all a smeared pall of reek and coal smoke brooded like some -vast bird of prey. Coal yards, docks, freight houses, elevators, -shanties—and once more that interminable sea of dingy, squalid -domiciles. - -“What’s the population down there, Billy?” - -“Hundred’n ten thousand, six hundred an’—” began Shevlin glibly. “An’ -every soul of them solid for you, Boss. Sixteen thousand to -hundred-’n’-ten-thous——” - -“That’s right. So as long as the youngster’s content to speak his little -pieces here in Granite, I’ve stood by and let him talk. It would be time -enough to put in a spoke when he started across country. But this -blowout to-night is different. The stories of it will get in the Boston -and Philadelphia and New York papers. So——” - -“Well?” - -“So there won’t be any meeting?” - -“If you say so, it goes. Will I give the boys the office to rough-house -the joint?” - -“And have every out-of-State paper screeching about ring rule and -rowdyism? Billy, you must have been born more ignorant than most. You -never could have picked up all you don’t know, in the little time you’ve -lived.” - -Shevlin looked duly abashed and awaited further orders. - -“I hear the gas main that serves Snyder’s Opera House isn’t in very good -order,” resumed the Boss. “I shouldn’t wonder if all the lights went out -just as the meeting opens to-night. That’ll mean a lot of confusion. And -my friend, Chief Geoghegan, being a careful man, will disperse the crowd -to prevent a riot, and to keep pickpockets from molesting those pure -patriots. I want you to see Geoghegan and the gas company about it, -right away. But look here, there mustn’t be any rough-house or disorder. -Tell the boys to keep away. I’ll have work enough for them to do when -Standish takes the road.” - -Billy Shevlin, a great light of joy in his little beady eyes, departed -on his mission, while Caleb, summoning Anice Lanier, set about his daily -task of dictation. His always large mail was still more voluminous -during the past week or so, and he had been forced to double his staff -of stenographers. He and his secretary toiled steadily for three hours -to-day, then laid aside the remaining work until later on. - -“How’ll you like being secretary to the Governor, Miss Lanier?” asked -Caleb, as he lighted his cigar and stretched out his thick legs under -the table. - -“Fully as much as you’ll like being Governor, I fancy,” she answered. - -“I guess you won’t have to be very much wedded to the job at that,” -sighed Conover. “Do you know, I’d give a year’s income if I’d never made -that measly speech. But now that I’m in for it, I’m going to make the -fight of my life. Everybody in the Mountain State will sure know there’s -been a big scrap, and when it’s over, our young friend, Standish, is -going to be just a sweet, sad memory.” - -“I hear he is making some strong speeches.” - -“And I hear you went to hear a couple of them,” retorted Caleb, -grinning. - -“Do you mean,” she cried indignantly, “that you’ve actually been spying -on me? You have dared to——?” - -“Now, _don’t_ get woozey, Miss Lanier. What on earth would I spy on -_you_ for? Your time, outside work hours, is your own. And besides, I’ve -got all sorts of proof that you’re always loyal to my interests.” - -“Then how——” - -“How’d I find it out? While I don’t keep tabs on _you_, I do keep tabs -on Nephew-in-law Standish, and on his meetings and what sort of people -go there. And a couple of times my men happened to mention that they saw -my pretty secretary in the audience. There, now, don’t get red. What -harm is there in being found out? Only it kind of amused me that you -never spoke about it here.” - -“Why should I? I——” - -“No reason at all. A person’s got a right to lock up what’s in their -minds as well as what’s in their pockets. I always have a lot of respect -for folks who keep their mouths shut. If you keep your mouth shut about -your own affairs, you’ll keep it shut about mine. That’s why I have a -kind of sneaking respect for liars, too. Folks who guard what’s in their -brains by making a false trail with their mouths. The public’s got no -more right to the contents of a man’s brain than it has to the contents -of his safe. And the man who ain’t ashamed to lock his safe needn’t be -ashamed to tell a lie.” - -“Is that your own philosophy? It’s a dangerous one.” - -“Oh, I’m not speaking of the man who lies for the fun of it. Telling a -lie when you don’t need to is tempting Providence.” - -The girl laughed; so simple and so totally in earnest was he in -expounding his pet theory. It was only to her that the Railroader was in -the habit of talking on abstruse themes. Despite her habitual reserve, -he read an underlying interest in his odd ideas and experiences, and was -accordingly lavish in relating them. She served, unconsciously to both, -as an escape valve for the man’s habitual dominating self-restraint. - -“So you agree with Talleyrand,” she suggested, “that words are given us -to hide our thoughts?” - -“Talleyrand?” he asked, puzzled. “Oh, one of those book characters you -admire so much, I s’pose. Yes, he was all right in that proposition. But -a lot of times the truth will hide a man’s thoughts even better. It was -by telling the truth I got out of the worst hole I ever was in. Ever -tell you the mix-up I had with the Mountain State Coal Company?” - -“Coal Company? I didn’t know there was any coal in the Mountain State.” - -“No more there is. Only I didn’t know it then. A chap came along and -interested me in the deal. He said he’d struck a rich coal vein up in -Jericho County. Showed me specimens. Got ’em somewhere in Pennsylvania, -I s’pose. And got me to float a company. Well, the stuff they took out -of the measly shaft was a sort of porous black slate or shale or -something, and it wouldn’t burn if you put it in a white-hot blast -furnace. One look showed me that. And there I was with a company -capitalized at $300,000—half of it my own money—and suckers subscribing -for the stock and all that, and a gang of a couple of hundred Ginneys -and Svensks at work in the pit. It wasn’t that I minded the cash loss so -much as I minded being played for a jay, and the black eye it would give -any companies I might float in the future. - -“I’ll tell you, I was pretty sore. I was younger in those days, you see. -I ran up to Jericho to look over the wreck. Next day was pay day for the -hands, and I hadn’t enough cash with me for half of ’em. I sat in my -hotel that night thinking of the row and smashup there’d be next -morning, and just wishing I had a third foot to kick myself with. The -lamp got low, and I called for the landlord to fill it. Some of the -kerosene leaked out while he was doing it and spilled over a handful of -the ore that was lying on the table. That porous stuff soaked it up like -a sponge. The mess made me sick, and I picked up the samples of -near-coal and slammed ’em into the fireplace. They blazed like a Sheeney -clothing store.” - -“I thought you said it wouldn’t burn.” - -“The pieces were soaked in kerosene, and of course they burned, just as -a lamp would if you threw it in the fire. But it gave me the tip I -wanted. I bolted out of that hotel and hunted up a couple of my own -crowd. We had the busiest night on record. No use bothering you with -details. A shed, three barrels of kerosene and a half a ton of ore. Then -early next morning I wandered into the hotel office and did a despairful -scream. I’d seen to it that the editor of the local paper was there, and -I knew a bunch of the ‘big guns’ of the place always congregated in the -office for an after-breakfast gossip. Well, I groaned pretty loud and -hectic about the way I’d been stuck on the ore. - -“‘What’s the matter with it?’ asked one of my two pals. ‘Won’t the stuff -burn?’ - -“‘Burn!’ I yells. ‘It won’t do a thing _but_ burn. It burns so hot, -it’ll ruin any grate it’s put in. Why, heat like that is worse than none -at all. It’ll burn out the best grate or furnace in a week. Nobody’ll be -fool enough to buy such stuff. The company’s smashed!’ - -“They all stared at me as if I were looney. Then I made out I was mad -clear through. - -“‘Don’t believe me, eh?’ says I. ‘Then look at this.’ - -“I throws a pocketful of the ore into the grate, and it blazes up like -mad. The whole office was torrid hot in five minutes. But the crowd was -a blamed sight hotter. They went plumb wild over the new, wonderful fuel -I’d discovered, and tried to explain to me that it had the heating power -of ten times its weight of coal. But all the time I just shook my head, -and kept on whining that no one’d buy it because it would burn out -furnaces too quick. - -“Well, the upshot of it was that the news travelled like a streak of -lightning. By the time I got over to the shaft, the gangs were all on, -and their padrones raked up a clause in the contract that permitted ’em -to take their pay in stock, at par, if they chose to, instead of cash. -Just a piece of technical red tape they used to stick in mining -contracts. Those padrones fairly squealed for stock, and near mobbed me -when I implored ’em to accept money instead. So I compromised by issuing -’em orders for stock at ten above. But before I’d do even that, I told -’em over and over that they were making fools of themselves and the -stock and ore were worthless. They laughed at me, and thought I was -trying to grab all the stock for myself. So I made ’em sign a paper -saying that they took it at their own request and risk, and against my -will and advice; and I gave ’em their stock orders and came back to town -with my pay satchel still full. - -“By the time I struck the hotel the place was jammed. Folks had flocked -from all over to see the wonderful fuel and watch it burn. Rich farmers, -capitalists from Granite and a lot more. The stock had been at 28¼. -Inside of two days it was at 129, and still booming. Then I sold. But as -president of the company I refused to let a single share be distributed -without the buyer signing a blank that he took it at his own risk, and -that I had told him the ore was worthless. And I kept on shouting that -it was worthless, and that the public was robbing itself by buying such -stuff. What was the result? The more I told the truth, the harder the -suckers bit. Widows and ministers and such-like easy marks most of all, -I hear. I got out of the company in disgust, and announced I’d have no -dealings with such an iniquitous, swindling scheme. Folks thought I’d -gone clean silly, and they bought and bought and bought, and then——” - -“And then?” as Conover lighted a fresh cigar. - -“Oh, then they woke up and screamed louder than ever.” - -“What was done about it? Was there no redress?” - -“‘Redress’ nothing! What redress could there be for a pack of -get-rich-quick guys who had insisted on buying my stock after I’d told -them just how worthless it was? Didn’t I have their own signed -statements that I——” - -“And you call that transaction an instance of truth-telling?” - -“Oh, well, the _real_ truth’s too precious to squander foolishly where -it won’t be appreciated. It’s like whiskey: got to be weakened to the -popular taste. And speaking of liars, have you kept your eye much on -Jerry lately?” - -“No, why?” - -“That young ass has got something on the thing he calls his mind, and -I’ve a good working notion the ‘Something’ is a scheme to get even with -me. I just judge that from what I know of him. He gets his morning -letter from that chorus missus of his, and then he sits and rolls his -eyes at me for half an hour. He’s framing up something all right, all -right. What it is, I don’t know. That’s the advantage a fool has over a -wise man! You can dope out some line of action on a man of brains, but -the Almighty himself don’t know what a fool’ll do next. So I’m kind of -riding herd on Jerry from afar.” - -“Perhaps if you tried a new tack—took him into your confidence——” - -“There wouldn’t be any confidence left. No man’s got enough for two. -Sometimes I’m shy on even the little I once had.” - -“The campaign?” - -“The campaign? That ain’t a question of confidence any more than knowing -the sun will rise and Missouri will go Democratic. I was thinking of the -confidence I had of winning the Pompton Avenue crowd by that measly -reception.” - -“You haven’t succeeded?” - -“Not so’s you’d notice it. A few of the people who are so tangled up in -my deals that they are scared not to be civil, nod sort of sheepish at -me when I meet ’em. The rest get near-sighted as soon as I come round -the corner. As for calling on us or inviting me to any of their houses, -why you’d think I was the Voice of Conscience by the way they sidestep -me.” - -“But the season hasn’t really opened. In most cities, people aren’t even -back from the seaside or mountains yet. Perhaps, later on——” - -“Later on the present performance will be encored by popular request. -Say, Miss Lanier, I was half jagged that night. But I can remember -telling you that I was happier just then than I’d ever been before. I -was in society at last. My boy was a member of the smart set in New -York. My girl was a princess. I was going to be Governor.” - -“Yes?” - -“Well, look at me now. Jerry’s made a lifelong mess of his future. -Blanche is on the way to Yurrup with a bargain counter prince that I’d -hate to compliment by calling deuce-high. My deebut into society was -like the feller in the song, who ‘Walked Right in and Turned Around and -Walked Right out Again.’ The Governorship’s the only thing left; and I’m -getting so I’m putting into that all the hopes I squandered on the rest. -And when I’ve nailed it, I’ve a half mind to try for President. That’d -carry me clear through society, and on out on the other side.” - -Anice listened to him with a sort of wonderment, which always possessed -her when he spoke of his social aspirations. That a man of his -indomitable strength and largeness of nature should harp so eternally -and yearn so strenuously in that one petty strain, never ceased to amaze -her. - -“The feet of clay on the image of iron,” she told herself as she -dismissed the thought. - -“By the way,” asked Conover, as she rose to leave the room, “were you -thinking of going to the Standish meeting to-night?” - -“Yes,” she answered, meeting his quizzical gaze fearlessly, “if you can -spare me.” - -“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’m afraid I can’t. I’ve about a ream of -campaign stuff to go through, and I shall need your help.” - -“Very well,” answered Anice, and he could decipher neither -disappointment nor any other emotion in those childlike brown eyes of -hers. - -“Lord!” he muttered to himself as she went out, “what a politician that -woman would have made! The devil himself can’t read her. If I had -married a girl like that instead—I wonder if that heart-trouble of the -wife’s is ever likely to carry her off sudden.” - -An hour or so of sunlight remained. Anice, tired from her all-day -confinement indoors, donned hat and jacket and sallied forth for a walk. -She turned her steps northward toward the open country that lay beyond -Pompton Avenue. There was a sting in the early fall air in that high -latitude which made walking a pleasure. Moreover, after the atmosphere -of work, tobacco, politics and reminiscences that had been her portion -since early morning, it was a joy to be alone with the cool and the -sweetness of the dying day. Besides, she wanted to think. - -But the solitary stroll she had planned was not to be her portion, for, -as she rounded the first corner, she came upon Clive Standish deep in -talk with Ansel. Clive’s tired eyes brightened at the sight of her. The -look of weariness that had crept into the candidate’s face since she had -last seen him went straight to Anice’s heart. With a hurried word of -dismissal to his campaign manager, Standish left his companion and fell -into step at Miss Lanier’s side. - -“This is better than I expected,” said he. “I always manage to include -Pompton Avenue in my tramps lately, but this is the first time I’ve -caught a glimpse of you.” - -“You are looking badly,” she commented. “You are working too hard.” - -“One must, in a fight like mine. It’s nothing to what I must do during -my tour. Everything depends on that. I start to-morrow.” - -“So soon? I’m sorry.” - -“Why?” he asked in some surprise. - -“I’m afraid you’ll find Mr. Conover stronger up-State than you think. I -don’t like to see you disappointed.” - -“You care?” - -“Of course I do. I hate to see anyone disappointed.” - -“How delightfully impersonal!” grumbled Clive, in disgust. - -“I thought you were averse to personalities. You’ve said so in both the -speeches I’ve heard you make.” - -“You came to hear me? I——” - -“One likes to keep abreast of the times; to hear both sides——” - -“And having heard both——” - -“One forms one’s own conclusions.” - -“And yours are——” - -“Quite formed.” - -“Anice!” exclaimed Standish impatiently, “nature never cut you out for a -Sybil. Can’t you be frank? If you only knew what your approval—your good -wishes—mean to me, you would be kinder.” - -“There are surely enough people who encourage you and——” - -“No, there are not. I want _your_ encouragement, _your_ faith; just as I -had it when we were boy and girl together, you and I!” - -“You forget, I am in the employ of Mr. Conover. As long as I accept his -wages, would it be loyal of me to——” - -“Then why accept them? If only——” - -“One must make a living in some way. I have other reasons, too.” - -“That same wretched old mystery again! As for making a living, that’s a -different thing, and it has changed too many lives. Once, years ago, for -instance, when I was struggling to make a living—and a bare, scant one -at that—I kept silent when my heart clamored to speak. I kept silent -because I had no right to ask any woman to share my hard luck. But now -I’m on my feet. I’ve made the ‘living’ you talk about. And there’s -enough of it for two. So I——” - -“I congratulate you on your success,” said the girl nervously. “Here is -my corner. I must hurry back. I’ve a long evening’s work to——” - -“Anice!” - -“Good-by!” - -“You _must_ hear me. I——” - -“Hello, Miss Lanier! Parleying with the enemy, eh? Come, come, that -isn’t playing square. ’Evening, Standish!” - -Caleb Conover, crossing the street from the side entrance of his own -grounds, had confronted the two before they noted his approach. Looking -from one to the other, he grinned amusedly. - -“I’ve heard there was more’n one leak in our camp,” he went on, “but I -never s’posed _this_ was it.” - -Trembling with confusion, perhaps with some deeper emotion, Anice -nevertheless answered coolly: - -“I hope my absence hasn’t delayed any of your work? I was on my way -back, when you——” - -“Now look at that,” exclaimed Caleb with genuine admiration. “Here’s my -hated enemy as red and rattled as if I’d caught him stuffing -ballot-boxes or cheering for Conover! And the lady in the case is as -cool as cucumbers, and she don’t bat an eye. Standish, she’s seven more -kinds of a man than you are, or ever will be, for all your big shoulders -and bigger line of talk. Well, we won’t keep you any longer, son. No use -askin’ you in, I s’pose? No? Then maybe I’ll drop around to your meeting -this evening. I’d ’a’ come before, but it always makes me bashful to -hear myself praised to the public. Good night.” - - -It was late that evening when Clive reached his rooms, for a few brief -hours of rest before setting forth on his tour of the State. He was -tired out, discouraged, miserable. His much-heralded meeting had been -the dreariest sort of fiasco. Scarcely had the opening address begun and -the crowded house warmed up to the occasion, when every light in the -building had been switched off. - -Inquiry showed that a break had occurred in the gas mains which could -not be remedied until morning. Candles and lamps were hurriedly sent -for. Meantime, though a certain confusion followed the plunging of the -place into darkness, the crowd had been, on the whole, orderly. In spite -of this, the chief of police, with twenty reserves, coming on the scene, -had ordered Standish civilly enough to dismiss the audience. Then the -policemen had filed up on the stage, illumining it by their bull’s-eye -lanterns, and clustered ominously about the speakers. - -In response to Clive’s angry protest, the chief had simply reiterated -his order, adding that his department was responsible for the city’s -peace and quiet, and that the crowd showed an inclination to riot. Nor -could the Arm of the Law be shaken from this stand. The audience, during -the colloquy between Standish and the chief had grown impatient, and an -occasional catcall or shrill whistle had risen from the darkened -auditorium. At each of these sounds the police had gripped their -nightsticks and glanced with a fine apprehension at their leader for -commands. - -The upshot of the matter had been the forced dismissal of the -spectators. Standish had scouted Ansel’s suggestion that the whole -catastrophe was a ruse of Conover’s, until, as he walked down the dark -aisle toward the door, he heard a policeman whisper: - -“I was waitin’ for the chief to give some of us the tip to pinch him.” - -“An’ let him make a noise like a martyr?” grunted a second voice easily -recognized as Billy Shevlin’s. “You must think the Boss is as balmy in -the belfry as you blue lobsters. He’d ’a’ had Geoghegan broke if he’d——” - -The rest of the reply had been lost. - -No other disengaged hall could be found in the vicinity; and the meeting -from which Clive had expected so much had gone by the board. He walked -home in a daze of chagrin. How could he hope to fight a man who employed -such weapons; who swayed such power in every city department; who thus -early in the campaign showed plainly he would stop at nothing in beating -his opponent? - -Then the young candidate’s teeth clenched tight, and the sullen grit -that for so many centuries has carried the bulldog race of -yellow-haired, strong-jawed Anglo-Saxons to victory against hopeless -odds came to his aid. He shook his big shoulders as if tossing off some -physical weight, entered his rooms and switched on the electric light. - -On his study table lay a special delivery letter, neatly typewritten, as -was the single long sheet of foolscap it contained. Standish glanced at -the bottom of the page. There was no signature. Then he read: - -“The date for the various county conventions has not been formally set. -It is unofficially given as a week from Saturday. Instead, the caucus -will be held in three of the eight counties _next_ Saturday. The -Machine’s men know this. The League’s don’t. It will be sprung as a -surprise, with two days’ notice instead of the customary seven. This -will keep many of the League’s people from attending. At the Bowden and -Jericho caucuses telegrams will be received saying you have withdrawn. - -“At Matawan and Haldane the regular delegates will be notified to meet -at the town halls. While they are waiting outside the locked front -doors, the county chairman and his own crowd will step in the back way -and hold their caucus and elect their delegates. Floaters will be -brought into several counties. In Wills County the chairman will fail to -hear the names of your delegates. Have your manager arrange for the -Wills men to bolt at the right time. Force the State Committee _at once_ -to declare the date for the county conventions. Notify the League’s men -at Matawan and Haldane of the ‘back door’ trick, and have the telegraph -operators at Jericho and Bowden warned not to receive or transmit any -fake message of your withdrawal. - -“On your State tour you will find newspapers closed to your speeches and -advertisements, and a number of the halls engaged before you get to the -town. Arrange for injunctions restraining the papers from barring your -notices, and have someone go ahead of you to secure halls. And arrange -for police protection to break up rowdyism at your meetings.” - -Clive Standish read and re-read this remarkable epistle. That it had -come from the Conover camp he could not doubt. He had heard, before -Caleb’s hint of the previous afternoon, that there was a certain -discontent and vague rumor of treachery, in more than one of the -multifarious branches of the Boss’s business and political interests. -For the unexpected strength developed by the Civic League and the -eloquence of its candidate had shaken divers of the enemy’s less -resolute followers, and more than one of these might readily seek to -curry future favor with the winning side by casting just such an anchor -to windward. - -In any case, there was the letter. Its author’s identity, for the -moment, was of no great matter. - -“Anonymous!” mused Standish, eyeing the missive with strong distaste. -“Is it a trick of Conover’s or a bit of treachery on the part of one of -the men he trusts? In either case, there’s only one course a white man -can take with a thing of this kind.” - -Picking up the letter, he crumpled it into a ball and threw it into the -fireplace. - -“Better not say anything about it to Ansel,” he decided as he watched -the paper twist open under the heat and break into a blaze. “He’d only -call me a visionary crank again. And if it’s a trap, the precautions -he’d take would play straight into Conover’s hand.” - -Some blocks away, in his Pompton Avenue Mausoleum, the Railroader was -giving final orders to the henchmen to whom he had intrusted the details -of watching Standish’s forthcoming tour. And some of these same details -he had even intrusted to the unenthusiastic Gerald. - - - - - CHAPTER VI - CALEB WORKS AT LONG RANGE - - -Clive Standish opened his up-State tour the following night in the small -town of Wayne. It was a farming centre, and the hall was tolerably well -filled with bearded and tanned men who had an outdoor look. Some of them -had brought their wives; sallow, dyspeptic, angular creatures with the -patient, dull faces of women who live close to nature and are too busy -to profit thereby. - -The audience listened interestedly as Clive outlined the Boss-ridden -condition of the Mountain State, the exorbitant cost of transporting and -handling agricultural products, the unjust taxes that fell so heavily on -the farmer and wage-earner, the false system of legislation and the -betrayal of the people’s rights by the men they were bamboozled into -electing to represent them and protect their interests. He went on to -tell how New York and other States had from time to time risen and -shaken off a similar yoke of Bossism, and to show how, both materially -and in point of self-respect, the voters of the Mountain State could -profit by following such examples. In closing he briefly described the -nature, aims and purposes of the Civic League and the practical reforms -to which he himself stood pledged. - -It did Clive’s heart good to see how readily his audience responded in -interest to his pleas. He had not spoken ten minutes before he felt he -had his house with him. He finished amid a salvo of applause. His -hearers flocked about him as he came down from the platform, shaking his -hand, asking him questions, praising his discourse. - -One big farmer slapped him on the back, crying: - -“You’re all right, Mr. Standish! If you can carry out all you’ve -promised, I guess Wills County’ll stand by you, solid. But why on earth -didn’t you advertise you was comin’ to Wayne to-night? If it hadn’t ’a’ -been for your agent that passed through here yesterday and told some of -the boys at the hotel and the post office, you wouldn’t ’a’ had anyone -to hear you. If we’d known what was comin’, this hall’d ’a’ been -packed.” - -“But surely you read my advertisements in your local papers?” exclaimed -Clive, “I——” - -“We sure didn’t read anything of the kind,” retorted a dairyman. “I read -everything in the _Wayne Clarion_, from editorials to soap ads., an’ -there hasn’t been a line printed about your meetin’.” - -“I sent my agent ahead to place paid advertisements with every paper -along my route,” said the puzzled Standish. “And you say he was in town -here yesterday. So he couldn’t have skipped Wayne. I’ll drop in on the -editor of the _Clarion_ on my way to the station and ask him why the -advertisement was overlooked.” - -Accordingly, a half hour later, en route for the midnight train, -Standish sought out the _Clarion_ office and demanded an interview with -its editor-in-chief. - -“I guess that’s me,” observed a fat, shirt-sleeved man, who looked up -from his task of tinkering with a linotype machine’s inner mysteries. -“I’m Mr. Gerrett, editor-in-chief, managing editor, city editor, too. My -repertorial staff’s out to supper, this being pay day and he being -hungry. Were you wanting to subscribe or—? Take a chair, anyhow,” he -broke off, sweeping a pile of proofs off a three-legged stool. “Now, -what can I do for you?” - -“My name is Standish,” began Clive, “and I called to find out why——” - -“Oh!” - -The staccato monosyllable served as clearing house for all Gerrett’s -geniality, for he froze—as much as a stout and perspiring man can—into -editorial super-dignity. Aware that the atmosphere had congealed, but -without understanding why, Clive continued: - -“My agent called here, did he not? And left an advertisement of——” - -“Yes,” snapped Gerrett, “he did. I was out. He left it with my foreman -with the cash for it. I mailed a check for the amount this morning to -your League headquarters at Granite.” - -“But why? The advert——” - -“The ad.’s in my waste-basket. Now, as this is my busy night, maybe -you’ll clear out and let——” - -“Look here!” said Clive, sternly, and refusing to notice the opened -door, “what does this mean?” - -“It means we don’t want your ads. nor your money.” - -“Were you too crowded for space and had to leave the advertisement out?” - -“No, we weren’t. We don’t want any dealings with you or the alleged -‘League’ you’re running. That’s all. Ain’t that plain enough?” - -“No,” answered Clive, trying to keep cool, “I want a reason.” - -“You’ll keep on wanting it, then. I’m boss of this office, and——” - -“The _real_ boss? I doubt it. If you were, what reason would you have -for turning away paid advertisements? I may do you an injustice, my -friend, but I think you’re acting under orders.” - -“You’re off!” shouted Gerrett, reddening. “I run this paper as I choose. -And I don’t take orders from any man. I——” - -“Nor passes? Nor freight rebates on paper rolls, and——” - -“D’ye mean to insult me?” bellowed Gerrett, wallowing forward, -threatening as a fat black thundercloud. “I’ll have you know——” - -“I don’t think,” replied Clive, calmly, and receding not a step, “I -don’t think you _could_ be insulted, Mr. Gerrett. You are making rather -a pitiable exhibition of yourself. Why not own up to it that you are -acting under orders of the ‘Machine,’ whose tool you are? The ‘Machine’ -which is so afraid of the truth that it takes pains to muzzle the press. -The ‘Machine’ that is so well aware of its own rottenness, it dare not -let the people whom it is defrauding hear the other side of the case. -Why not admit you are bought?” - -Gerrett was sputtering unintelligible wrath. - -“Get out of my office!” he roared at last. - -“Certainly,” assented Standish, “I’ve learned all I wanted to. You serve -your masters well. I hope they pay you as adequately.” - -He turned to the door. Before he reached it a thin youth with ink-smears -on his fingers swung in. - -“Hard luck!” exclaimed the newcomer. “That Standish meeting’s raised a -lot of interest downtown. Pity we can’t run anything on it! It’d make a -dandy first-page spread.” - -“Shut up!” bellowed Gerrett. “You young——” - -“Don’t scold him,” counselled Standish, walking out. “He didn’t make any -break. We’re all three in the secret.” - - -The next few days witnessed practical repetitions of the foregoing -experiences. In almost every town the local newspapers not only refused -to report a line of Standish’s speeches, but would not accept his -advertisements. Nor, in most places, could he find a job office willing -to print handbills for him. His agent had nearly everywhere been able to -engage a hall; but as no adequate preliminary notice of the meeting had -been published, audiences were pitiably slim. In one or two towns, where -the papers did not belong to the “Machine,” it was discovered that every -hall, lodge-room or other available meeting-place had been engaged in -advance by some mysterious competitor. Clive, at such settlements, was -forced to speak in open air. Even then the police at one town dispersed -the gathering under excuse of fearing a riot; at two others the mayor -refused a license to hold an outdoor meeting, and at a fourth, a gang of -toughs, at long range, pelted the audience with stones and elderly eggs, -the police refusing to interfere. - -At length Clive’s advance agent returned to the candidate in abject -despair. - -“I’ve been doing this sort of work eight years,” the man reported, “but -this time I’m clean stumped. I can’t make any headway. The papers, the -city authorities, the opera-house-and-hall-proprietors and the police -are all under Conover’s thumb. It’s got so that as soon as I reach a -town I can find out right away who is and who isn’t in the ‘Machine’s’ -pay. Where the papers aren’t muzzled—and there are precious few such -places—the halls are closed to us, and either the mayor or the police -will stop the meeting. Where the papers are working for Conover, we can -get all the halls we want, because the Boss knows the news of your -speech can’t circulate except by word of mouth. - -“Oh, they’ve got us whipsawed in grand shape! I’m wondering what’ll -happen at Grafton Monday night. That’s the biggest city next to Granite, -and there’s always been more or less of a kick there against Conover -rule. They’ve got a square man for mayor, and one of their three -newspapers is strong for you. I was able to get the opera house, too. -It’s your big chance of the campaign, and your last chance on this tour. -The rest of the towns on your route I can’t do anything with. I’m -waiting to see what dirty game Conover will play at Grafton, now that he -can’t work his usual tricks there. He’ll be sure to try something.” - -Billy Shevlin, who had also acted (unsuspectedly as unofficially) as -advance agent of Clive Standish’s tour, had in three respects excelled -the authorized agent: In the first place, he had been as successful as -the other had been a failure. In the second, he had not turned back. -Third, and last, he was not in the very least discouraged. Nor had he -need to be. - -Yet even to him Grafton presented the first serious problem. And to it -he devoted much of his time and more of his cleverness. At last he -formed a plan and saw that his plan was good. - -Clive reached Grafton at noon of the day he was scheduled to speak. This -was the second largest city in the Mountain State. Here, next to -Granite, must the chief battle of the campaign be waged. On the effect -of his speech here hung a great percentage of Clive’s hopes for the -coming State convention. As Grafton went, so would big Matawan County, -whose centre it was. And Grafton, wavering in fealty to Conover, might -yet be won to the Standish ranks by the right sort of speech. So with -the glow of approaching struggle upon him Clive awaited the night. All -he asked was a fair hearing. This, presumably, was for once to be -accorded him. - -At the hotel on his arrival he found Karl Ansel waiting. The big, lean -New Englander was in a state of white-hot wrath. - -“You got my telegram and the notice of the caucuses, I suppose!” he -growled as Clive met him. - -“No. I ordered all mail forwarded here, and telegrams, too. I broke away -from my route Saturday, when I found I couldn’t get a hall at -Smithfield. I cancelled my date there and went over to Deene, leaving -word for everything to be sent on to Grafton. Then, yesterday——” - -“Never mind that. We’re done! Beat! Tricked!” - -“What do you mean?” - -“The county conventions—the caucuses! In every—nearly every one of the -eight counties Conover worked some blackguardism. To some he sent -telegrams that you backed out. In others his chairmen tried the ‘back -door’ act. And I wrote you how they’d ‘snapped’ the dates and caught us -unready. Then——” - -Clive recalled the anonymous letter which later events had driven from -his memory. If only he had been able to lower himself to his opponent’s -level and take advantage of it—of the treachery in the Conover ranks! -If—— - -But Ansel was still pouring out the flood of his ill-temper. - -“Whipsawed us, right and left,” he declared. “Beat us at every point as -easy as taking candy from a baby. What are _we_ doing in politics? We’re -a lot of silly amateurs against——” - -“We’re a lot of honest men against a gang of crooks. And in the long run -we’ll win. We——” - -“The long run, eh? Well, the run has begun, and they’ve got us on it. -We’re beat!” - -“Poor old Ansel,” laughed Clive, “how many times during the past -fortnight have I heard you say that? And every time you pick yourself up -again and go on with the fight. Just as you’ll do now.” - -“Not on your life! I—oh, well, I suppose I will, if it comes to that! -But it’s a burning, blazing shame.” - -“If it wasn’t for just such ‘burning, blazing shames,’ there’d be no -need for our campaign. It’s to crush such ‘shames’ that we’re working. -Cheer up! I’ve great hopes for to-night’s meeting.” - -Tersely he described his trip, the drawbacks he had encountered, and the -better chances that seemed to attend the Grafton rally, Ansel -interspersing the tale with a volley of queries and expletives. - -“I’d heard of this press-muzzling,” said he as Standish ended, “and I -have one way of blocking it. I’ve arranged for your speeches and ‘ads.’ -and advance notices to be printed in the biggest paper in the next -State, and scattered all through the Mountain State as campaign -documents. I don’t think even Conover can block that move.” - -“Splendid!” cried Standish. “Old man, you’re a genius!” - -“No, I’m not,” contradicted Ansel, rather ruefully, “but someone else -is. I don’t know who.” - -“I don’t understand.” - -“Why, the idea was sent to me three days ago, anonymously. Typewritten -on foolscap. No signature. What d’you think of that?” - -“Anonymously?” - -“Yes. I wonder why. The idea’s so good, one would think the originator’d -claim it. Unless——” - -“Unless it came from the Conover camp?” - -“Just what occurred to _me_. Anyhow, I’ve adopted the suggestion. I -suppose _you’d_ have refused to accept anonymous help, eh?” - -“Every man to his own folly. It’s done now.” - -“It sure is. And with a few more such tips, Conover would be ‘done,’ -too. He’s carried matters high-handedly for years, but now maybe someone -he’s ridden rough-shod over has turned on him.” - - -The great night had come. Clive and Ansel, arriving at the Opera House, -found that gaudy, gayly-lighted auditorium full to the doors. On the -stage sat the mayor, the proprietor of one of the papers, a half-dozen -clergymen and a score of civic dignitaries. The boxes were filled with -well-dressed women. Evening suits blended with the less conspicuous -costumes of the spectators who stretched from stage to entrance, from -orchestra to roof. A band below the stage played popular and national -airs. - -The news of Clive’s eccentric pre-convention tour, of his eloquence, his -clean manliness and the obstacles he had overcome, had drawn hundreds -through sheer curiosity. More had come because they were weary of -Conover’s rule and eagerly desired to learn what his young antagonist -had to offer them in place of bossism. - -Skilled, by experience, in reading the sentiment of crowds, Clive, as he -stepped onto the stage, felt instinctively that the main body of the -house was kindly disposed toward him. Not only was this proven by the -spontaneous applause that heralded his appearance, but by a ripple—a -rustle—of interest that rose on every hand. The sound nerved him. He -considered once more how much hung on to-night’s success or failure, and -the advance augury was as music to his ears. - -The mayor, a little, nervous man with a monstrous mustache and a cast in -one eye, opened the meeting with a brief speech, defining the purpose of -the evening, and ended by introducing the candidate. Clive came forward. -A volley of applause such as he had never before known hailed him. He -bowed and bowed again, waiting for it to subside. But it did not. It -continued from every quarter of the house. - -From pleasure Clive felt a growing uneasiness. The majority of the -audience seemed to have relapsed into silence, and were staring about -them in wonder at the unduly continued ovation. The thumping of feet and -canes and the shouts of welcome increased rather than diminished. It -settled down into a steady volume of sound, regular and rhythmic, -shaking the whole auditorium, losing any hint at spontaneity and -degenerating into a deafening, organized babel. - -The men on the platform glanced at each other in angry bewilderment. For -fully ten minutes the tumult endured, rendering intelligible words out -of the question. The mayor, as chairman, rapped for silence. But his -efforts were vain. The sound was drowned in the vaster, reëchoing volume -of rhythmic sound. Clive held up his hand with a gesture of authority. -The applause doubled. - -This was growing absurd. The quiet majority of the audience waxed -restive, and half-rose in its seats to locate the disturbance. To end -the embarrassing delay Standish began to speak, hoping the clamor would -die down. But his words did not reach the second row of seats. - -Ansel slipped forward to his side. - -“This is a put-up job!” he exclaimed, shouting to make himself heard -above the uproar. “They are pretending to applaud because they think you -dare not call them down for that. They’ll keep it up all evening if they -get a chance, and you won’t be able to speak ten words.” - -In a front orchestra seat a man stood up waving a flag and bawling: - -“_Standish!_ _Standish!_ _We want_ STANDISH!” - -The rest of Billy Shevlin’s carefully drilled cohorts took up the cry, -and it was chanted a hundred times to the accompaniment of resounding -sticks and boot heels. - -The mayor beckoned a deputy sheriff from the wings. Pointing to the -front-seat ringleader he commanded: - -“Put that fellow out.” - -The deputy descended the steps to the orchestra, grabbed the -vociferating enthusiast by the collar and started to propel him up the -aisle. In an instant, as though the action were a signal, every sound -ceased. The house was as still as death. And through the silence soared -the shrill, penetrating protest of the man who had just been collared. - -“You leave me be!” he yelled. “I’ve got as much right here as you have. -An’ I’m earnin’ my money.” - -“What money!” shouted a trained querist in the gallery. - -“The cash Mr. Standish promised me for leadin’ the applause, of course. -He’s payin’ me an’ the rest of the boys good, an’ we’re goin’ to earn -our dough. _Standish!_ _Standish!_ _We want_——” - -Then pandemonium broke loose. Hundreds of voices caught up the rhythmic -refrain, while hundreds more shrieked “Fake!” and a counter rhythm arose -of - -“_Fake!_ _Fake!_ _Fake!_ _Fake!_ FAKE!” - -Standish, abandoning all present hope of making the audience understand -that the shrill-voiced man was a hireling of Conover’s, and that the -whole affair was a gigantic, well-rehearsed trick, turned to face the -group on the platform. But there, at a glance, he read in a dozen pairs -of eyes suspicion, contempt, disgust. - -“I’m sorry, Mr. Standish,” sneered the little mayor, “that your friends -are over-zealous in earning their——” - -“Do you mean that you—that _anybody_—can believe such an absurdity?” -cried Standish. “Can’t you see——?” - -“I can only see,” said the mayor, rising, “that I have evidently -misunderstood the purpose and nature of this meeting. Good night.” - -To Clive’s horror the little dignitary walked off the stage, followed by -two-thirds of those who had sat there with him. The majority of the -boxes’ occupants followed suit. The few who remained on the platform did -so, to judge from their expression, more from interest in the outcome of -the riotous audience’s antics than through any faith in Clive. For by -this time the erstwhile orderly place was in full riot. Individual -fights and tussles were waging here and there. Men were shouting -aimlessly. Women were screaming. People were hurrying in a jostling, -confused mass up the aisles toward the exits, while others bellowed to -them to sit still or move faster. And through all (both factions of -shouters having united in a common slogan) rang to an accompaniment of -smashing chairs and pounding feet that endless metrical refrain of - -“_Fake!_ _Fake!_ _Fake!_ _Fake!_ FAKE!” - -Standish, Ansel at his side, was once more at the platform’s edge, -striving in vain to send his mighty voice through the cataract of noise. -One tough, in the pure joy of living and rioting, had climbed over the -rail of a proscenium box—the only one still occupied—and, throwing an -arm about the neck of a young girl, sitting there with an elderly man -and woman, tried to kiss her. The girl screamed. Her elderly escort -thrust the rowdy backward, and the latter, his insecure balance on the -box rail destroyed, tumbled down among the orchestra chairs. The scene -was greeted with a howl of delight from kindred spirits. - -The youth scrambled to his feet and, joined by a half dozen intimates, -once more swarmed up the side of the box. The girl shrank back, and -futilely tugged at the closed box door, which had become jammed. The old -man, quivering with senile fury, leaned over the box-front and grappled -the foremost assailant. He was brushed aside and, amid a hurricane of -laughter from the paid phalanx in the gallery, the group of half-drunk, -wholly-inspired young brutes clustered across the box rail. The whole -incident had not occupied five seconds. Yet it had served to draw the -multi-divided attention of the mob and the rest of the escaping audience -to that particular and new point of interest And now, dozens of the -tougher element, seeing a prospect of better sport than a mere campaign -row, elbowed their way to the spot. - -The girl’s cry and that of the woman with her had barely reached the -stage when Clive Standish, with one tremendous spring, had cleared the -six-foot distance between footlights and box. There was a confused, -whirling, cursing mass of bodies and arms. Then the whole group rolled -outward over the rail. - -Before they had fairly touched ground Clive was on his feet, the centre -of a surprised but bellicose swirl of opponents who were nothing loath -to change their plan of baiting a well-dressed girl into the more -thrilling pastime of beating a well-dressed candidate. - -As the score of toughs rushed him, Clive had barely time to get his back -into the shallow angle between the bulging outer bases of the two -proscenium boxes. Then the rush was upon him. - -Hitting clean and straight, and with the speed and unerring deadliness -of the trained heavyweight boxer, Clive for the moment held his own. -There was no question of guarding. He relied rather for protection on -the unusual length of his arms. - -Nor could a blow be planned beforehand. It was hit, hit, and keep on -hitting. Fully twenty youths and men surged forward at him, and at -nearly every blow one went down among the pushing throng. But for each -who fell there were always two more to take his place. The impact and -crash of blows sounded above the yells and shuffle of feet. This was not -boxing. It was butchery. - -Only his semi-sheltered position and the self-confusing hurry and -numbers of his assailants kept Clive on his feet and allowed him to hold -his own. - -Yet, as he dimly realized even through the wild lust of battle that -gripped and intoxicated him, the fight was but a question of moments. -Soon someone, running in, must grapple or trip him, or a kick would -reach and disable him. And once down, in that bedlam of stamping, -kicking feet, his life would not be worth a scrap of paper. - -While it lasted, though, it was glorious. The veneered shell of -civilization had been battered away. He was primitive man, gigantic, -furious, terrible; battling against hopeless odds. Yet battling (as had -those ancestors from whom his yellow hair, great shoulders and bulldog -jaw were inherited) all the more gladly and doughtily because of those -very odds. - -He was aware of a man who, running along the box rail from the stage, -had dropped to his side and stood swinging a gilded, blue-cushioned -box-chair about his head. This apparition and the whizzing sweep of his -odd weapon caused the toughs to give back for an instant. - -“Good old Ansel!” panted Clive. - -“Save your breath!” grunted Karl. “You’ll need it.” - -Then a yell from twenty throats and the rush was on again. At first, -anticipating the easy triumph which their type so love, the toughs had -turned from the milder fun of frightening a girl of the better class to -the momentary work of thrashing the solitary man who had interfered with -that simple amusement. Now, bleeding faces, swollen eyes and more than -one fractured jaw and nose had transformed the earlier phase of rough -spirits into one of murderous rage. - -The man who had so mercilessly punished them must not be allowed to -escape alive. The tough never fights fair. When fists fail, a gouge, -bite or kick is considered quite allowable. When, as in the present -instance, the intended victim is so protected as to render these tactics -difficult of success, pockets are usually ransacked for more formidable -weapons. - -Ansel’s arrival on the scene had but checked the onrush. No two men, big -and powerful as both were, could subdue nor hold out against that -assault. - -Clive struck, right, left, with the swiftness of thought. And each blow -crashed into yielding, reeling flesh. - -Down whirled Ansel’s chair on the bullet head of one man, and down went -the man beneath the impact. - -Up whirled the chair and again it descended on another head—descended -and shivered into kindling wood. - -Dropping the fragments, Karl ranged close to Clive and together the two -struck out, the one with the wild force and fury of a kicking horse, the -other with the colder but no less terrific accuracy of the trained -athlete. - -A tough, ducking one of Ansel’s wild swings, ran in and caught him about -the waist. Doubling his left leg under him, Karl caught the man’s -stomach with the point of his knee. The assailant collapsed, gasping. -But the momentary lapse of the tall New Englander’s fistic attack had -opened a breach through which two more men rushed and flung themselves -bodily on him. - -Clive, unaware of his ally’s plight, yet felt the increased impetus of -the onslaught on himself, and had to rally his every faculty to -withstand it. His breath was coming hard from his heaving chest, and his -head swam with fatigue and excitement. More than one heavy blow had -reached his face and body. Then—— - -“Clear the way there, youse!” howled an insane, mumbling voice “Lemme at -’im! I’ll pay ’im for this smashed jaw!” - -The press immediately in front of Clive Standish slackened and the crowd -opened. In its centre reeled a horrible figure—bloodstained, torn of -clothing, raging and distorted of face, one hand nursing an unshaven -jaw, while the other flourished a revolver. - -“Lemme at ’im!” mumbled the pain-maddened tough through a hedge of -splintered teeth. “Clear the way or I’ll shoot to clear!” - -Then, finding himself directly in front of Standish, the maniac halted -and levelled his weapon. - -Something swished through the air from behind Clive’s head. A big -shapeless object hurtled forward and smote the broken-jawed tough full -across the eyes on the very instant he fired at point-blank range. - -The ball went wild, and surprise at the odd blow he had received -(apparently from nowhere), caused the man’s pistol to clatter to the -ground. - -The girl in the box—innocent cause of the whole battle—had paid her debt -to the man who had imperilled his life in her defence. She had crouched, -trembling, in the background watching the progress of the fray. But as -the intended murderer’s trigger-finger had tightened, she had hurled at -his face, with all her frail force, the huge bouquet she carried. For -once a woman’s aim was unerring, and thereby a man’s life was saved. - -Her act—melodramatic, amazing, unlooked-for, eccentric in its poetic -justice and theatric effects—sent a roar of applause from the onlookers, -even as the pistol-shot momentarily startled the group of ruffians into -sanity. Clive, without awaiting the result of the shot, had flung -himself upon the little knot of toughs who were locked in death-grip -about Ansel. - -But even as he did so, a cry of warning rang from a dozen parts of the -big building: - -“The cops! Lights out! The cops!” - -The hastily-summoned cohort of blue-coated reserves, pistols and -nightsticks drawn, charged down the centre aisle. And before their onset -the rabble melted like snow in April. - -The historic Grafton Opera House riot was a thing of the past. - - -An hour later Clive Standish sat alone in his hotel room. Ansel had just -said good night to him and left him to his own miserable reflections. - -Now that the excitement was over, he had time to realize what a ghastly -failure, from a campaign standpoint, his Grafton meeting had been. It -was the climax of his long, unbroken series of failures. He was beaten, -and he could no longer force himself to think otherwise. - -Heart and mind and pride were as sore as the aching, bruised face and -body from which he had so recently washed the stains of battle. - -At other towns he had scored nothing worse than failure. Here at Grafton -Conover had gained yet another point. The Railroader had made the people -look on his young opponent as a cheap trickster. The very class Clive -was working to rescue from Boss misrule would brand him as a charlatan. - -Yes, he was beaten. How could a man hope by clean methods to stand -against such powers as Caleb Conover possessed, and did not scruple to -use? The fight had been hard. And now it was over. He had done his best. -No one could have done more. And he had failed. - -The reaction from the violent physical and mental strain of the riot was -upon Standish. Hope, vitality, even self-trust were at their very ebb. - -A knock sounded at the door. - -“Come in,” he called wearily, supposing Ansel was coming back for -something he had left. - -“Thanks, I will,” replied Billy Shevlin, sidling into the room and -closing the door behind him. - -Clive stared in blank astonishment at his unexpected visitor. The latter -grinned pleasantly and sat himself down, unasked, in a chair near the -door, tucking his derby hat between his feet. - -“Good evening, Mr. Standish,” said Billy. “Pleased to see you again. -‘Same here,’ says you,” he added, after an embarrassed little pause -which Clive made no move to break. - -“What do you want?” asked the candidate at last. - -“Just a little gabfest with you. That’s all. I——” - -“You come with a message from Mr. Conover?” - -“Not me. I ain’t seen the Boss this ten days.” - -“I thought you were his special henchman,” said Clive, amused in spite -of himself by the heeler’s ingratiating manner, and puzzled as to the -cause of this midnight call. - -“The Boss’s _what_?” queried Billy. - -“His ‘henchman,’ I said. Aren’t——” - -“No, I ain’t. I don’t know just what a hench-person is, but _I_ ain’t -one. This ain’t the first time I’ve been called that. Some day when I -get time I’m goin’ to look it up in the dicshunary. An’ if it means what -I think it does, I’m going to lick——” - -“I wouldn’t bother if I were you. But you haven’t told me why you’re -here.” - -“Well,” responded Shevlin, with an air of casting all possible reserve -to the winds, “I wanted you to kind of get a line on what you’re up -against. Why not take your medicine graceful and quit?” - -“Is that any affair of yours?” - -“Sure, it’s my affair. Do you s’pose I’m settin’ here just to hand out -ree-fined conversation with you this time of night? You’ve put me to a -whole lot of bother lately, Mr. Standish. I’ve had all I could do -sometimes to block the game ahead of you on this tour. An’ then, -to-night——” - -“So it was you——” - -“I done my best,” assented Shevlin modestly. - -“Hold on!” he continued, as Clive jumped up. “Hold on, Mr. Standish! -Don’t you get wedded to the idee that ’twas me who kicked up that row -over the girl nor the scrap that followed. That ain’t my line. The -Boss’ll skin me alive fer lettin’ you make such a pose in the limelight -as you did when you butted in as the heero and copped off that rescue. -All _I_ did was to organize the cheerin’ party, and post that guy what -to say when he was nabbed. I’d ’a’ got away with it all without a break, -at that, only this Grafton gang ain’t got no ree-finement. They has to -go an’ make a toadpie of the whole party.” - -Clive sat down again. He realized that the little heeler, for his own -interest, was telling the truth in disclaiming all share in the riot’s -later stages. He was curious, too, to learn what else Shevlin had to -say. - -“So it was a Pyrrhic victory for you after all, you think?” suggested -Standish. - -“Pyrrhic?” mused Billy, thoughtfully. “Must ’a’ run on some of the -Western tracks. No skate of that name ever won a vict’ry here in the -East. Someone’s been stringin’ you about that, I guess, Mr. Standish.” - -“Perhaps so. And you’ve come to suggest that I withdraw? Why should I?” - -“’Cause you ain’t got the chance a snowball has on the south slopes of -Satanville. Come! Drop out an’ let’s have no hard feelin’. Conover’s got -ten times your strength everywhere. An’ the strong man’s always the man -that’ll win. You can dope that out——” - -“Not always. There was David’s fight with Goliath, for one, and——” - -“David who?” - -“A little chap who won out against a man double his size,” smiled Clive. -“Goliath was what you’d call a heavyweight.” - -“An’ what was David’s manager doin’, puttin’ a bantam into the ring with -a heavyweight? He’d ’a’ had that David person asleep in the first round. -Say, Mr. Standish, I seen to-night you’re a first-rate scrapper, an’ you -handle your hands fine for an amachoor. But what you don’t know about -prizefights an’ racehorses’d fill a City Record. Someone’s sure been -guying you good an’ plenty.” - -“Well, all that has nothing to do with what you came here about. You’ve -got something on your mind. Speak out, can’t you?” - -“It’s just this,” replied Shevlin, edging his chair nearer, and lowering -his voice, “you’re beat. An’ you’ve been to consid’ble expense in the -campaign, an’——” - -“Yes?” - -“An’ Mr. Conover’s set his heart on bein’ Gov’nor by a good majority. -An’ when he sets his heart on a thing he’s willin’ to pay well for it.” - -“Yes?” - -“So,” continued Billy, emboldened by Clive’s calmness, “what’s the -matter with you an’ him fixin’ this thing up peaceable?” - -“How?” - -“I’ve got a blank check here. It was give me for expenses. Shows how the -Boss trusts me, eh? Well, I’m willin’ to fill this out for $5,000 if you -say, an——” - -Then Clive Standish picked up his caller very gently by the nape of the -neck, carried him tenderly to the door, opened it and deposited him in -the hall outside. - -Returning, he shut the door, crossed over to his bath-room and washed -his hands. - -“Beaten?” he murmured to himself, all his fatigue and discouragement -forgotten. “Not yet! When they find it worth while to try to buy me off -it shows they’re still afraid. I’m in for another try at this uphill -game. But first of all I’ll see Caleb Conover face to face and have it -out with him. I wonder,” he speculated less belligerently, “I wonder if -Anice will happen to be in when I go there?” - - - - - CHAPTER VII - CALEB UNDERGOES A “HOME EVENING” - - -“There’s no use glowering at _me_ every time you speak of poor Clive,” -protested Mrs. Conover with all the fierce courage of a chased -guinea-pig. “It isn’t _my_ fault he’s running against you, and it isn’t -my fault that he’s my nephew, either.” - -“I guess both those failings would come under the head of misfortunes, -rather’n faults,” retorted Caleb. “And they’re both as hard on him as -they are on you, Letty. I wasn’t glowering at you, either. Don’t stir up -another spat.” - -The idea that Mr. Conover was capable of inciting any such disputation -so flattered that poor, spiritless little creature that she actually -bridled and looked about her to make sure Anice and Gerald, the only -other members of the household present, had heard. - -The quartette were seated in the Conover library, whither they had -gathered after dinner for one of those brief intervals of family -intercourse which Caleb secretly loved, his wife as secretly dreaded and -Gerald openly loathed. The Railroader, at heart, was an intensely -home-loving man. He had never known a home. Least of all since moving -into the Mausoleum. He had always, in increasingly blundering fashion, -sought to make one. - -The wife he bullied, the son he hectored, the daughter with whom he had -forever quarrelled, the secretary who met his friendliness with unbroken -reserve; all these he had tried to enroll as assistants in his various -homemaking plans. The results had not been so successful as to warrant -description. - -Finally, Conover had centred his former efforts on one daily plan. He -had read in the advice column of the _Star_ about the joys of “pleasant -evening hour in the bosom of one’s family” and the directions therefor. -The idea appealed to him. He ordained accordingly that after the -unfashionably early evening meal the household should congregate in the -library, and there for at least one hour indulge in carefree -confidential chat. This, Caleb mentally argued, was a capital opening -wedge in the inculcation of the true home-spirit which had been his -lifelong dream. - -The household obeyed the order, even as all Conover’s orders—at home and -abroad—were obeyed. The session usually began in laborious efforts at -small talk. Then an unfortunate remark of some sort from Mrs. Conover, -or an impertinence or sneer from Gerald, and the storm would break. The -“pleasant evening hour” oftener than not ended in a sea of weakly -miserable tears from Mrs. Conover, a cowed or _sotto voce_ profane exit -on Gerald’s part, and in Caleb’s stamping off to his study or else -around to the Kerrigans’ for a blissful, shirt-sleeved, old-time -political argument in front of the saloon’s back-room stove. - -On this present evening Caleb had just received Shevlin’s report of the -Standish tour. He was full of the theme and strove to interest his three -hearers in it. In Anice he found, as ever, an eager listener. But Gerald -yawned in very apparent boredom, while Mrs. Conover shed a few -delightfully easy, but irritating tears at the account of the opera -house fight. Caleb had silently resented these moist signs of interest, -and his glare had called forth an unusual protest from his weak little -spouse. - -“I’m sure,” she went on, nervously taking advantage of the rare fit of -courage that possessed her, “I’m _quite_ sure somebody else must have -put this Governorship idea into poor Clive’s head. He’d never have -thought of such a rash thing by himself. I don’t believe that at heart -he really wants to be Governor at all. He——” - -“If he don’t,” remarked Conover, “I guess that makes it unanimous. I -wish that idiot Shevlin hadn’t given him the chance to play to the -gallery, though, in a fist fight. It’ll mean votes for him. Folks have a -sort of liking for a man who can scrap. By the way, Jerry, if you go -around to Headquarters to-night, tell Bourke I want him to run to -Matawan for me to-morrow on that floater business. He——” - -“I don’t believe they can spare Bourke at Headquarters just now,” began -Gerald, with a faint show of interest. “You see——” - -“If he was the sort of man they could spare, he wouldn’t be the sort of -man I’d want to send on a ticklish job like this. Has Brayle showed up -at any of our rallies yet?” - -“No. And I don’t believe he will. He’s done with politics, Shevlin tells -me. Got religion, Billy says, and——” - -“If Pete Brayle’s got religion, you can gamble he’s got it in his wife’s -name, like every other asset of his. ‘Done with politics,’ eh? Well, -politics ain’t done with him. I’ll see Shevlin about it in the morning.” - -“I thought Mr. Brayle was an atheist,” put in Letty. “It’s an awful -thing to be. How do you suppose he ever became one?” - -“By thinking too hard with a mind that was too small; same as most -atheists do,” suggested Caleb. “Say, Jerry,” he added, “it won’t do you -no harm to know I’m rather tickled at the way you’ve took hold at -Headquarters this past week or so. You won’t lose by it.” - -“She wrote me to,” answered Gerald, flushing. “You owe it to _her_. Not -to me.” - -“She?” - -“Yes. My——” - -“Ugh! I might ’a’ known it! Well, so long as you do your work I don’t -care where the inspiration comes from. I ain’t too finicky to hit a -straight blow with a crooked stick. Why’d she tell you to hustle?” - -“She said she ‘hoped it would touch your hard heart.’ Wait, and I’ll -read you what she——” - -“No, you won’t. My hardness of heart isn’t a patch on my hardness of -hearing when it comes to listening to that sort of pink paper drivel. -I——” - -“Now, father,” whined Mrs. Conover, persuasively, “why be so hard on the -poor boy? Perhaps——” - -“Perhaps he’s wheedled you into thinking a yeller-haired high-kicker -would make the ideel daughter-in-law for the next Governor of the -Mountain State. But his golden eloquence hasn’t caught _me_ yet. So, as -long as there’s one sane member of the Conover family——” - -“Oh, Caleb, how can you treat your own child——” - -“Yes!” snorted Caleb, “my own children have a right to expect a fine -line of treatment from me, haven’t they? Blanche and Jerry, both. What -is it Ibid says about ‘A serpent’s tooth and a thankless——’” - -“That was Shakespeare,” contradicted Mrs. Conover, with the tact that -was her chief charm. “And you’ve got it all wrong. There’s no such -person as——” - -“I tell you it was Ibid,” growled Caleb, always tender on the subject of -his learning. “It says so in the ‘Famous Quotation’ book. Maybe you can -look down on my education. But I guess I can stand pat all right on the -things I _have_ learned. And——” - -The butler entered with a card, which he carried to Caleb. After one -glance at the pasteboard Caleb crushed it in his fingers and threw it to -the floor. - -“Turn her out!” he ordered. - -“Why, who is it?” squeaked his wife in high excitement. - -“It’s some woman for Jerry. Gaines brought me the card by mis——” - -“For me?” cried Gerald, jumping up, his face aflame. “Why, it—it -can’t——” - -“Yes, it can. And it is, or rather it _was_, for I’ve sent her away. -Maybe you forget I made you promise——” - -“Stand aside!” spake a dramatic contralto voice from beyond the -portières, “I have a right here.” - -The curtains were thrust apart, revealing the protesting, discomfited -butler; and, pushing past him, a tall, slender young woman, quietly but -prettily dressed, pompadoured of hair, and very, _very_ determined of -aspect. - -“Good Lord!” grunted Caleb under his breath, “she ain’t even a blonde. I -thought they all——” - -But she was in the library itself, and facing the amazed master of the -house. Gerald, at first sight of her, had sprung forward and now grasped -the newcomer ardently by both hands and drew her to him. - -“I was sure,” murmured the intruder in that same throaty contralto, -rich, yet insensibly conveying a vague impression of latent vulgarity, -“I was _sure_ your man was mistaken, and that you couldn’t have meant to -turn me away without a word when I had come so far to see my precious -truant boy. _Did_ you? We women, Mrs. Conover,” she went on, eyes and -voice claiming alliance of the meek-faced little nonentity who shrank -behind Anice Lanier, “we women understand how hard it is to keep away -from the man who has taught us to love him. _Don’t_ we? Men never can -_quite_ realize that. Not even my Gerald, or he wouldn’t have stayed -away so long or made me stay away from him. _Would_ he?” - -“It was Dad,” broke in Gerald. “I told you that in my first letter, -darling. He won’t stand for our marriage, and——” - -“Ah! that is because he doesn’t know,” she laughed archly. “Mr. Conover, -this big splendid boy of mine is too much in love to explain as he -should. And he’s so high-spirited, he can’t listen as patiently to -advice as he ought to. _Can_ you, Gerald? So I came myself, when I -couldn’t stand it any longer to be away from him. I knew I could make -you understand. _Can’t_ I?” - -“I can tell better when you’ve tried,” answered Caleb, watching with a -sort of awed fascination the alternate plunges and rearings of the -vibrant black pompadour, which, in deference to the prevailing style of -the moment—and of the chorus—was pendent directly above the visitor’s -right eye. - -His curt rejoinder rather took the caller aback. She looked about the -group as if for inspiration. Anice Lanier had risen, and was at the -door. Caleb saw her. - -“Please don’t go, Miss Lanier!” he called. - -“I would much prefer to,” answered Anice, “if you don’t object. This -seems to be purely a family affair and——” - -“And at least one person with a decently-balanced brain ought to be -present. Our affairs are _your_ affairs as far as you’ll allow. Please -do me the favor of staying.” - -The visitor had, by this diversion, regained grasp on her plan of -action. - -“Mr. Conover,” she said, stretching out her suède-gloved hands toward -the Railroader in a pretty gesture of helpless appeal as to an -all-powerful judge, “I am your son’s wife. He loves me. I love him. Does -that tell you nothing?” - -“Yes,” said Caleb judicially, “it tells me you love each other; if -that’s what you mean. For the sake of argument we’ll take that for -granted, just for the present. Now get down to facts.” - -“I am your son’s wife,” repeated the woman, somewhat less throatily, but -still with brave resolve. “He sought me out and wooed me. He told me I -should receive a welcome in his home. He made me love him. _Didn’t_ you, -Gerald? And I married him. Ah, but we were happy, we two! Then, like a -thunderbolt from the blue sky fell your command that we part. He and I. -For long—oh, _so_ long—I have tried to be patient, to wait for time to -soften your heart. But at last I couldn’t bear it. I couldn’t _bear_ it, -so I came here to meet you in person, to cast myself at your feet if -need be. To——” - -She paused. The cold, inscrutable gaze of the Railroader’s light eyes -did not tend to inspire her very creditable recitation. As a matter of -fact, Caleb was at the moment paying very little attention to her words. -He was noting the hard dryness of her skin and the only half-hidden -lines about mouth, brow and eye; and contrasting them with Anice -Lanier’s baby-smooth skin and the soft contour of her neck and cheek. - -Had the stranger been saying anything of import Caleb would have -missed no syllable. But, through long years of experience with the -dreary windiness and empty pothouse eloquence of politicians, the -Railroader had learned by instinct, and without waiting to catch so -much as the first word, whether anything worth hearing was being said, -or if the case were, as he was wont to express it, “an attack of -rush-of-words-to-the-mouth.” He had already placed his present -caller’s oration in the latter category. But her pause brought him -back to himself. - -“Well?” he demanded. - -“So I am here to implore you to be just, to be generous,” resumed the -girl, slightly raising the pitch of the scene as she approached a -climax. “I throw myself on your mercy. I, Enid Conover——” - -“Enid Conover!” snorted the Railroader. “Why——” - -“Yes. Enid Conover! How I have learned to love that name!” - -“Have, hey? Then take my advice, young woman, and stifle that same wild -adoration for my poetic cognomen, for you aren’t going to have the -renting of it any longer’n I can help.” - -“Not——?” - -“Oh, you’ll get over it easy! Just as you got over your love for that -high-sounding title, Enid Montmorency. And just as, before that, when -you left your mother’s Germantown boarding-house, you got over any -passion you may have had for your original name, Emma Higgs. You see I -know some little about you. I took the trouble to have you looked up. -You and your family. You told Gerald your family’s old. From all I hear, -I guess the main difference between you and that same family is that -one’s older’n you make out and the other’s younger. Take your choice as -to which is which. And now——” - -“You insult me!” declaimed the girl, her eyes flashing, her figure drawn -to the full height of a really excellent pose, her pompadour nestling -protectingly above the arched brow. - -“No, I don’t. I couldn’t. (Jerry, you sit down there and behave yourself -or I’ll spank you!) If you think I’m wrong, maybe you’d like me to tell -my son the way you first happened to go on the stage. No? I guess I’ve -got this thing framed up pretty near straight. It’s a grand-stand play, -and Papa is It, eh? A masterstroke of surprise for the old man, and a -final tableau of the bunch of us clustering about you and Gerald in the -centre of the stage, while you fall on each other’s necks and -do a unison exclamation of ‘God-bless-the-dear-old-Dad! -How-much-will-he-leave-us? And-how-soon?’ You waited in town awhile. But -Papa didn’t relent and send Hubby back to his lonely wifie. Then you -sick Gerald on to acting like a human being, hoping to win Papa over by -being a good boy. No go. Then as a last play you butt in here on a -sudden with all your lines learned down pat, and do a grand appeal. -Well, Mrs.-Miss-Emma-Higgs-Enid-Montmorency-Conover, it doesn’t work. -That’s all. If you’ve got the sense I think, you’ll see the show’s a -frost, and you’ll start back for Broadway. Take my blessing, if you want -it, and take Jerry along for good measure, if you like. It’s all you’ll -ever get from me, either of you.” - -To Caleb Conover’s unbounded horror and amaze, Enid, instead of spurning -him haughtily, burst into a crescendo, throaty gurgle of contralto -weeping, and flung herself bodily upon him; her long-gloved arms twining -about his neck, her pompadoured head snuggling into his bosom. - -“Oh, Father! _Father!_” came a muffled, yet artistic wail from somewhere -in the region of his upper waistcoat buttons. “How _can_ you? You’ve -broken Gerald’s heart. And now you’re breaking mine. Forgive us!” - -“Miss Lanier!” thundered Caleb, struggling wildly to escape the -snake-like closeness of the embrace, “for heaven’s sake won’t you come -and—and unwind this person? She’s spoiling my shirt-front. Lord, how I -do hate to be pawed!” - -“Do not touch me! Do not _dare_ to, menial!” commanded the bride, -relinquishing her hold, and glaring like a wounded tigress at Anice, who -had made no move whatever in response to Caleb’s horrified plea. The -visitor drew back from Caleb as though contact with him besmirched her. - -“_Well!_” she gasped, and now the throaty contralto was merged into a -guttural snarl, ridiculously akin to an angry cat’s. “_Well!_ Of all the -cheap tight-wads I ever struck! Think you can backtrack _me_, do you? -Well, you _lose_! I’m married to him all right, and _I’m_ not giving him -up in a hurry. You try to butt in, and you’ll find yourself in a hundred -thousand alienation suit! Oh, I know _my_ rights, and no up-country -Rube’s going to skin me out of ’em. You old bunch of grouchiness! And to -think they let you boss things in this jay town of yours! Why, in New -York you’d never get nearer Broadway than Tenth Avenue, and you couldn’t -even boss a red light precinct. My Gawd! I’ll have to keep it dark about -my coming to a hole like this or my friends’ll think I’ve been playing a -ten-twenty-thirt’ circuit. No civilized person ever comes here, and now -I know why. They’re afraid they’ll be mistook for a friend of yours, -most likely. You redheaded old geezer, you don’t even know a lady when -you see one. Keep your lantern-jawed, pie-faced mutt of a son. I’m going -back to where there’s at least _one_ perfect gentleman who knows how to -behave when a lady honors him by——” - -“Enid!” cried Gerald, who had sat in dumb, nerveless confusion during -the recent interchange of courtesies, “you don’t mean—? You mustn’t go -back to him! You _mustn’t_! Has he met you again since I left? Tell me! -I said I’d kill him if he ever spoke to you again, and, by God, I will! -He shan’t——” - -A timid, falsetto screech, like that of a very young leveret that is -inadvertently trodden beneath a farmer’s foot in long grass, broke in on -the boy’s ravings. Mrs. Caleb Conover collapsed on the floor in a dead -faint. - -Anice ran to the unconscious woman’s aid. Even Gerald, checked midway in -his mad appeal, stopped and stared down in stupid wonder at his mother’s -little huddled figure. - -Caleb seized the moment to cross the room quickly toward the furious -chorus girl. He caught her by the shoulder, and in his pale eyes blazed -a flare that few men and no woman had ever seen there. The color, behind -the artistic paint on the visitor’s face, went white at the look. She, -who was accustomed to brave the rages of drunken rounders, shrank -speechless, cowering before those light eyes. One arm she raised -awkwardly as if to avert a blow. Yet Caleb’s touch on her shoulder was -gentle; and, when he spoke, his voice was strangely dead and -unemotional. So low was it that his meaning rather than his exact words -reached the actress. - -“This is _my_ city,” said he. “What I say goes. There is a train to New -York in thirty minutes. If you are in Granite one minute after it -leaves, my police shall arrest you. My witnesses shall make the charge -something that even _you_ will hardly care to stand for. My judge shall -send you to prison for a year. And every paper in New York shall print -the whole story as I choose to tell it. Now go!” - -The fear of death and worse than death was in her eyes. She slunk out, -shrunken in aspect to the form of an old and bent woman. Not even—most -beloved trick of stage folk!—did she turn at the portières for a parting -look. The patter of her scared, running feet sounded irregularly on the -marble outer hall. Then the front door slammed, and she was gone. - -The final scene between Conover and his son’s wife had endured less than -twenty seconds. It was over, and she had departed before Gerald realized -what had happened. Then, with a cry, he was on his feet and hurrying to -the door. But his father stood in front of it. - -“If you’re not cured now,” said Conover, “you never will be. Go back and -ring for your mother’s maid.” - -The boy’s mouth was open for a wrathful retort. But embers of the blaze -that had transformed Caleb’s face as he had dismissed the chorus girl -still flickered there. And under their scorching heat Gerald Conover -slunk back, beaten but still muttering defiant incoherences under his -breath. - -Mrs. Conover, under Anice’s gentle ministration, was coming to her -senses. She opened her eyes with a gasp of fear, then sat up and looked -apprehensively around. - -“She is gone, dear,” whispered Anice, divining her meaning, “and Gerald -didn’t mean what he said. He was excited, that was all. He’s all right -again now. Shall I help you upstairs?” - -But Mrs. Conover insisted on being assisted to the nearby sofa, from -which refuge she feebly waved away her maid and vetoed Anice’s further -offices. - -“I am all right,” she pleaded under her breath. “Let me stay here. Caleb -hates to have me give way to these heart attacks. I’ll stay till he has -gone to his study. Then——” - -“All right again, old lady?” asked Caleb, walking across to the sofa. -“Like me to send for the doctor?” - -“No. Yes, I’m quite well again now,” stammered his wife. “Thank you for -asking.” - -It was not wholly indifference which had kept Conover from the invalid’s -side. So great had been the unwonted fury that mastered him, he had -dared not speak to either of the women until he was able to some extent -to curb it. His usually iron nerves were still a-quiver, and his voice -was unlike its customary self. - -“Until further notice,” he announced dryly, looking from one to the -other, “these ‘pleasant home hours’ are suspended. By request. They’re -too exciting for a quiet man like me. I hope you’ll all try to smother -any disappointment you feel. And now,” turning to the butler, who had -come in answer to his ring, “I’ll see if I can’t get the taste of this -farewell performance of the pleasant hour series out of my mouth before -I start my evening’s work. Gaines, order Dunderberg brought around in -ten minutes.” - -“Where are you going?” asked Mrs. Conover, who had imperfectly caught -the order. - -“To get into my riding clothes,” answered her husband from the doorway. - -“But you spoke about Dunderberg. You’re surely not going to ride -Dunderberg when I’m so shaken up. I shall worry so——” - -“Why? _You_ ain’t riding him.” - -“But why not ride Sultan? He’s so gentle and quiet and——” - -“Letty! do I look as if I was on a still hunt for something gentle and -quiet? I want something that’ll give me a fight. Something that’ll tire -me out and take my mind off black, floppy pompadours and stocking-leg -gloves! Jerry, you come along with me. I want a talk with you.” - -“Oh, if only that dreadful horse would die!” sighed Mrs. Conover. “I -never have an instant’s peace while you’re riding him.” - -“Rot!” growled Caleb, grinning reassurance at the pathetic little figure -on the sofa. “There never yet was a horse I couldn’t manage or that -could harm _me_. Come along, Jerry.” - -He stamped upstairs to his dressing-room followed by the reluctant, -still muttering Gerald. - -This was by no means the first time Mrs. Conover had plucked up courage -to entreat her lord not to ride his favorite horse, Dunderberg, the most -vicious, tricky brute in all that horse-breeding State. And never yet -had the Railroader deigned to heed her request. In fact, such opposition -rather pleased him than otherwise, inasmuch as it enhanced, to all -listeners, his own equestrian prowess. - -Caleb Conover was a notoriously bad rider. Horsemanship must be learned -before the age of twenty or never at all. And Conover was well past -forty before he threw leg over saddle. But he loved the exercise, and -took special joy in buying and mastering the most unmanageable horses he -could find. - -How so wretched a horseman could avert bad falls or even death was a -mystery to all who knew him. It was seemingly by his own sheer will -power and brutal strength of mind and body that he remained triumphant -over the worst horse; was never thrown nor failed to conquer his mount. - -It was one of the sights of Granite to see Caleb Conover careering down -the main avenue of the residence district, backing some foaming, -plunging hunter, whose wildest efforts could never shake that stiff, -indomitable figure from its seat. With walloping elbows and jerking -shoulders, the Railroader was wont to thunder his way at top speed up -and down suburban byways; inciting his horse to its worst tricks, -tempting it to buck, kick, wheel or rear. And when the maddened brute at -length indulged in any or all of these manœuvres, a joy of battle would -light the rider’s face as, with unbreakable knee-grip and a -self-possession that never deserted him, he flogged the steed into -subjection. - -In telling Letty that there was no horse he could not safely manage and -control Conover had but repeated an oft-made boast—a boast whose truth -he had a score of times proven. He was not a constant equestrian. He -never rode for the mere pleasure of it. In ordinary moments he cared -little for such recreation. But when he was angered, or perplexed, or -desired to freshen jaded nerves or brain, his first order was for his -newest, worst-tempered horse. - -As he rode so semi-occasionally, and as the horse he selected was -usually one which even his pluckiest grooms feared to exercise, the -brute in question was fairly certain to be in a state of rampant, rank -“freshness,” and to require the best work of two men to lead him from -the stables to the _porte-cochère_. As few steeds could long withstand -such training as Conover inflicted, he was forever changing mounts. The -horse of the hour would wax so tame and docile as to preclude further -excitement, or would break a blood-vessel or go dead lame in one of the -fierce conflicts with its master. Then a new mount must be sought out. - -It was barely a month earlier that Caleb had discovered Dunderberg, and -had bought the great black stallion at an outrageously high price. And -thus far the purchase still delighted him, for Dunderberg not only -showed no signs of cringing to the master’s fiery will, but daily grew -fiercer and more unmanageable. - -So, while Mrs. Conover trembled, wept and alternately prayed and watched -the length of driveway beyond her window, the Railroader was wont to -dash at breakneck speed along the farther country roads, atop his huge -black horse, checking the mad pace only for occasional battles-royal -with the ever-fractious beast. - -To-night, coming atop the previous excitement of the “pleasant home -hour,” the strain on Letty was too great. Clinging convulsively to -Anice, the poor woman wept with a hysterical abandon that almost -frightened the girl. Tenderly, lovingly as a mother the girl soothed the -trembling old lady; comforting her as only a woman of great heart and -small hand can; quieting at length the shuddering hysterics into -half-stifled sobs. - -Had Caleb Conover (upstairs wrestling with an overtight riding boot) -chanced upon the group, he would have been sore puzzled to recognize in -this all-tender, pitying maiden the coldly reserved secretary on whose -unruffled composure and steady nerve he had so utterly come to rely. - -“Oh, it’s horrible—_horrible_!” panted Mrs. Conover, finding voice as -the sobs subsided. - -“Yes, yes, I know,” soothed Anice. “But it——” - -“You _don’t_ know. You can’t know. It isn’t only the horse. It’s -everything! I sometimes wonder how I stand it. Each time it seems as -if——” - -“Don’t! Don’t, dear! You’re overwrought and tired. Let me take you -upstairs and——” - -“No. It does me good. There’s never been anyone I could talk to. And -sometimes I’ve felt I’d give all this abominable money and everything -just for one hour’s friendship with anyone who really cared.” - -“But _I_ care. Really, _really_ I do. Let me help you, won’t you, -please? I want so much to.” - -“‘Help’ me?” echoed the weeping woman, with as near an approach to -bitterness as her crushed spirit could muster. “_Help_ me? How can -anyone help one of Caleb Conover’s slaves? And I am the only one of them -all who has no hope of escape. The others can leave him and find work -somewhere else. Even the horses he loves to fight have the satisfaction -of fighting back. But I haven’t courage enough to do either of those -things. What _can_ I do?” - -It was the first time in their three years of daily intercourse that -Anice Lanier had seen or so much as suspected the existence of this -feeble spark of resentment in the older woman’s cowed soul. It -dumbfounded her, and left her for the time without power of consoling. - -“Do you know, Miss Lanier,” went on Letty, “at one time I hated you? -Yes”—as she noted the pained surprise in the girl’s big, tear-swimming -eyes—“actually hated you. You were all I was not. You were not afraid of -him. He deferred to you. He never deferred to me, or to anyone else but -you since he was born. He never cared for me. And he did care for you. -If I were to die——” - -“Mrs. Conover!” - -Anice had shaken off Mrs. Conover’s clinging hands, and was on her feet, -her eyes dry, her cheeks blazing. - -“Don’t be angry with me! _Don’t!_” whimpered the invalid. “I didn’t mean -any harm. You said you wanted to help me. And oh, if you only knew what -a help it is to be able to speak out for once in my life without fear of -that terrible will power of Caleb’s choking me silent! I don’t hate you -now. I didn’t as soon as I saw you cared nothing for him. For you don’t. -I see more than people think. And—I suppose it’s wicked of me to even -think such things—but when I die it will be good to know Caleb will for -once be balked in his wishes; for you’ll never marry him. I know that.” - -“I can’t listen to you!” exclaimed Anice. “You are not yourself or you -wouldn’t talk so. Please——” - -“May I come in?” - -Both women, with the wondrous art which their sex alone can master, had -dropped into conventional attitudes with their backs to the light by the -time the intruder’s first word was spoken. As Clive Standish passed -through the portières into the library, he saw only that its two -occupants were seated, one reading, the other crocheting, in polite -boredom, each evidently quite willing that their prolonged session of -dreary small talk should be interrupted. - -“Good evening, Aunt Letty,” said Clive, as he stooped over the excited -woman and kissed her. “I called to see Mr. Conover on a matter of some -importance. The footman was not sure whether he could—or would—see me or -not. So, while I was waiting for him to find out, I thought I heard your -voice in here and ventured in. Good evening, Miss Lanier. You’ll pardon -my left hand?” - -The right he held behind him, yet in one of the mirrors Anice could see -the knuckles were swathed in plaster. The hand he offered, too, was -bruised, cut and discolored. - -“I—I had a slight accident,” he said hastily, noting her glance. -“Nothing of importance. I——” - -“Mr. Conover has told us of it,” answered Anice. “It was splendid of -you, Clive! You risked your life to——” - -“To get out of a fight that my own folly had brought on. That was all. -I’m afraid my tour wasn’t exactly a success. In fact, I fear it will go -down in Mountain State annals as the colossal failure of the century. So -I’m back.” - -“You’ve given up?” she asked in quick interest. - -“Why? Do you want me to?” - -“No.” - -Her monosyllable told little. Her eyes, which he alone could see, told -more. Clive was satisfied. - -“I have not given up,” he said simply, “and I am not going to.” - -“Oh, but, Clive,” put in his aunt, finding her voice at last after the -shock of seeing Standish walk thus boldly into the lion’s den. “You’d -really better give up the whole silly business. I’m sure Mr. Conover -would be so pleased.” - -“I don’t doubt it,” replied Standish, smiling grimly at Anice over the -old lady’s bobbing head, “but I’m afraid it is a pleasure that’s at -least deferred. The kind that Solomon tells us ‘maketh the heart sick.’ -I’m still in the race. Very much in it.” - -“But then, why—why have you come here, Clive?” urged Letty nervously. -“Mr. Conover and you are such bad friends. I’m sure there’ll be an awful -scene, just as there was that time four years ago. And I do so hate -scenes. After this evening’s——” - -“I’m afraid there may be a ‘scene,’ as you call it,” admitted Clive, -“but it won’t be at all on the order of the one four years ago. And I -hope it won’t be in your presence either, Aunt.” - -Again his eyes met Anice Lanier’s. She nodded ever so slightly, and he -knew that when the time should come he could trust her to remove the -timid woman from the danger zone. - -“Why do you want to see Mr. Conover?” asked Anice, “or is that an -impertinent——?” - -“Not in the least. I want to come to an understanding with him. Affairs -have reached a point where that is necessary.” - -“An understanding?” - -“Yes. As long as he contented himself with ordering his followers to -lampoon and vilify myself and the League I made no complaint. It was -dirty, but I suppose it was politics. But when he muzzles the press, -orders the police and the mayor of the cities to refuse me fair play, -and sets thugs to attack me and illegally steals the State conventions, -it’s time to have it out with him face to face. That is why I am here, -and why I shan’t leave until I have seen him. I hadn’t meant to say all -this to you,” he added, ashamed of his own heat, “but——” - -“Oh, I’m _certain_ Mr. Conover won’t like it!” moaned his aunt. “I’m -quite certain he won’t. Now, if you’d only speak tactfully and -pleasantly to him——” - -“Well,” came the Railroader’s strident tones from the hall outside, -“where is he, then?” - -The portières were swished aside with a jerk that set the curtain rings -to jingling, and Caleb Conover, in riding dress, hatted, spurred and -slashing his crop against one booted leg, filled the narrow doorway. - -Mrs. Conover gave a little gasp of fear. Anice Lanier let fall over her -bright face the mask of quiet reserve it always wore in her employer’s -presence. - -Clive rose and took a step toward his unwelcoming host. - -And so, for ten seconds, the rival candidates faced each other in -silence—a silence heavy with promise of storm. - - - - - CHAPTER VIII - CALEB CONOVER LISTENS AND ANSWERS - - -“Well,” began Conover, breaking the short pause, “what do _you_ want?” - -“I want to speak to you—alone,” answered Standish. - -“Come up to my study. Gaines, tell the groom to keep Dunderberg moving. -I’ll be down in ten minutes.” - -In silence the Railroader led the way upstairs. He passed into the -study, leaving Clive to follow. Nor, as he seated himself in his big -desk chair, did he request his visitor to sit down. Ignoring these -slights, Clive took up his stand on the opposite side of the desk. - -“Now, then,” said Caleb, “get through your business as quick as you can. -What do you want?” - -“To speak to you in reference to this campaign.” - -“Had enough, eh?” - -“Altogether too much of the sort you’ve inflicted on me.” - -“Good! You’ve got more sense than I thought. There’s two kinds of fools: -the kind that put their heads in a hornet’s nest once and then have -sense enough to admit they’ve been stung, and the kind that keeps their -heads there because they’re too daffy to see the exit-signs or too -pig-headed to confess that hornet-stings ain’t the most diverting form -of massage. I’m glad to see you belong to the first class. I’d placed -you in the second.” - -“But I——” - -“But you want to get out of this p’ticular hornet’s nest, I s’pose, -without giving too life-like an imitation of a man shinning down from a -tree, eh? Well, I guess that can be fixed. Sit down. We’ll——” - -“You’re mistaken!” broke in Standish, resenting the more civil tone of -his host as he had not resented his former rudeness, “I’m in this fight -to stay. I——” - -“Want your cash losses made good! If you——” - -“Mr. Conover,” said Clive calmly, though the knuckles that gripped the -table-edge were white with pressure, “when your lackey, Shevlin, made -that same proposition to me, he thought he was making a perfectly -straight offer. And, judging by the standards you’ve taught him, I -suppose the suggestion was almost holy compared with the majority of his -tactics. So I didn’t thrash him. He knew no better; for the same reason -I don’t thrash _you_.” - -“That and maybe a few others,” laughed Conover, in no wise offended. “I -climbed up from yard-boy to railroad president by frequently jamming my -fists in where they’d do the most good. I guess you’d have a faint -s’spicion you’d been in a fight before you was through. But I presume -you didn’t come here to-night to give an encore performance of your -grand-stand play at Grafton. It seems I started on the wrong idea just -now. You don’t want to drop out gracefully or to sell out, and you -prefer the soothing attentions of the hornets to——” - -“Yes, if you put it that way, Mr. Conover——” - -“Hold on a second.” - -The Railroader crossed to a screen at the farther end of the room. -Thrusting it aside he said to a stenographer who sat behind it, pencil -and pad in hand: - -“We won’t need you any longer. This ain’t going to be that kind of -interview after all. You can go now. Just a little precaution of mine,” -he added to Clive as he returned to the table. “Now you can go on -talking.” - -“You were setting a spy to take down what I said!” gasped Clive, -incredulous. - -“No. A stenographer to report our little chat. We were a bit short on -campaign litterchoor. But I see it won’t be needed now. Go ahead.” - -“I’ve just returned from a tour of the State,” commenced Standish, once -more forcing himself to keep down his temper. - -Conover drew a typewritten bundle from a drawer. - -“If you were counting on telling me all about it,” he observed, “I can -save you the trouble. Here’s the whole account.” - -“Does your ‘account’ include the recital of a mob incited to smash -furniture, insult women and attempt murder? Or of suborned town -officials, bought policemen and muzzled editors? If not, it is -incomplete. I went on that tour prepared to meet all legitimate -obstacles. I met only fraud, violence and the creatures of boss-bought -conspiracy. It is to call you to account for that and to ask how far it -was done by your personal sanction that I have come to see you. Also to -ask if you intend to give me fair play in future.” - -“Fair play?” echoed Conover in genuine bewilderment. “Son, this is -politics, not ping pong.” - -“Everyone in God’s world is entitled to fair play. And I’m here to -demand it.” - -“‘God’s’ world, eh? My friend, when you’ve travelled about it as long as -I have, you’ll find out that the original owner sublet the premises long -ago.” - -“It looks so, in the Mountain State, I agree. But I’m trying to act as -local dispossess agent for the present tenant. All men are born equal, -and some of us are tired of being owned by a political boss. We——” - -“You’re a terribly original feller, Standish! That remark, now, about -all men being ‘born equal.’ It was made in the first place, wasn’t it, -by a white-wigged, short-panted hero who owned more slaves than he could -count? ‘Born equal!’ Maybe all men are. But by the time they’re out of -swaddling-clothes they’ve got bravely over it. That old Jefferson -proverb’s responsible for more anarchy and scraps, and strikes and -grumbling and hard-luck stories, than all the whole measly dictionary -put together. Get down to business, man. This ain’t a p’litical rally. -Cut out the fine talk, can’t you? My horse is waiting.” - -“I’ve told you already what I wish. I want to know if you will fight -like a man for the rest of the campaign, and if the outrages I -encountered on my tour were by your order?” - -“That won’t take an awful lot of eloquence to answer. What was done to -you up-State was planned out by me, and it isn’t deuce-high to what’ll -drop on you if you’re still alive when the State Convention——” - -“You cur!” - -“Meaning _me_?” queried Caleb blandly. - -“You cur!” repeated Clive, his last remaining shreds of temper thrown to -the winds. “I was told I’d meet this sort of reception, but I couldn’t -believe there was a man alive who had the crass effrontery to confess he -was a wholesale crook, and that he was going to continue one. You’ve -sapped the integrity, the honesty, the freedom of this city and State. -You’ve made us a byword for every community in America. You’ve trailed -your iniquitous railroad across the State, crushing every smaller and -more honest line, until you are czar of all our traffic. You rob the -people by sending to Legislature your own henchmen, who help you steal -franchises, and who cut down your taxes and throw the burden of -assessment on the very class of people you have already defrauded to the -top of your bent. Corruption of the foulest sort has been smeared by you -all over the face of this commonwealth, till the people are stricken -helpless and speechless under it. Who can help them? Are there ten -lawyers in this State who don’t wear your collar, and whose annual -passes from your road aren’t granted them on the written understanding -that such courtesies are really ‘retainers’? Then, when I try to help -the people you have ground to the dirt—when I try to wipe the filthy -stain from the Mountain State’s shield—even then you will not fight me -fair, as man to man. You stab in the back, like any other common felon, -and you feel so secure in your own stolen position, that you actually -boast of it, and propose to continue your damnable knifing tactics. Why, -Caleb Conover, you don’t even know how vile a _thing_ you are!” - -He paused, breathless, still furious. The Railroader was leaning back in -his big chair eyeing the angry man with genuine amusement. - -“You’ve got the hang of it!” murmured Caleb, half to himself. “The -regular reformer shout. I wouldn’t have thought it of you. Honestly, -son, it’s hard to take you reformers serious. You’re all so dead sure -you’re saying what’s never been said before, and that you’re discovering -what no one else ever dreamed of. If only I could buy one of you Civic -Leaguers at my own estimate of you, and sell you at your estimate of -yourself, it’d be the biggest deal I ever made. Now don’t get red and -try to think up new platitudes to beller at me. I’ve listened pretty -patient, but I think it’s my turn to do a little shouting, too. I’ve -heard you out. Now, maybe it’ll do you no harm to make the same -return-play to me. Sit down. You came here to reach an understanding, -and get a line on my course, eh? Well, you’ve got a big load of fine -words out of your system in the last few minutes. I’ll answer you as -best I can, and then maybe in future us two’ll understand each other the -better.” - -In spite of himself, Clive Standish listened. This thickset, powerful -man, whose blazing temper was proverbial, had attended the young -candidate’s rather turgid arraignment with every evidence of -good-natured interest. He had endured insulting epithet with almost the -air of one who hearkens to a compliment. And, in answering, he had -spoken so moderately, so at variance with his usual mode of address, -that Standish was utterly puzzled, and was half-ashamed of his own -vehemence. What one of the Boss’s myriad moods was this, and what end -had he in view? Clive checked his own impulse to depart. After all, -there was something of justice in what Conover had said about the -courtesy due a man who had listened to such a tirade as his. - -Standish remained standing at the table, looking across with unwilling -inquiry at his host, who lounged at ease in his chair, watching the -younger man with a grim smile, as though reading his every thought. -Their relative positions were ludicrously akin to those of judge and -prisoner. And the compelling force that lay behind the amusement in -Caleb’s light eyes strengthened the resemblance. - -“In the first place,” said the Railroader, “I think you called me a -‘cur.’ Twice, I believe, you said that. You most likely thought I’d get -mad. A cur _does_ get mad when he’s called bad names. But a grown man’s -too busy to kick the puppy that yelps at his heels. A man of sense keeps -his mouth shut, unless he’s got something to say. If a cur hasn’t -anything else to yelp at, he goes out and picks a scrap with the moon, -or at something else that’s too big or too high up to bother to hit back -when he barks at it. Me, for instance. So we’ll let it go at that, and -we won’t bother to get up a puzzle picture of us both and label it ‘Find -the cur.’ Have a cigar? No? They aren’t campaign smokes. You needn’t ’a’ -been afraid of ’em.” - -He lighted a gaudily-banded perfecto, puffed it a minute, and went on: - -“I don’t know why I’m going to waste time talking to you. I’ve never -took the trouble, before, to defend myself or to try to make other folks -see my view of the case. But you’re a well-meaning chap, for all you’re -such an ass. And maybe something’s due you after the luck I put you up -against on that tour of yours. So I’m just going to squander some words -on you. And after that I’ll ask you to trot off home, for I’ve some -riding to do.” - -He shifted his cigar to an angle of his mouth and resumed: - -“In the first place, you give me the usual rank old talk about the way I -treat the people of the Mountain State. Why do I boss this City and the -State? Because the people want me to. Why do I run things to suit myself -in my railroads and my legislature? Because the people want me to. Now -you’re getting ready to say that’s a lie. It isn’t. Why don’t I grab the -food off some man’s dinner table? Because he _don’t_ want me to. He’d -yell for the police or pull a gun on me if I tried it. Why do I saddle -that same man with any taxes I choose? Why do I elect my own crowd to -office and work franchises and everything else just as I like? Because -he _does_ want me to. If he didn’t he wouldn’t let me. He could stop me -from stealing his dinner. And he would. He could stop me from grabbing -his State. And he doesn’t. Do you s’pose for a second that I, or Tom -Platt, or Richard Croker, or Charley Murphy, or Matt Quay or any other -boss who ever lived, could have made ten people in the whole world do -what those people didn’t want to? You knew well enough they couldn’t. -Then, why did Platt and Quay and the rest boss the Machine? Why do _I_ -boss the Machine? Because the people _want_ to be bossed. Because they’d -rather be led than to lead themselves. Can you find a flaw in that? -Facts is facts, and history is history. Bosses is bosses, and the people -are sheep. Is a shepherd in the herding business for his health and to -amuse and el’vate the sheep? Not he. He’s in the game for the money he -can get out of shearing and occasional butchering. So am I. My own -pocket first, last and always. If it wasn’t me it’d be another shepherd. -And maybe one that’d make the sheep sweat worse’n I do.” - -Clive’s lips parted in protest, but Caleb waved him to silence. - -“You were going to say some wise thing about the people’s inviolate -rights, eh? We’ve all got ‘inviolate rights.’ But if we leave ’em laying -around loose and don’t stand up for ’em, we can’t expect much pity when -someone else cops ’em away from us. If I try to turn you out of your -house, you’ve got a right to prevent me. And you would. If you sat by -and let me do it, you’d deserve what you got. If I try to turn the -people out of their rights in the Legislature and they stand for it, -who’s got a kick coming? Once in a blue moon some man whose brains have -all run to lungs—nothing personal—gets up and shouts to the people that -they’re being conned. Sometimes—not _this_ time, mind you—they believe -it, and they throw over the Machine and elect a bunch of wall-eyed -reformers that know as much about practical politics as a corn-fed dodo -bird knows about theology. What happens? The city and the State are run -in a way that’d make a schoolboy cry. At the end of one single -administration there’s a record of incompetence and messed-up official -affairs that takes a century to straighten out. The police have been -made so pure they won’t let ice and milk be sold for sick babies on -Sundays, but they haven’t time to keep folks from being sandbagged in -open daylight. The Building Department Commissioners are so -incorruptible they don’t know a brick from a lump of putty. And the -contractors eat up chunks of overpay for rotten work. And so in every -branch of government. The people get wise to all this, and they decide -it’s better to be bled by professionals and to get at least part of -their money’s worth in decent service than it is to be bled just as -heavy by a pack of measly amachoors and get no service at all. So back -they come to the Boss, begging him to get on the job again. Which he -does, being a self-sacrificing sort of a cuss, and glad to help the -‘plain pe-ople.’ Likewise himself.” - -“The administration you describe is the result of fanaticism, not real -reform. It——” - -“From where I sit, the difference between the two ain’t so great as to -show to the undressed eye. You speak of lawyers and country editors -being bought by my passes. Is there any law making ’em accept those -passes if they don’t want ’em? Could I buy ONE of those men if he wasn’t -for sale? There’s just one thing more, and then your little lesson’ll be -over and you can run home. All through this delightful little ree-union -you’ve kind of took the ‘holier-than-thou’ tone that’s such a pleasing -trait of you reformers when you’re dealing with mere sane folks. Now, -the best thing you can do is to take that fool idea out for a walk and -lose it, for you not only ain’t any better than me, but ain’t half the -man, and never _will_ be half the man I am. You were born with a gold -spoon in your mouth. The spoon was pulled out after you grew up, but not -till you had your education and your profession. What did you do? You’d -had the best advantages money could buy you. And for all that, the most -you could rise to was a measly every-day law practice. That’s all the -dividends the tens of thousands of dollars invested in your future were -ever able to declare, or ever _will_ be able to. _I_ started life dead -broke. No education, no pull, no cash, no prospects. I don’t know just -how rich I am to-day, but no one’s going to call you a liar if you put -it at forty millions. And I’m bossing bigger territory—and bossing with -more power—than half the so-called high and mighty kings of Yurrup. Now, -s’pose _you’d_ started where I did? Where’d you be to-day? You’d be the -‘honest young brakeman on the branch road,’ or at best you’d be ‘our -genial and rising young feller-townsman,’ the second deputy assistant -passenger agent of the C. G. & X. That’s where _you’d_ be. And you know -it. Had you the brains or the sand to get where I am? Not you. Any more -than one of those patent leather ’ristocrats in France had the genius to -win out the Napoleon job. You’re where you started. I’ve kept on rising. -And I’ll rise to the White House before I’m done. Now I ask you, fair -and square, which of us two is the best man, and if you oughtn’t to be -looking up to Caleb Conover instead of——” - -“I am the better man,” answered Clive quietly. “And so is any honest -man. And I can look down on you for the same reason any square American -can look down on a political Boss. Because we are honest and you are -not.” - -“Well,” vouchsafed Caleb, grudgingly, “that’s an answer anyhow, and it -comes nearer being sense than anything you’ve said so far. But you’re -wrong for all that. You talk about honesty. What’s honesty? The pious -Pilgrim Fathers came here and swindled old Lo, the poor Indian, out of -his country in a blamed sight more raw fashion than I’ve ever bamboozled -the people of the Mountain State. And the Mountain Staters were willing, -while the Indian wasn’t. Yet the old settlers are called ‘nation -builders’ and ‘martyrs,’ and a lot of other hot-air titles, and they get -statues put up to their memories. How about the Uncle Sam’s buying a -whole nation of Filipinos and coolly telling ’em: ‘_I’m_ bossing your -islands now. Listen to me while I soften your rebellious hearts with the -blessed gospel of the gatling gun.’ Yet Uncle Sam’s all right. So’s John -Bull, who done the same trick, only worse, in India and Egypt. No one’s -going to call America or England or the Pilgrim Fathers dishonest and -crooks, is there? Then why do you call Caleb Conover dishonest for doing -the same thing, only a lot more squarely and mercifully? The crook of -to-day is the hero of to-morrow. And I’m no crook at that. Why, Son, a -hundred years from now there’s liable to be a statue stuck up somewhere -of ‘Caleb Conover, Railroader, Champion of the People.’ Honesty, eh? -What _you_ call ‘honesty’ is just a sort of weak-kneed virtue meaning -lack of chance to be something else. ‘Honester than me’ means ‘less -chance than me.’ The honestest community on earth, according to you -reformers’ way of thinking, is in the State Penitentiary. For not a -crime of any sort’s committed there from one year’s end to the other.” - -Conover chuckled softly to himself, then continued: - -“And there’s something else about me that ought to make ’em sculp a halo -onto that same statue. What I’ve done to build up my pile I’ve done open -and with all the cards on the table. I have called a spade a spade, and -I haven’t referred to it, vague-like, as an ‘industr’l utensil.’ I -haven’t took the Lord in as a silent partner on my deals. What I’ve took -I’ve took, and I’ve said, ‘Whatcher going to do about it?’ I’ve won out -by strength, and I ain’t ashamed of my way of playing the game. I -haven’t talked through my nose about being one of the noble class picked -out by Providence to watch over the wealth that poor folks’d have had -the good of if I hadn’t grabbed it from ’em. And I haven’t tried to -square myself On High by endowing colleges and heathens and libraries -and churches. I guess a sinner’s hush-money don’t make so much of a hit -with the Almighty as these philanthropist geezers seem to think it will. -What I’ve given I’ve given on the quiet and where it’d keep folks from -the poorhouse. When it comes to the final show-down on Judgment Day, -I’ve a sneaking notion the out-and-out pirate—_me_, if you like—will win -out by about seven lengths over the holy hypocrite. That’s another -reason why I tell you you’re wrong when you say I ain’t honest. I don’t -hope to convince you by any of the words I’ve been wasting. If you were -the sort of man reason could reach you wouldn’t be a reformer. I’ve -squandered enough time on you for one evening. Save all the pat replies -that I can see you’re bursting with, and spring ’em at your next -meeting. I’ve no time to listen to ’em now. Good night.” - -Unceremoniously as he had entered the room he quitted it, leaving -Standish to go as he would. - -“I talked more’n I have since that fool speech of mine at the -reception,” muttered the Railroader as he clattered down the broad -staircase. “But I steered him off from the chance to say what he really -wanted to, and I dodged any scene that would be of use to him in his -campaign. Too bad he’s a Reformer! He’s got red blood in him, the young -idiot. Yes, and he’s not such an idiot either if it comes to that.” - -Clive Standish, descending the stairs a moment later, puzzled, -disappointed, vaguely aware that he had somehow been tricked, heard the -shout of a groom and the thundering beat of Dunderberg’s flying hoofs -along the gravel of the drive. - -“If he was as much master of the situation, and as content with himself -as he tried to make me think,” reflected Clive as he passed out into the -darkness, “he’d never ride like that.” - -Standish went to the League’s headquarters, where for two hours he -busied himself with routine affairs, and tried to shut out memory of the -deep, taunting voice and masterful, amused eyes that had held him -captive, and had turned him from the real purpose of his visit. And in -time the light, sneering eyes deepened into liquid brown, and the -sonorous voice into Anice Lanier’s. For whatever theme might form any -particular verse of the day’s song for Clive, he noticed of late that -Anice was certain to be the ever-recurrent refrain. - -Wearied with his evening’s work, Standish returned late to his own -rooms. His man said, as he helped the candidate off with his light -covert coat: - -“A messenger boy brought a letter for you, sir, about an hour ago. He -said there was no answer. I left it on your desk.” - -Clive picked up the typewritten envelope listlessly and tore it open. It -contained a note, also typewritten, and a thicker enclosure. He read: - -“_Anonymous letters carry a stigma. Perhaps that is why you did not -profit by my last one. I have good reasons for not signing my name. And -you have good reason to know by now that what I write is the truth. Be -wiser this time. I enclose a list of the County Chairmen who have sold -out to Conover, the name of the Chairman to be chosen for next week’s -State Convention, and a rough draft of the plan to be used for your -defeat. Next to each detail you will find my suggestion for blocking it. -You owe it to yourself and to the people to take advantage of what I -send you._” - -“He’s right, whoever he is!” exclaimed Clive, half-aloud. “It’s the only -way I can fight Conover on equal terms. There’s no sense in my standing -on a foolish scruple when so much hangs on the result of the -Convention.” - -He snatched up the enclosure which had slipped to the floor. Irresolute -he held it for almost a minute, his firm lips twitching, his eyes cloudy -with perplexity. Then, with a sigh of self-contempt he slipped note and -enclosure in a long envelope, addressed it and rang for his man. - -“See that this is delivered to-night,” he ordered. - -The valet, as he left the room, glanced surreptitiously at the -envelope’s address. To his infinite bewilderment he saw the -superscription: - -“_Caleb Conover, Esq., 167 Pompton Avenue. Personal._” - -There was a terrible half hour in the Mausoleum that night. - - - - - CHAPTER IX - A CONVENTION AND A REVELATION - - -The day of the State Convention! - -The Convention Hall at Granite was a big barn-like building, frequently -used for church and school entertainments, and occasionally giving a -temporary home to some struggling theatrical company. For the holding of -the convention which was to name the Governor of the Mountain State a -feeble attempt at decorating the vast interior had been made by -Conover’s State chairman. - -On the front of the dingy little stage were a table and chairs for the -officers, and a series of desks for the reporters of the local and New -York newspapers. Across the back hung a ragged drop curtain showing a -garden scene in poisonous greens and inflammatory reds. Stuck askew on -the proscenium arch were crudely-drawn portraits of Jefferson and Andrew -Jackson. Between these alleged likenesses of Democracy’s sponsors, Billy -Shevlin had, by inspiration and acclaim, caused a huge crayon picture of -Caleb Conover himself to be hung. - -This monstrous trio of ill-assorted portrait parodies were the first -thing that struck the eye as one entered the main door at the front end -of the hall. On seeing them, grim old Karl Ansel had cast about him -until he located Shevlin and a group of the Railroader’s other -lieutenants. - -“Say, Billy,” he drawled in tones that penetrated the farthest corners -of the auditorium, “what did you want to show your ignorance of the -Scriptures for by hanging Conover’s picture in the middle with Jackson -and Jefferson on the outside? You’ve got things reversed. In the -original it was the Just Man who hung between two thieves. You ought to -have put your mug and Conover’s up there with Clive Standish in the -centre, if you wanted to carry out the right idea.” - -And Shevlin, in no wise comprehending, looked for the first time with -somewhat less pride on his artistic work, and waxed puzzled at the roar -of laughter that swept over the massed delegates. - -“Them pictures set the Boss back fifteen dollars apiece,” he began, in -self-justification, “an’——” - -“And like most of the crowd here,” finished Ansel, “they were sold to -Conover before the convention began.” - -There was the usual noise and tramping of feet and clamoring of brass -bands, the customary rabble of uniformed campaign clubs with their gaudy -banners and pompous drum-majors about the hall and in it, for an hour -before the time that had been set for the calling of the convention. -Here, there and everywhere circulated the busy lieutenants of Boss -Conover. Their master, with a little coterie of chosen lieutenants moved -early into his headquarters in one of the rooms at the rear of the -stage, where he sat like some wise old spider in the heart of his web, -sending out warnings, advice and admonitions to his under-strappers. - -Although Conover was leaving no ravelled ends loose in his marvellously -perfect machine, he took his wonted precautions more through force of -habit and for discipline’s sake than through any necessity. He felt -calmly confident of the result. He had looked upon his work and he had -seen that it was good. Even had Standish been the choice of a majority -of the people in all eight counties of the State, it would have availed -him little, for through the routine tricks whereof the Railroader was -past master, his young opponent was at the last able to control the -votes of but two counties—Matawan and Wills. - -Standish’s contesting delegates from the other six counties sat sullen -and grim in the gallery. Fraudulent Conover delegates, who had usurped -the formers’ places by the various ruses so successfully put into action -at the caucuses, held the credentials and occupied the seats belonging -by rights to the Leaguers on the floor of the Convention Hall. There the -Machine delegates smilingly sat and awaited the moment when they should -name their Boss as candidate for Governor. - -From the seats of the usurpers there went up a merry howl of derision as -Standish’s two little blocks of delegates from Matawan and Wills marched -in and took their places well down in front, where they formed a -pitifully small oasis among the Conover delegates from Bowden, Carney, -Haldane, Jericho, Sparta and Pompton counties. - -There was no cheering by the Standish delegates on the floor of the -convention. Nine out of ten knew that it was practically a hopeless -fight into which they were about to plunge, and they knew, too, that not -one of them would have been given his rightful place as a delegate, had -it not been that even Conover feared to outrage sentiment in those -ever-turbulent rural counties, as he had done in the larger and more -“loyal” sections of the State. - -Karl Ansel, with an inscrutable grin on his long, leathery face, might -have sat for a picture of a typical poker player, as he slipped into his -place at the head of the Wills County delegation. If the shadow of -defeat was in his heart, it did not rest upon his lignum vitæ features. -What mattered it that his every opponent was smugly aware that the -League’s cards were deuces? It was Karl’s business to wear the look of a -man secure behind a pat flush. And he wore it. But at heart he was sore -distressed for the hopes of the brave lad he had learned to like so -well. And, as he watched the swelling ranks of Conover delegates, his -sorrow hardened into white-hot wrath. - -Standish was nowhere in sight. Following the ordinary laws of campaign -etiquette, he did not show himself before the delegates in advance of -the nomination; but, like Conover, sat in temporary headquarters behind -the stage. About him were a little knot of Civic Leaguers, some of them -men who had run the risk of personal violence in the campaign in their -fight to obtain a square deal for the young reformer against the -Juggernaut onrush of the Machine. One and all they were Job’s -comforters, for they knew it would take a miracle now to snatch the -nomination from the Railroader’s grip. - -Promptly at twelve o’clock Shevlin, in his newly acquired capacity of -State Chairman, called the convention to order. He had judiciously -distributed bunches of his best trained shouters where they would do the -most good. This claque, glad to earn their money, kept an eye on their -sub-captains and cheered at the slightest provocation. They cheered -Shevlin as he brought the gavel down sharply on the oak table in front -of him, and went through the customary rigmarole of announcing the -purposes of the convention. They cheered when he named the secretaries -and assistant secretaries who would act until the permanent organization -had been effected. And between times they cheered just for the joy of -cheering. - -Through the din the little square of Standish delegates from Wills and -Matawan sat grim and silent, while the contesting delegates in the -gallery above muttered to one another under their breath their yearnings -for the opportunity to take personal payment on the bodies of those who -had ousted them from their lawful places. - -Both sides knew that the first and last test of strength would come upon -the selection of the Committee on Credentials, since it was to this -committee that the contests of the six larger counties for the right to -sit in the convention would go for settlement. By an oversight common to -more than one State, there was no clause in the party laws setting forth -the procedure to be followed in the selection of the committee of a -State convention. At preceding conventions the chairman had invariably -(and justly) ruled that only delegates whose seats were not contested -should be entitled to a hand in the selection of the Committee on -Credentials, for custom holds that to permit delegates whose seats are -contested to have a hand in the selection of the committee, would be -like allowing men on trial to sit as jurors. - -On the observance of this unwritten rule hinged Clive Standish’s last -and greatest hope. If this precedent were to be followed now, it would, -of course, as he had pointed out to the doubting Ansel, result in the -selection of a committee by the Standish delegates from Wills and -Matawan counties, since in those counties alone there were no contests. -This must mean a fair struggle. On it Clive staked his all. Staked it, -forgetting the endless resource and foresight of his foe. For Caleb -Conover had no quixotic notion of giving his rival any advantage -whatever. On the preceding night he had written out his decree. This -command Shevlin now hastily read over before acting on it: - -“_Announce that the chairman rules there shall be three members of the -Committee on Credentials from each county, regardless of that county’s -voting strength, and that the delegates holding the credentials from -each county shall be allowed to choose those committeemen._” - -To the layman such an order may mean little. To the convention it meant -everything. Six counties were, officially, for Conover. Two for -Standish. Thus eighteen of Caleb’s adherents could, and would, vote to -ratify the seating of the Railroader’s delegates. The opponents of this -weird measure could muster a numerical force of but six. - -Meanwhile, the preliminary organization of the convention had been -effected without much delay. The Standish delegates, knowing the -futility of making a fight at this time, had raised merely a perfunctory -opposition to the nomination of Bourke as temporary chairman. Through -Bourke (by way of Shevlin) Conover now proclaimed his plan of choosing -the all-important Committee on Credentials. - -Bourke, well drilled, repeated the decision in a droning monotone. -Instantly the convention was in the maddest uproar. All semblance of -order was lost. Bedlam broke loose. In the gallery the contesting -Standish delegates writhed in impotent rage, leaning far over the rail, -shaking their fists and howling down insult, curse and threat. - -On the floor the delegates from Wills and Matawan were already upon -their feet, yelling furious protests, shrieking “Fraud;” “Robbery!” and -kindred pleasantries, without trying or hoping to secure recognition -from the chair. - -Foreseeing the inevitable trend of affairs, the Conover “heelers” and -the fraudulent delegates from the six larger counties had been prepared -for this. At a signal from Billy Shevlin they burst into a deafening -uproar of applause. - -The furtive-faced Bourke rapped on the table, but the bang of his heavy -gavel was unheard. The Standish delegates would not be quieted, and the -Conover crowd did not want to be. - -A dozen fist-fights started simultaneously. A ’longshoreman—Conover -district captain from one of the “railroad” wards of Granite—wittily -spat in the face of a vociferating little farmer from Wills County, and -then stepped back with a bellow of laughter at his own powers of -repartee. But others understood the gentle art of “retort courteous” -almost as well as he. Losing for once his inherited New England calm, -Karl Ansel drove his big gnarled fist flush into the grinning face of -the dock-rat, and sent him whirling backward amid a splintering of -broken seats. - -As the ’longshoreman staggered to his feet, wiping the blood from his -face, the sergeant-at-arms (foreman of a C. G. & X. section gang), made -a rush for Ansel, but prudently held back as the gaunt old man fell on -guard and grimly awaited his new opponent’s onset. - -Ansel, smarting and past all control, ploughed his way down the main -aisle, and halting below the stage, shook his clenched fist at Caleb’s -crayon likeness. - -“I’ve seen forty pictures of Judas Iscariot in my time,” he thundered, -apostrophizing the portrait in a nasal voice that rose high above the -clamor, “and no two of them looked alike. But by the Eternal, they _all_ -were the living image of YOU!” - -Then he went down under an avalanche of Conover rowdies, giving and -taking blows as he was borne headlong to the floor. Through the tumult, -the pounding of Bourke’s gavel upon the table was like the unheeded -rat-tat of a telegraph ticker in a tornado. It was fifteen minutes -before a semblance of order had been restored. By that time there were -on every side a kaleidoscopic vista of bleeding noses, torn clothing, -and battered, wrathful faces. - -Thus it was that, at the cost of a brief interim of fruitless rioting, -the Machine had its way. Over the hopeless protests and bitter -denunciations of the tricked minority the empty form of choosing the -Committee on Credentials was carried through. As a foreseen result, -Standish had but six members on the committee, three from Wills and -three from Matawan, while from the Conover faction eighteen were to sit -in judgment upon the merits of their own cause. - -The contest was over. The Standish delegates offered but a perfunctory -opposition to the work of choosing the Committees on Organization and -Platform. This much having been done, the convention took the usual -recess, leaving the committees to go into session in separate rooms back -of the stage. - -The delegates filed out, the men from Wills and Matawan angry and silent -in their shamed defeat, those from the six victorious counties crowing -exuberant glee at their easy triumph. - - -The adjournment announced, Clive slipped out of the Convention Hall by a -rear entrance, and went across to his private office at the League -rooms. He wanted to be alone—away from even the staunchest friends—in -this black hour. Against all counsel and experience, against hope -itself, he had hoped to the last. His bulldog pluck, his faith in his -mission, had upheld him above colder, saner reason. Even the repeated -warnings of Ansel had left him unconvinced. Up to the very moment -Conover’s final successful move was made Standish had hoped. And now -hope was dead. - -He was beaten. Hopelessly, utterly, starkly beaten. From the outset -Conover had played with him and his plans, as a giant might play with a -child. It had been no question of open battle, with the weaker -antagonist battered to earth by the greater strength of his foe. Far -worse, the whole campaign had been a futile struggle of an enmeshed -captive to break through a web too mighty for his puny efforts, while -his conqueror had sat calmly by, awaiting a victory that was as sure as -the rise of the sun. - -Standish knew that in a few minutes he would be able to pull himself -together and face the world as a man should. In the interim, with the -hurt animal’s instinct, he wanted to be alone. - -Save for a clerk in the antechamber, the League’s rooms were deserted. -Everyone was at the convention. The clerk rose at Clive’s entrance and -would have spoken, but the defeated candidate passed unheeding into his -own office, closing the door behind him. - -Then, stopping short, his back to the closed door, he stared, -unbelieving, at someone who rose at his entrance and hurried forward, -hands outstretched, to greet him. - -“I knew you would come here!” said Anice Lanier. “I _felt_ you would, so -I hurried over as soon as they adjourned. Aren’t you glad to see me?” - -He still stared, speechless, dumbfounded. She had caught his -unresponsive hands, and was looking up into his tired, hopeless eyes -with a wealth of pity and sympathy that broke through the mask of blank -misery on his face, and softened the hard lines of mouth and jaw into a -shadow of a smile. - -“It was good of you to come,” he said at last. “I thought I couldn’t -bear to see anyone just now. But—it’s so different with you. I——” - -He ceased speaking. His overstrung nerves were battling against a -childish longing to bury his hot face in those cool little white hands -whose lightest touch so thrilled him, and to tell this gentle, -infinitely tender girl all about his sorrows, his broken hopes, his -crushed self-esteem. In spirit he could feel her arms about his aching -head, drawing it to her breast; could hear her whispered words of -soothing and encouragement. - -Then, on the moment, the babyish impulse passed and he was himself -again, self-controlled, outwardly stolid, realizing as never before that -the price of strength is loneliness. - -“I am beaten,” he went on, “but I think, we made as good a fight as we -could. Perhaps another time——” - -She withdrew her hands from his. Into her big eyes had crept something -almost akin to scorn. - -“You are giving up?” she asked incredulously. “You will make no further -effort to——” - -“What more is to be done? The Committee on Credentials——” - -“I know. I was there. It’s all been a wretched mistake from the very -beginning. Oh, _why_ were you so foolish about those letters?” - -“Letters? What letters?” - -“The letters sent you with news of Mr. Conover’s plans for——” - -“Those anonymous letters I got? What do _you_ know——” - -“I wrote them,” said Anice Lanier. - - - - - CHAPTER X - ANICE INTERVENES - - -“You wrote them? _You_ wrote them?” muttered Standish, over and over, -stupid, dazed, refusing to believe, to understand. - -“Yes,” she said, “I wrote them. And I wrote one to Mr. Ansel. He was -wiser than you. He tried to profit by what I——” - -“And I—_I_ thought it might be Gerald Conover.” - -“Gerald? He never knew any of the more secret details of the campaign. -His father couldn’t trust him.” - -“And he _did_ trust _you_.” - -Clive had not meant to say it. He was sorry before the words had passed -his lips. Yet it was the first lucid thought that came to him as his -mind cleared from the first shock of Anice’s revelation. He knew how -fully Conover believed in this pretty secretary of his; how wholly the -Railroader had, in her case, departed from his life rule of universal -suspicion. That she should thus, coldbloodedly, calculatingly, have -betrayed the trust of even such an employer as Caleb was monstrous. He -could not reconcile it with anything in his own long knowledge of her. -The revelation turned him sick. - -“You despise me, don’t you?” she asked. There was no shame, no faltering -in her clear young voice. - -“I have no right to—to judge anyone,” he stammered. “I——” - -“You despise me.” And now it was a statement, not a query. - -“No,” he said, slowly, trying to gauge his own tangled emotions, “I -don’t. I don’t know why I don’t, but I don’t. I should think anyone else -that did such a thing was lower than the beasts. But you—why, _you_ are -yourself. And the queen can do no wrong. I’ve known you nearly all your -life. If it had been possible for you to harbor a mean or dishonest -impulse I’d have been the first person on earth to guess it. Because no -one else would have cared as I did. As I _do_. I don’t understand it at -all. And just at first it bowled me over, and a whole rush of disloyal -thoughts and doubts came over me. But I know now it’s all right, -somehow, for it’s _you_.” - -“You mean,” exclaimed the girl, wonderingly, “that after what I’ve told -you, you trust me?” - -“Why, of course.” - -“And you don’t even ask me to explain?” - -“If there was anything I had a right to know—that you wanted me to -know—you’d have explained of your own accord.” - -She looked at him long, searchingly. Her face was as inscrutable as the -Sphinx’s, yet when she spoke it was of a totally different theme. - -“What are you going to do?” she inquired. - -“Do?” he repeated, perplexed. - -“Yes, about the campaign.” - -“There’s nothing to do. I am beaten. When the convention meets, in half -an hour, Conover will be nominated. Only my two little blocks of -delegates will be left to oppose him, against all that whole——” - -“Yes; yes, I know that,” she interposed, “but what then?” - -“That is the end, I suppose. Perhaps by the next gubernatorial -campaign——” - -“The next? _This_ campaign hasn’t fairly begun yet. Do you mean to say -you are going to sit by with folded hands and accept defeat?” - -“What else is left?” - -“Everything is left. You have tried to fight an all-powerful machine, to -fight it on its own ground, along its own lines, yet refusing to use its -own weapons or to guard against them. And you have failed. The _real_ -fight begins now.” - -“What do you mean?” - -“I mean you must call on the people at large to help you. You have -aroused them. Already there is so much discontent against Boss rule that -Mr. Conover is troubled. You have no right to abandon the Cause now that -you’ve interested others in it. Put yourself in the people’s hands.” - -“You mean, to——?” - -“To declare yourself an independent candidate.” - -“‘Bolt’ the Democratic ticket? It——” - -“It is against custom, but good men have done it. In this battle, as I -understand it, there is no question of party issues. It is the people -against the Machine. Can’t you see?” - -“Yes,” he replied, after a moment of hesitation, “I see. And you are -right. But it means only the courting of further defeat. What Conover -has already done in muzzling the press and using other crooked tactics, -he will continue to do. My speeches won’t be allowed to circulate. My -meetings will be broken up. More Conover men will register than can be -found on the census list. And on Election Day there will be the usual -ballot frauds. All the voting machinery is in Conover’s hands. Even if I -won I would be counted out at the polls. No——” - -“Wait! If I can clear the way for you, if I can insure you a fair -chance, if I can prevent any frauds and force Mr. Conover to leave the -issue honestly to the people of the Mountain State—if I can do all this, -then will you declare yourself an independent candidate, and——?” - -“But how can _you_—a girl—do all this?” - -“I’ll explain that to you afterwards. But it won’t be in any unfair or -underhand way. You said just now you trusted me. Can’t you trust me in -this, too?” - -“You know I can.” - -“And you’ll do as I ask?” - -“Yes.” - -“Good!” - -“It’s worth trial. I’ll do it.” - -“Then I shall be the first to congratulate the future Governor.” - -“Anice!”—the old-time boyish impetuosity she so well remembered flashing -into one of its rare recurrences—“if I win this fight—if I am elected -Governor—I shall have something worth while at last to offer you. If I -come to you the day I am elected——” - -“I shall congratulate you only as I would any other friend.” - -His lips tightened as at a blow. For a moment neither spoke. It was -Clive who broke the silence. - -“I have said it awkwardly,” he began. “If it had been less to me I might -have found more eloquence. I love you. I think I have always loved you. -You know that. A woman always knows. I love you. I loved you in the old -days, when I was too poor to have the right to speak. What little I -am—what little I may have achieved—is for _you_. I have not made much of -myself. But that I’ve made anything at all is due to you. In everything -I have done, your eyes and your smile have been before me. At heart, -I’ve laid every success at your feet. At heart I’ve asked your faith and -your pardon for each of my failures. And, whether you care or not, it -will always be the same. That one dear ambition will spur me on to make -the very best of myself. My victories shall be your victories whether -you wish it or not. Perhaps that seems to you presumptuous or foolish?” - -“No.” - -There was no perceptible emotion in the half-whispered word. From it -Clive could glean nothing. Presently he went on: - -“I think whenever you see a man trying to make the most of all that is -in him, and wearing out his very soul in this breakneck American race -for livelihood, you’ll find there is some woman behind it all. It is for -her, not for his own selfish ambition, that he is fighting. Sometimes -she crowns his victory. Sometimes he wins only the thorn-crown. But the -glory of the work and the winning are hers. Not his. Now you know why I -entered this Governorship fight, and why I am willing to keep it up. Oh, -sweetheart, I _love_ you so. You _must_ understand, now, why I longed to -come to you in my hour of triumph and——” - -“You would have come too late,” she said in that same enigmatic -undertone. - -“_Anice._” - -There was a world of pain in his appeal, yet she disregarded it; and, -with face averted, hurried on: - -“Would you care for—for the love of a girl who made you wait until you -could buy her with fame and an income? Do I care for the love of a man -who holds that love so cheaply he must accompany its gift with a -Governorship title——?” - - -“And now,” she observed, some minutes later, as she strove to rearrange -her tumbled crown of rust-colored hair before the tiny patch of office -mirror, “and now, if you can be sensible for just a little while, we’ll -go back to the convention. And I’ll explain to you about those letters. -The anonymous ones.” - -“It’s all right. I don’t have to be told. I——” - -“But I have to tell you. That’s the worst of being a girl.” - - -The crowd had trooped back into the Convention Hall. Gerald Conover had -not been at the earlier session, but now, his sallow face flushed with -liquor, he sat silent and dull-eyed among a party of noisy young -satellites, in one of the dingy, chicken-coop boxes at the side of the -stage. - -He had evidently been drinking hard. In fact, since his wife’s visit to -Granite, the previous week, the youngster had seldom if ever been wholly -sober. Nor was his habitual apathy all due to drink. - -The Conover machine, having greased the wheels and oiled the cogs, did -not propose to lose any time in running its Juggernaut over the young -reformer who had dared to brave an entrenched and ruthless organization. -Amid a hullabaloo Bourke called the conference to order, ending his -formula with the equally perfunctory request: - -“All gents kindly r’frain from smokin’!” - -At the word a hundred matches were struck, in scattered volley, from all -corners of the place. For nothing else so inflames the desire to smoke -as does its unenforceable prohibition. Thus, amid clouds of malodorous -campaign tobacco smoke, was the sacrifice to the Machine consummated. - -The Committee on Resolutions offered a perfunctory platform filled with -the customary hackneyed phrases, lauding the deeds of Democracy and -denouncing the Republican party. As the Republicans had never won a -victory in the Mountain State since 1864, these platitudes were -provocative of vast yawns and of shuffling of feet as the delegates -impatiently awaited the call to the slaughter. - -The six Standish men on the Platform Committee had prepared a minority -report, but on the advice of Ansel they did not present it. - -The Committee on Organization, by a vote of eighteen to six, offered a -report nominating Bourke, temporary chairman, to succeed himself as -permanent chairman. - -Then, while the Conover claque hooted joyously and the Standish men sat -by in helpless silence, the finishing stroke was delivered. - -Two reports were offered from the Committee on Credentials, one of the -minority, signed by the six members from Wills and Matawan, recommending -the seating of the contesting Standish delegates from the other six -counties; the other, signed by the eighteen Conover members of the -committee, recommending that the delegates holding credentials be -allowed to retain their seats. - -The majority report was jammed through, while Shevlin’s noble army of -brazen-lunged shouters cheered, screeched and blew tin horns. - -In his den behind the stage Caleb Conover’s mouth corners twisted in a -grim smile of satisfaction as the babel of noise reached him. From some -mysterious source Shevlin had produced a half-dozen bottles of -champagne, and there, in the room of the successful candidate, corks -were drawn and success was pledged to “the Mountain State’s next and -greatest Governor,” with Caleb’s time-honored slogan, “To hell with -reform!” as a rider. - -In another room, directly across the stage, a very different scene was -in action. Karl Ansel had left his seat in the Wills County delegation, -turning over the floor leadership of the forlorn Standish hope to Judge -Shelp, of Matawan; and had gone direct to Standish’s quarters. The room -had been empty when he entered, but before he had waited thirty seconds, -the door was flung open and Clive hurried in. - -Ansel looked sharply at him. Then in astonished bewilderment. He had -expected to find the beaten man dejected, bereft of even his customary -strong calm. On the contrary, Standish, his face alive with resolve and -with some other impulse that baffled even Ansel’s shrewd observation, -came into the place like a whirlwind. Kicking aside the litter of dusty -stage properties and dingy, discolored hangings that were piled near the -door, he made his way to Karl and grasped his hand. - -“How goes it?” he asked. “I’m sorry to be late. I thought——” - -“Well, Boy, it’s all up,” said Ansel. “Some fool said once that virtue -was its own reward, and I guess it just naturally has to be. It never -gets any other. In half an hour from now Caleb Conover will be nominated -for Governor, and we will be bowing our necks for his collar, and -pledging ourselves to support him and his dirty gang, just as we always -have in the past and just as we always will in the future, I presume. We -put up a good fight and an honest one, but you see where it’s landed us. -So far as we are concerned, it’s all over but the shouting.” - -And the grim old New Englander dropped his hand upon the shoulder of the -defeated candidate with an awkward gesture that was half a caress. - -“You’re mistaken,” retorted Clive, “the shouting has just begun. Ansel, -I have made up my mind. A man owes more to his State than he owes to his -party. Political regularity is one thing, and common decency is another. -I marched into this convention a free man, with nobody’s collar on my -neck, and I’m going to march out in the same way.” - -“What?” almost shouted Ansel. “You’re not going to bolt?” - -“Yes, I am,” answered Standish. “And I’m going to bolt right now before -the nomination is made.” - -“But, man,” protested Ansel, “think of it—the irregularity of it! You’ll -be branded as a bolter and a renegade, and a traitor and a lot of other -things. Why, man alive, it’ll _never_ do.” - -“It _will_ do,” responded Standish. “I have it all planned. If we walk -out of this convention now, we are going to take some of the delegates -with us. I believe that the Independents will indorse us, and I believe -that the Republicans will indorse us; if we take this stand. I believe -that there are thousands of Democrats who think more of the State than -they do of any one man or any one party. They have followed Conover -because there was no one else to follow. Yes, _I’m_ going to bolt, and -I’m going out there now and tell these people why I do it.” - -“But look here, Standish,” remonstrated Ansel, “that’s mighty near as -irregular as the bolting itself, going out there and making a speech. No -candidate’s ever supposed to show his face to the convention until after -the nomination is made. You know that, don’t you? Then, after the -nomination he comes out either to accept it or to promise his support to -the winner. You’ll bust the party traditions all to flinders.” - -“Very well,” assented Clive, “if I can smash the Machine, too, it’s all -I ask. I tell you my mind is made up. This convention has been a -mockery, a farce. You know how many voters were with us, and you know -the deal our delegates got. The time’s come in this State to draw up a -new Declaration of Independence. And, right now, I’m going to be the man -to start the ball rolling.” - -“But, hold on!” began Ansel. Clive did not hear. Brushing past the lank -manager, he walked out of the room and made his way to the front of the -platform. Karl, muttering perplexedly, followed him. - -As the young candidate’s tall figure emerged from the wings, a buzz of -wonder went up from the delegates on the floor below, for, as Ansel had -said, such an advent at such a time was without precedent. But there was -neither hisses from the Conover crowd nor cheers from the corner where -the survivors of the Standish hope sat. The delegates were too -astonished to make any demonstration. - -Straight across the stage Standish strode. Shevlin, hurrying out from -Conover’s room, made as though to bar his way, but gave place before the -other’s greater bulk, and fled to tell the Railroader what was afoot. - -With Ansel still behind him, Standish kept on until he reached the table -beside which the chairman sat. At his coming Bourke jumped nervously to -his feet. - -“Hey! This ain’t regular,” he began, unconsciously copying Ansel’s -words. “The nomination’s just goin’ to begin, and we——” - -But he could get no further. Standish pushed him aside, ignoring the -chairman as completely as if he were one of the battered stage -properties. - -Dropping one hand upon the table, he faced the crowd, his whole being -alert with tense nervous force. A low murmur, like a ground swell, ran -from row to row of seats, and found its echo in the galleries, where -hundreds of the townspeople had packed themselves to hear the nominating -speeches, and to witness, with varying emotions, the crowning victory of -Caleb Conover. - -In the midst of a silence in which the fall of the proverbial pin would -have sounded like the early morning milk wagon, Clive Standish began the -most unusual speech that a Mountain State convention had ever heard. - -“My friends——” - -From Shevlin’s rooters came a volley of hisses and cat-calls, but the -disturbance and the disturbers were speedily squelched. From the -galleries and from the back of the stage, where many prominent townsfolk -sat, there sprang up a roll of protest, so menacing in its tone, that -the half-drunken thugs’ cheer-leaders deemed it the better part of valor -to draw into their shells and remain thereafter mute. - -“My friends,” repeated Standish, his powerful voice echoing from floor -to roof, “Abraham Lincoln freed the black men forty odd years ago. It’s -time that somebody freed the white brother. For years this State has -groaned under the tribute of a relentless Machine, under the rule of a -railroad that was all stomach and no conscience, all bowels and no -heart, all greed and no generosity. Our party—and with shame I say -it—has been turned into a vest-pocket asset of this vile corporation. -For months past, and more especially to-day, you have seen what its -power is, as opposed to the power of the more honest citizens of our -party. It won to-day, it won yesterday, and it won the day before. It -always has won. It rests with us here to-day, now and in this hour, to -decide whether a new Proclamation of Emancipation is to be issued or -whether the great Democratic party in the Mountain State shall continue -to be the chattel, the credulous, simple, weak-kneed, backboneless, -hopeless, helpless victim of the greediest, most corrupt railroad that -ever trailed its steel shackles across the face of the earth. Whether or -not the Boss-guided Machine shall beat us to earth and hold us there -forever. We have tried reforming the party from the inside, and we have -failed. Has the time come to reform it from the outside?” - -He paused, and the answer came. From the Conover hosts went up a shout -of “No! No!” mingled with hiss and groan. But instantly, from a great -scattered mass of the audience, and from the Standish delegates on the -floor, there arose an outburst of cheering that drowned the barking -negatives of what had been but ten short minutes before a majority of -that convention. - -The effect of this outburst was diverse on its hearers. With Standish -himself it acted as a tonic, as an electric battery which gave him added -force and vigor for what he had yet to say. Karl Ansel it seemed for the -moment to stupify and paralyze. Conover’s lieutenants it threw into a -state of consternation, which approached frenzy, panic, demoralization. -They ran aimlessly to and fro, conferring excitedly in hoarse whispers. - -Conover, alone, from his den at the rear of the stage, smiled to himself -and gave no other sign of interest. - -Standish was speaking again, and now behind him stood Karl Ansel -recovering from his amazement, and intent to catch his leader’s every -word. - -“I tell you,” thundered Clive, beside himself with excitement, “we have -got to act—and to act _now_. I tell you that the people of this State, -irrespective of party, are waiting for half a chance to throw off the -yoke of the railroad—of the Machine. All over this country of ours -bosses are being overthrown. They are going down to ruin in the wreckage -of their own Machines; and it is the PEOPLE who are downing them. The -day of Bossism is passing—passing forever. We came into this convention -as free men. _Some_ of us did. And I for one propose to walk out of it a -free man. If we go before the people of this State on the issue of -honest government as opposed to dishonesty, I tell you that we will -_win_. It only needs a man with a match, and the nerve to use that -match, to start a conflagration that will burn party ties to cinders and -leave a free, emancipated people. - -“Let them call me bolter, if they will! Let them call me traitor, -ingrate, renegade! I would rather be a bolter than a thief. I would -rather rip my party, dearly as I love it, to rags and tatters, than to -sacrifice my own self-respect any longer! I would rather see the -Democratic party pass from existence altogether than to see it continue -the tool and the creature of greed and dishonesty. - -“Yes, they may call me bolter, and properly so, for I am going to bolt -this convention! Is there a man who will follow me out of doors? Out of -the filthy atmosphere of this Machine-ridden, Boss-owned convention, -into the pure sunshine of God’s own people?” - -In the midst of an indescribable tumult, in which hisses and cheers were -madly intermingled, Clive Standish leaped off the platform, cleared the -orchestra railing and strode up the middle aisle toward the open door at -the far end of the hall. - -And then a strange thing occurred. Karl Ansel, as a man wakened from a -dream, rubbed his eyes, and peered for a moment at Clive’s retreating -back. Then with a yell that shook the rafters he, too, bounded over the -rail and hastened up the aisle behind his leader. - -The delegates from Wills and Matawan counties arose as one man, forming -in procession behind Ansel and Standish. - -Down the steps from the gallery came not one, nor a dozen, but -nine-tenths of those who had heard the speech, including the very cream -of the representative business element of Granite. - -The remarkable scene was over in almost less than it takes to tell of -it. In a daze sat the abandoned convention. Glancing about them, even -the Conover delegates on the floor discovered here and there vacant -chairs, gaps in their own solid ranks, where some one, weaker perhaps -than the others—or perhaps stronger—had been moved by the furious -oratory of Clive Standish to join that procession which even now was -rolling out of the front door into the quiet, gaslit street like a -living avalanche. - -Bourke managed to pull the remnants of the convention back into some -sort of shape. The delegates went through the form of nominating -Conover. A quantity of hand-made enthusiasm burst forth; and then, -without a speech from the successful nominee, the great occasion wound -up in a roar of cheers, shouts and blaring music. - -“There wasn’t any stereopticon stunts done while I was out of the room, -was there?” asked Billy Shevlin as, at the close of the proceedings, he -and Bourke repaired to Conover’s den behind the stage. - -“’Course not,” answered the chairman. “Why?” - -“Oh, nothin’,” said Billy, “only I heard one of them N’ York reporters -sayin’ something about ‘handwritin’ on the wall.’ Maybe it’s a new joke -that ain’t reached Granite yet.” - -“No,” remarked the Railroader, as he joined his lieutenants, “it hasn’t -reached Granite, and what’s more it ain’t going to. The only handwriting -on these walls will take the form of a double cross. And it’ll be -opposite Standish’s name.” - - - - - CHAPTER XI - CALEB CONOVER MAKES TERMS - - -“Well,” remarked Caleb Conover, Railroader, with a Gargantuan sigh of -relief as he flung himself into the great desk chair in his study, and -lighted one of his eternal black cigars, “_that’s_ over!” - -“It sure is!” chuckled Billy Shevlin, who, alone of the cheering throng -that had escorted the gubernatorial nominee home from the convention, -had been permitted to enter the sanctum. “But, Boss, I wisht that -Standish feller hadn’t stampeded the herd like he did. It’ll cut holes -in your ‘landslide’ scheme.” - -“What can the crank do?” grinned Caleb. “Not a paper in Granite’ll -report his speech. And we’ll work the same game up-State we did during -his tour. If worst comes to worst, there’s always a quiet, orderly way -of losing sight of him at the polls. No, son, Standish’s yawps don’t -bother me any more. I’ve got him about where I want him, I guess. Here’s -the cash for the rooters. And here’s something for the boys to-night, -too. Whoop it up all you like, so long as you keep on the other side of -the railroad tracks. That’ll be all. Come around by eight to-morrow. And -say, Billy!” he called after his departing henchman, “see if you can -find Miss Lanier downstairs anywhere. I want to speak to her.” - -The Railroader leaned farther back in the depths of the soft chair, -drawing in great draughts of strong tobacco-reek and expelling it in -duplex clouds through his thick nostrils. - -It was good to rest. As far as his iron frame and cold nerves could feel -such a weakness, reaction from the long strain of the day was upon him. -In Conover’s case it took the form of lazy comfort; of enjoyment in his -rank cigar, in the sensuous delight of relaxing every tense muscle and -of sprawling idly, happily before his coal fire. The grim lines of the -mouth relaxed, the keen eyes took on a pleasanter light. - -He had fought. He had won. He would continue to win. For him the joy of -fighting lay more in the battle itself than in the victory. But in the -pause between two conflicts it was good to stretch one’s self out in a -great, comfortable chair, to smoke, to blink drowsily into the red -coals. The one thing remaining to complete his sense of utter well-being -was the presence of some congenial soul wherewith to talk over his -achievement. And—— - -Anice Lanier’s knock sounded at the door. Caleb’s placid expression -deepened into a smile of real pleasure. - -“Come in!” he called. “I was just hoping you’d——” - -He checked himself. Across the threshold stepped Anice. She wore a hat -and was dressed for the street. Over her shoulder Caleb caught sight of -Clive Standish. - -“Here’s all sorts of unexpected honors!” exclaimed the Railroader. “I -heard you’d bolted, Standish, but I never thought you’d bolt so far as -this poor shanty of mine. Come in and sit down. We’ll make a real merry -family party, us three.” - -There was something peculiarly happy in this advent of the defeated man -to swell the victor’s triumph. Caleb vaguely felt this. He was glad -Anice should see Clive and himself together; should be able to observe -his own reserved strength as opposed to the bombastic denunciation -Standish had doubtless come to deliver. It would amuse her to note the -contrast between the two; to see her employer’s superiority in -self-control and repartee. - -So, as Standish followed the girl into the room, the host actually -beamed on his intended victim. Then he noticed that neither Anice nor -her escort sat down. Also that the latter remained near the door, while -Miss Lanier advanced toward the desk chair Caleb had drawn so snugly -into the hearth-angle. But she ignored a second and even softer chair he -had arranged on the opposite side of the fire. And all this dimly -troubled Caleb Conover. - -“Anything the matter?” he asked, with somewhat less assurance. “Come to -propose a compromise, Standish? Or maybe a campaign partnership? Good -idea, that! Only I’m afraid it wouldn’t work this time. In business -partnership, you know, one man puts up the money and the other the -experience. And by the end of sixty days they’ve usually swapped. But in -politics one man always has both the experience and the money. Or the -means of getting ’em. Otherwise he wouldn’t be there at all. So I’m -afraid I’ll have to refuse.” - -He ended with a laugh that did not carry conviction, even to himself. No -one replied. Neither of his guests’ faces showed sign of having heard. -Conover’s good temper wavered. - -“What’s up?” he demanded of Clive. “Speak out, can’t you?” - -But it was Anice Lanier who replied. - -“Mr. Conover,” she said, “you recollect the unsigned letter, enclosing -some of your campaign plans, that was sent back to you by Mr. Standish -last week?” - -Caleb’s red hair bristled. - -“Yes,” he answered, deep in his throat. “Have you found out who sent -it?” - -“I have,” she returned, in the same level voice. “Also the sender of two -other letters of the sort, earlier in the campaign. One of these was to -Mr. Standish. It contained a description of your plan for the county -caucuses and of the measures you had framed against his up-State tour. -Mr. Standish destroyed that letter and refused to act on its -suggestion.” - -“More fool he. Who wrote it?” - -“The second letter was to Mr. Ansel,” went on Anice. “It gave him the -idea for scattering issues of an out-of-State paper along the -speech-route, with advertisements and report of——” - -“Who wrote it, I asked you?” - -“The same person wrote all three.” - -“Then who——” - -“I did.” - -“This isn’t a thing to joke about. There’s a leak somewhere pretty high -up, and I must find——” - -“I wrote them.” - -She spoke slowly, as though imparting a lesson. The Railroader’s eyes -searched her face one instant. Then he dropped back, heavy and inert, -into the farthest recess of his chair. - -“Good Lord!” he whispered, staring at her blankly. - -“I wrote them,” reiterated Anice. “No one knew, not even Mr. Standish, -until to-day. I brought him here this evening, because something that is -to be said must be said in his hearing. I have his promise not to -interfere in this interview, but to let me take my own course. It was I, -too, at whose advice he bolted the ticket at——” - -“_You’ve_ done all this?” blurted Caleb, finding his shattered -self-poise at last. “Are you crazy, girl?” - -“No; I am quite sane. From the start I have helped Mr. Standish. By my -help, I believe, he will win the Governorship. I have learned much from -you, in practical politics, Mr. Conover. I intend to put some of that -education into use. You see——” - -“You’ve backtracked me? _You_, of all the folks alive! Why, I’d ’a’ -gambled my whole pile on your whiteness, girl. This is a measly joke of -some kind. It’s——” - -“It’s the truth, Mr. Conover.” - -And Caleb, looking deep into her eyes, could at last doubt no longer. A -dull red crept into his face. - -“Well, I’ll be damned!” he said, slow, measured of voice, rigid of body. -“Jockeyed by the one person in the world I ever had any trust in! -Cleaned out like any drunken sailor in a dance hall! Say,” he added in -puzzled querulousness, “what’d the Almighty mean by putting eyes like -yours in the face of a——” - -A sudden forward movement from Standish checked him, and, incidentally, -drove from his brain the last mists of bewilderment. The Railroader -settled forward in his chair, his teeth meeting in the stump of the -cigar he had so contentedly lighted but a few minutes before. He was -himself again; arrogant, masterful, vibrant with quick resource. A -sardonic smile creased his wooden face. - -“You’re a noble work of God, Miss Lanier, ain’t you?” he sneered. “In -Bible days the man who betrayed his Master was made the star villain for -all time. But when it’s a woman that does the betraying, I guess even -the Bible would have to go shy on words blazing enough to show her up. -For three years,” he went on, as Anice, by a quick gesture, silenced -Clive’s fierce interruption—“for three years and more you’ve eaten my -bread and lived on my money. For three years I’ve treated you like you -were a queen. Whatever I’ve done or been to other folks, to _you_ I’ve -been as white as any man could be. You’ve had everything from me and -mine. And you pay me by playing the petticoat-Judas. Look here, there’s -something behind all this! Tell me what it means.” - -“It means,” answered Anice, who had borne without wincing the hot lash -of the angry man’s scorn—“it means that I have tried to pay a debt. Part -I have paid. Part I am paying.” - -“A debt? What rot are you trying to talk? I——” - -“If you care to listen I’ll tell you. I will make it as short as I can. -Shall I go on?” - -Conover nodded assent as a man in a dream. - -“My father,” began Anice, speaking dispassionately, her rich voice -flattened to a quiet monotone—“my father was Foster Lanier. You never -knew him. You never knew many of the men you have wrecked. But he was -chief stockholder in the Oakland-Rodney Railroad. He was not a business -man. The stock was left him by his father. It was all we had to live on. -It was enough. You owned the C. G. & X. Little by little you bought up -the other Mountain State roads. At last you came to the Oakland-Rodney. -Do you remember?” - -“I remember my lawyer told me there was some stiff-necked old fossil who -owned the majority stock and wouldn’t sell.” - -“So you crushed him,” went on Anice, unmoved, “as you have crushed -others. You cut off the road’s connecting points and severed its -communication with your own and your allied lines. After isolating it -you lowered your own freight rates and mileage until all the -Oakland-Rodney patronage was gone. The road collapsed, and you bought it -in. My father was a pauper. Other men have been driven to the same -straits by you—men whose very names you did not take the trouble to -learn. My father knew little of business. To save others who had bought -Oakland-Rodney stock at his advice, he sold what little property he had -and bought their worthless stock back at par. He was ruined and above -his head in debt. My mother was an invalid. The doctors said a trip to -the Mediterranean might save her life. We had not a dollar. So she died. -My father—he was out of his mind from grief and from financial worry—my -father shot himself. It was hushed up by our friends, and he was -reported accidentally killed while hunting. It was only one of the -countless victories you ‘financiers’ are so proud of. He and my mother -were but two of the numberless victims each of those victories entails.” - -She paused. Caleb made no reply. He sat looking in front of him into the -pulsing heart of the fire. He had scarce heard her. His mind was -occupied to bursting by the shock and acute pain of this rupturing of -his last intimate bond with humanity. - -“I was left to make my own way,” continued Anice, “and I came here. Out -of one hundred applicants you accepted me. It was not mere coincidence. -I believe it was something more. Something higher. I entered your -service that I might some day pay the debt I owed my father, who was not -strong enough to bear your ‘victory,’ and my mother, whose life the -money you wrested from us might have saved. This is melodramatic, of -course. But I think most things in real life are. I came here. I worked -for you. I won your confidence, your respect, your trust. Perhaps you -think it was a pleasant task I had set myself? I am not trying to -justify it. If it was unworthy, I have paid. You say I’ve ‘eaten your -bread and lived on your money.’ I have. And I have received your -confidence. But have I ever eaten a mouthful or received one penny that -I did not earn three times over? You yourself have said again and again -that I was worth to you ten times what you paid me. You have begged me -to let you raise my salary, to accept presents from you. Have I ever -consented? If there is a money balance between us, the debit is all on -your side. I owe you nothing for what confidences you have lavished on -me. Have I ever asked for them or lured you into bestowing them? Have -not all such confidences come unsought, even repelled, by me? Have I -ever spoken to you with more than ordinary civility? Have I ever so much -as voluntarily shaken your hand? The Judas parallel does not hold good, -Mr. Conover.” - -She waited again for a reply. But none came. Conover merely shifted his -heavy gaze from the fire to her pale, drawn face. - -“In all these years,” said Anice, “I have waited my chance. I could not -take your life to atone for the two gentle lives you crushed out. Nor -would a life like yours have paid one-hundredth of the debt. So I have -waited until your life-happiness, your whole future, should be bound up -in some one great aspiration. Until you should stake all on one card. -When such a time should come I resolved I would make you taste the -bitter shame and despair you have made others groan under. Oh, it was -long, weary waiting, but I think the end is coming. It _has_ come.” - -“You talk fine, Miss Lanier,” observed Caleb, all master of himself once -more, “but talking’s never quoted at par, except in a poker game and a -wedding ceremony. You’ve been reading novels, and you’ve framed up a -dandy line of story book ree-venge. It’s as good as any stage villainess -could have thought of. But, honest, it clean surprises me how a woman -with all your brains could have took such a fool plan seriously. It’s a -grand stunt to grab the centre of the stage and drive the wicked -oppressor out into the snow. Only it don’t happen to be snowing -to-night. Neither really nor fig’ratively. No, no, Miss Lanier, your -hand’s a four-flush, and I hold a whole bunch of aces. Go ahead with -your little fireworks, if that’s your diversion. It won’t bother anyone. -Certainly not _me_. The only regret I’ve got in the whole business is -finding you’ve so little horse sense.” - -“If I had so little,” answered Anice calmly, “the affair would have to -end here and now. As it is——” - -“Well?” - -“It’s going on.” - -“Oh, you’ve extra cards to turn that four-flush into a win, eh? Show ’em -out. I call.” - -“If you put it that way. I’m told it only needs one card to convert a -‘four-flush’ into a good hand. Perhaps I can play that card later. -Perhaps you won’t oblige me to play it at all. I hope you won’t.” - -“Go ahead.” - -“I have not been, unwillingly, in your confidence all these years for -nothing.” - -Caleb whistled. - -“I’m on!” said he curtly. “If I don’t stand aside and let your little -friend Standish win the race, you’ll do some exposing? Sort of like the -girl who showed up John D. in a magazine? Well, fire away. In the first -place, I’m not John D., and the American public (outside the Mountain -State) ain’t laying awake nights to find out how Caleb Conover got his. -And if you mean to use ‘Confessions of a Secretary’ for a campaign -document this fall, you’re welcome to. I’ll take my chance on getting a -little more mud than usual slung at me. It won’t affect the election, -and you know it won’t. And you ought to know by this time how little I -care what folks think of my character. No, it won’t do, Miss Lanier. If -that’s the card you’re counting on using to change your four-flush into -a winning hand——” - -“You are mistaken. This time, Mr. Conover, it is _I_ who am surprised at -_your_ lack of perception. The ‘card’ I spoke of is the Denzlow -correspondence.” - -“The Denzlow—? I burned that a year ago—burned it in this very room. In -this fireplace. You were here and saw me. And Denzlow died last May. I’m -afraid your ‘card’ won’t help that poor, lonely four-flush hand of yours -after all. I’m sorry, but——” - -“You burned a package of letters wrapped in a sheet indorsed ‘Denzlow,’” -interposed Anice, “but they happened to be a sheaf of insurance -circulars. With Mr. Denzlow’s permission (and on my promise not to make -use of them while he was alive) I bought those letters at the time you -thought _you_ bought them back from him. He got extra money, and the -letters were supposed to be transmitted to you through me. I kept the -originals. If you doubt it, here are certified copies. You will see the -notary’s signature was dated last June. Does that convince you?” - -“Where’s the letters themselves?” - -“With my brother. He is one of the subeditors of the Ballston _Herald_. -He is holding them subject to my orders. When he receives word from me -he will either turn them over to the Federal authorities (for it is a -United States Government matter, as you know, with a term of -imprisonment involved, and not a mere State offence that can be settled -with a few thousand dollars), or else he will publish the whole -correspondence in his paper, and leave the Government to act as it sees -fit. Does the card improve my hand?” - -Conover made no immediate answer. When he spoke there was no emotion in -his dry, business-like tones. - -“Yes, it does,” he admitted, “and I’m glad to see I was wrong about the -condition of those brains of yours. You’ve got me. I could bluff anybody -else, but I guess you know my game too well. A bluff’s a blamed good -anchor in a financial storm. But after the ship’s wrecked I never heard -that the cap’n got any special good out of the anchor. So we’ll play -straight, if you like. How much do you want?” - -“How much?” she repeated, doubtful of his meaning. - -“How much will you take for those Denzlow letters? Come now, let’s cut -out the measly diplomacy and get to the point. The man who gets ahead in -my line of work is the man who knows when to pay hush-money and when not -to. This is the time to pay. How much? Make me a cash offer.” - -“You don’t understand,” protested Anice, again with a pretty, imperious -gesture restraining Clive. “I am not one of the blackmailers you spend -so much of your time silencing. I——” - -“No? I never yet heard a scream that was so loud a big enough check -wouldn’t gag it. This interview isn’t so allooring that I’m stuck on -stretching it out any longer. Make your offer.” - -“I’ve explained to you that I want none of your money.” - -“Then what—Oh!” broke off Conover, clicking his teeth and narrowing his -eyes to gleaming slits, “I think I see. The Governorship, eh?” - -Anice inclined her head. - -“So I’m to throw it to Standish? H’m! And yet you say you’re not putting -the hooks in me! If that isn’t cold, straight, all-wool blackmail, I -don’t know what is. You think you owe me something because I didn’t -treat your father just square. So you pay the grudge off by blackmailing -me. Maybe your holy New England conscience is too near-sighted to see -it’s only in the devil’s ledger that two wrongs make a right.” - -“Do you speak from experience? Because it doesn’t fit this case. I -propose nothing of the sort.” - -“Then what in thunder _do_ you want?” snarled Caleb, thoroughly -mystified. “If it ain’t cash or——” - -“I want you to give Mr. Standish a fair chance. That is all. I want you -to remove the embargo from his speeches and advertising; to open the -columns of every paper in the Mountain State to him. To promise not to -molest him in any way, not to allow your rowdies to break up his -meetings nor to prevent him from hiring halls. Not to stuff the -ballot-boxes, falsify the returns, employ ‘floaters’ or—in short, I want -you to give him an equal chance with yourself; to conduct the campaign -honestly, and to leave the issue solely to the voters. Will you do -this?” - -“And if I beat him at that?” - -“If you are elected by an honest majority, that is no concern of ours. -All I demand is that you fight in the open and leave the result to the -people.” - -Caleb thought in silence for a few moments. - -“If I do this?” he asked at last. - -“Then, on the afternoon of Election Day, my brother shall turn over to -you, or to your representative, the entire Denzlow correspondence.” - -“I have your word for that? Certified copies and all?” - -“Yes.” - -“You don’t lie. That’s about the one foolish trait I’ve ever found in -you. If I’ve got your word, you’ll stand by it. Can’t say quite the same -of _me_, eh?” - -“I don’t think that needs an answer.” - -“Can’t turn over the letters to me now, on my pledge to——?” - -“I’m afraid not,” said Anice, almost apologetically. “I must——” - -“And you’re dead right. A promise is such a sacred thing that it’s -always wise to keep your finger on the trigger till the real money’s -handed over. Just to keep the sacredness from spoiling. As I understand -it, I’m to loosen up on Standish; and then if I lick him fair, you and I -are quits? I’ll do it. Such a fight ought to prove pretty amusing. It’ll -be an experience anyhow, as Sol Townsley said when Father Healy told him -he’d some day burn in hell. I’ll accept those silly terms of yours for -the same reason so many men stay honest. They don’t enjoy it, but it’s -more fun than going to jail. I’ll send out the orders first thing in the -morning. And on the afternoon of Election Day I’ll get that Denzlow -stuff?” - -“Yes. And the certified copy the following morning.” - -“In case I should get absent-minded that night when the votes are -counted? You’re a clever girl, Miss Lanier. Pity you’re to be wasted on -Standish! Oh, that’s all right. I don’t need to be told. A girl like you -isn’t acting the way you do just for the sake of a measly principle. And -now,” his bantering tone changing to one of brusque command, “if there’s -nothing more, maybe you’ll both get out. I’m tired, and——” - -Clive and Anice withdrew. The latter, looking back as she left the room, -saw Caleb sitting doubled over, motionless, in his chair, his gaze again -on the fire. - -Perhaps it was the flicker from the coals that made his face seem to her -to have grown in a moment infinitely old; his keen, light eyes -inexpressibly lonely and desolate. Undoubtedly so, for when he glanced -up and saw she was not yet gone, there was no expression save the shadow -of a sardonic grin stamped on his rugged features. - -Long and late Caleb Conover sat there alone in his big, silent study. -The lamp on the table flickered, guttered and went out. The live coals -died down to embers. The cold of early autumn crept through the great -room, along with the encroaching darkness. The clock on the wall chimed. -Then again, and a third time, but the Railroader sat motionless. - -At length he gathered himself together with an impatient grunt. He -reached across to his table and drew from a drawer a gaudy velvet case. -As he opened it, the dying firelight struck against a multi-pointed -cluster of tiny lights. - -“She wouldn’t have took it from me,” Caleb grumbled, half-aloud, as -though explaining to some invisible companion, “but I would ’a’ made -Letty give it to her. It’d ’a’ looked fine against that soft baby throat -of hers. Hell!” - -There was a swirling little eddy of cinders and sparks as the case -crashed into the heart of the dull red embers. - -The Railroader had fallen back into his former cramped, awkward attitude -of reflection. - -“First it was Jerry,” he whispered to the imaginary auditor among the -shadows. “First Jerry. Then Blanche. And now—_her_. That’s worse than -both the others put together. Not a one left.” - -The study door behind him was timidly opened. Caleb did not hear. - -“Not a one left!” he murmured again. “And——” - -“Is anything the matter, dear?” nervously queried his wife from the -threshold. “It’s nearly——” - -“_You_ don’t count!” shouted Caleb Conover, with odd irrelevance. “Go to -bed, can’t you?” - - - - - CHAPTER XII - CALEB CONOVER FIGHTS - - -The real campaign was at last under way, and the Mountain State thrilled -as never before in the history of politics. At a composite convention -made up of the Republican and lesser parties of the State, and held -almost directly after that of the Democrats, faction lines were cast -aside and Clive Standish nominated by acclamation. Ansel had presided, -and scores of bolting Democrats were in attendance. - -Then, in Granite and throughout the State, Clive began what is still -recalled as his “whirlwind campaign.” Often ten speeches a day were -delivered as he hurried from point to point. The reports of his meetings -were sown broadcast, as was other legitimate campaign literature. -Because of the daring and extraordinary course he had taken, as well as -for the sane, practical reforms he advocated, he was everywhere listened -to with growing interest. - -The Mountain State was at last awake—awake and hearkening eagerly to the -voice of the man who had roused it from its Rip Van Winkle slumbers. - -Horrified, wholly aghast, the Conover lieutenants had heard their -master’s decree that the press gag was to be removed, and other -customary tactics of the sort abandoned. None dared to protest. And, -after the first shock, the majority, in their sublime faith, read in the -mandate some mysterious new manœuvre of the Railroader’s which time -would triumphantly justify. - -Meantime, Conover was working as never before. The very difficulty of -the task in hand evoked all his fighting blood. He would have preferred -to win without so much labor. But since his ordinary moves were barred, -his soul secretly rejoiced in the prospect of fair and furious battle. -That he would conquer, as always before, he did not at first doubt. When -he had made his bargain with Anice Lanier, he had done so confident in -his power to sweep all opposition from his path; and he had secretly -despised the girl for allowing herself to be duped. - -He, on his part, knew he must forego the “landslide” he had once so -confidently hoped for. But in the stress of later crises, this ambition -had grown quite subservient to his greater and ever-augmentive longing -for election at any terms and on any majority. The strengthening -intensity of this ambition surprised Conover himself. At first mere -pride had urged him to the office he sought. But as time went on and new -obstacles arose between him and his goal, that goal waxed daily more -desirable, until at last it filled the whole vista of his future. - -His fingers ever on the pulse of the State, Caleb therefore noted with -annoyance, then with something akin to dread, the swelling onrush of -Clive’s popularity. To offset it the Railroader threw himself bodily -into the fight, personally directing and executing where of old he had -only transmitted orders; toiling like any ward politician; devising each -day new and brilliant tactics for use against the enemy. - -He stuck to the letter of his pledge to Anice. Its spirit he had never -regarded. He was everywhere and at all hours; now spending his money -like water in the exact quarter where it would do most good; now -propping up some doubtful corner of the political edifice he had reared, -and again lending the fierce impetus of his individuality at points -where his followers seemed inclined to lag. - -Little as he spared himself, Caleb spared his henchmen still less. With -deadly literalness he saw to the carrying out of his earlier order that -everyone, from Congressman too bootblack, must put his shoulder to the -wheel. The ward heelers, the privileged lieutenants, the rural agents -and the high officials in the Machine, alike, were driven as never -before. No stone was left unturned, no chance ignored. Nor was this all. -Forth went the call to all the hundreds, rich and poor, whom Conover at -various times had privately aided. - -The capitalist whose doubtful bill he had shoved through the Assembly; -the coal-heaver whose wife’s funeral expenses he had paid; the Italian -peddler whose family he had saved from eviction; the countless poor whom -his secretly-donated coal, clothes and food had tided over hard winters; -the struggling farmer whose mortgage he had paid; the bartender he had -saved from a murderer’s fate: all these beneficiaries and more were -commanded, in this hour of stress, to remember the Boss’s generosity, -and to pay the debt by working for his election. - -Checks of vast proportions (drawn ostensibly for railroad expenses) were -cashed by Shevlin, Bourke and the rest, and the proceeds hurled into -every crevice or vulnerable spot in the voting phalanx. The pick of the -Atlantic seaboard’s orators were summoned at their own price, and -commissioned to sway the people to the Machine’s cause. Conover even had -wild thoughts of winning favor with his home-city’s cultured classes by -beautifying Granite’s public gardens with the erecting of a heroic -marble statue of Ibid (who, he declared, was his favorite poet, and had -more sense than all the rest of the “Famous Quotation” authors put -together). When at length he was reluctantly convinced as to “Ibid’s” -real meaning, the Railroader ordered the papers to suppress the proposed -announcement and to substitute one to the effect that he intended to -donate a colossal figure of Blind Justice for the summit of the City -Hall. - -On waged the fight. Disinterested outsiders beyond the scope of the -Machine’s attraction were daily drawn, by hundreds, into the Standish -camp. In the country districts his strength grew steadily and rapidly. -The people at large were aroused, not to the usual pitch of illogical -hysteria incident on a movement of the sort, but to a calm, resolute -jealousy of their own public rights. Which latter state every politician -knows to be immeasurably the more dangerous of the two. - -Conover’s efforts, on the other hand were already bearing fruit. His -tireless energy, backed by his genius and the perfection of his system, -were hourly enlarging his following. The “railroad wards” and slums of -Granite and of other towns were with him to a man, prepared on Election -Day to hurl mighty cohorts of the Unwashed to the polls in their idol’s -behalf. Loyalty, self-interest, party allegiance, and more material -forms of pressure were binding throngs of others besides these -underworld denizens to the Conover standard. Not even the shrewdest -non-partisan dared forecast the result of the contest. - -Caleb, colder, harder, less human than ever, gave no outward sign of the -silent warfare that had torn him during that study-fire vigil on the -night of Anice Lanier’s defection. Beyond curtly stating that the -secretary had left his service of her own accord, he gave no information -concerning her. He had heard she was living with an aunt in another part -of town; and twice, with stony face and unrecognizing eye, he had passed -her on the street, walking with Clive. He had also received from her a -brief, business-like note telling him that her brother had instructions -to deliver to Conover’s representative, any time after noon on Election -Day, the Denzlow letters. - - -It was on the eve of election. The campaign work was done. One way or -another, the story was now told. The last instructions for the next -day’s duties had been given. Conover, returning home from his -headquarters, felt as though the weight of weeks had rolled off his -shoulders. Now that he had done all mortal man could, he was not, like a -weaker soul, troubled about the morrow. That could take care of itself. -His worrying or not worrying could not affect the result. Hence, he did -not worry. - -As he turned into Pompton Avenue and started up the long slope crowned -by the garish white marble Mausoleum, his step was as strong and untired -as an athlete’s. On his frame of steel and inscrutable face the untold -strain of past weeks had left no visible mark. - -A few steps in advance of him, and going in the same direction, slouched -a lank, enervated figure. - -The Railroader, by the gleam of a street lamp, recognized Gerald, and -moved faster to catch up with him. At such rare intervals as he had time -to think of domestic affairs, Caleb was more than a little concerned of -late over the behavior of this only son of his. Since the visit of his -wife to Granite, Gerald’s demeanor had undergone a change that had -puzzled even his father’s acute mind. He had waxed listless, taciturn -and unnaturally docile. No command seemed too distasteful for him to -execute uncomplainingly. No outbreak of rough sarcasm or wrath from -Caleb could draw from him a retort, nor so much as a show of interest. -Conover knew the lad had taken to drinking heavily and frequently, but -also that Gerald’s deepest potations apparently had no other outward -effect than to increase his listless apathy. - -Partly from malice, partly to rouse the youth, Conover had thrown upon -him many details of campaign work. To the older man’s wonderment Gerald -had accomplished every task with a quiet, wholly uninterested competence -that was so unlike his old self as to seem the labor of another man. -More and more, since Anice’s departure, Conover had come to lean on -Gerald’s help. And now it no longer astonished him to find such help -capably given. Yet the father was not satisfied. - -“It ain’t natural,” he said to himself, as he now overhauled his son. -“Ain’t like Jerry. Something’s the matter with him. He’s getting to be -some use in the world. But he’ll go crazy, too, if he keeps up those -moony ways of his. He needs a shaking up.” - -He instituted the shaking-up process in literal form by a resounding -slap between Gerald’s narrow shoulders. But even this most maddening of -all possible salutations evoked nothing but a listless “Hello, father,” -from its victim. - -“Start Weaver off for Grafton?” queried Caleb, falling into step with -his son. - -“Yes.” - -“Make out any of that padrone list I told you to frame up for me?” - -“I’ve just finished it. Here it is.” - -“Why, for a chap like you that list’s a day’s work by itself! Good boy!” - -No reply. Caleb glanced obliquely at the taciturn lad. The sallow, lean -face, with its dark-hollowed eyes, was expressionless, dull, apathetic. - -“Say!” demanded Conover, “what’s the matter with you, anyhow?” - -“Nothing.” - -“Ain’t sick, or anything?” - -“No.” - -“Still grouching over that girl?” - -“My wife? Yes.” - -“Ain’t got over it yet? I’ve told you you’re well out of it. If she’d -cared anything for you she’d never have settled with my New York lawyer -for $60,000 and withdrawn that fool alienation suit she was starting -against me, or signed that general release. You’re well out of it. I’ll -send you up to South Dakota after the campaign’s all over and let you -get a divorce on the quiet. No one around here’ll ever know you was -married, and in the long run the experience won’t hurt you. You’ve acted -pretty decent lately, Jerry, and I’m not half sorry I changed my mind on -that ‘heavy-father’ stunt and didn’t kick you out. After all, one -marriage more or less is more of an accident than a failing, so long as -folks don’t let it get to be a habit. You acted like an idiot. But -bygones are bygones, so cut out the sulks. Cheap chorus girls weren’t -made for grown men to marry.” - -“I’ll thank you to say nothing against her,” intervened Gerald stiffly, -with the first faint show of interest his father had observed in him for -weeks. - -“Just as you like,” assented Caleb, in high, good humor, glad to have -broken even so slightly into the other’s armor of apathy. “In her case, -maybe, least said the better. So you’re still home-sicking for her—and -for New York, eh?” - -“Yes.” - -“Still feel your own city ain’t good enough for you?” - -“What place is for a man who has lived in New York?” - -“Rot! ‘What place is?’ About ten thousand places! And some seventy -million Americans living in those places are as good and as happy and -stand pretty near as good a chance of the pearly gates as if they had -the heaven-sent blessing of living between the North and East rivers.” - -“Yes?” - -There was no interest and only absent-minded query in Gerald’s -monosyllable. Listlessness had again settled over him. Word and mental -attitude jarred on the Railroader. - -“New York!” reiterated Conover. “I’ve took some slight pains to learn a -few things about that place these last couple of months. Before that I -took your word for it that it was a hectic, electric-lit whirlpool where -nothing ever was quiet or sane, and where a young cub who could get -arrested for smashing up a hotel lobby was looked up to as a pillar of -gilded society. Since then I’ve bothered to find out on my own account. -New York’s a city with about two millions of people living on Manhattan -Island alone. We out-of-town jays are told these two millions are a gay, -abandoned, fashionable lot that spend their days in the congenial stunt -of piling up fortunes and their nights in every sort of high jinks that -can cost money and keep ’em up till dawn. ‘All-night fun, all-day -fortune-grabbing. Great place! Come see it!’ Well, I _have_ seen it. -Along around five or six P.M. about ninety-eight per cent. of those two -million people stop work. They’ve been fortune-grabbing all right, since -early morning. Only, they’ve been grabbing it usually for some one else. -They pile onto the subway or the elevated or the big bridge and—and -where do they go? To a merry old all-night revel on the Great White Way? -To an orgy of ‘On-with-the-dance, let-joy-be-unrefined,’ hey? Not them. -It’s home they go, quiet and without exhibiting to the neighbors any -season passes for all-night dissipation. They are as respectable, -decent, orderly, early-to-bed a crowd as if they lived on a farm. -’Tain’t their fault if ‘home’s’ usually built on the folding-bed plan -and more condensed than a can of patent milk. Apart from that, they live -just as everybody else in this country lives—no better, no worse, no -gayer, no quieter. There’s not a penny’s difference between that decent -ninety-eight per cent. and the business and working folks right here in -Granite.” - -Gerald did not answer. He had not heard. - -“That’s the ‘typical New Yorker,’” went on Caleb. “The ‘typical New -Yorker’—ninety-eight per cent. of him—is the typical every-day man or -woman of any city. He does his work, supports his family, and goes to -bed before eleven. Those are the folks I guess _you_ didn’t see much of -when you was there. Nor of the _real_ society push or even the climbers. -The society headliners are too few anyhow to count in the general -percentage. Besides, they’re out of town half the year. _You_ was mostly -engaged in playing ‘Easy Mark’ for the other two per cent. The crowd you -went with is the sort that calls themselves ‘typical New Yorkers,’ and -stays out all-night ’cause they haven’t the brains to find any other -place to go. Just a dirty little fringe of humanity, hanging about -all-night restaurants or drinking adulterated booze in some thirst -emporium, or spending some one else’s money in a green-table joint. They -yawn and look sick of life, and they tell everyone who’ll listen that -they’re ‘typical New Yorkers.’ - -“Lord! you might as well say our two per cent. Chinese population is -typical Americans. First time I ever was in New York overnight I walked -from Ninetieth Street down to Fourteenth, at about one in the morning, -taking in a few side streets on the way. I didn’t meet on an average of -two people to the block, and every light was out in nineteen houses out -of twenty. Down along part of Broadway I saw a few tired, frowsy-looking -folks in big restaurants, and a few drunks and a girl or two, and some -half a dozen cabs prowling about. That was ‘gay New York by night. -Hilarious and reeskay attractions furnished by typical New Yorkers!’ -Whenever I hear that chestnut about ‘typical New Yorkers,’ I think of -old Baldy Durling up in Campgaw, who was sixty years old when he went to -his first circus. He stood half an hour in front of the dromedary’s -stall, taking in all its queer bumps and funny curves, and then he looks -around, kind of defiant at the crowd, and yells out: ‘Hell! There -_ain’t_ no such animal!’” - -A polite smile from the dry lips, which Gerald of late was forever -moistening, was the only reply to this harangue. Caleb gave up trying to -draw the youth into an argument, and adopted a more business-like tone. - -“I want you should run down to Ballston for me soon’s you’ve voted -to-morrow, Jerry. Better take the 7.15 train. I want you to go to the -office of the Ballston _Herald_, and give a note from me to Bruce -Lanier, one of the editors. He’ll hand you a package. Nothing that -amounts to much, but I’ve paid a big price for it, so I don’t want it -lost. Take good care of it, and bring it back on the two o’clock train. -Get all the sleep you can to-night. You’re liable to have a wakeful -day.” - -“All right.” - -“The package Lanier’s to give you is just a bunch of letters about a -railroad deal. Nothing you’d understand. They’re to be ready for me any -time after noon to-morrow.” - -“I thought you wanted me to work at the polls for you.” - -“Anybody that knows how to lie can work at the polls. There’s nobody but -you I can send for those letters. All the other men I can trust can’t be -spared to-morrow.” - -“Bruce Lanier,” repeated Gerald idly. “Any relation to Miss——” - -“Only a relation by marriage. He’s her brother.” - -“Nice sort of girl, always seemed to me. What’d she leave you for?” - -“She left of her own accord.” - -“So you told me. But why?” - -“Because she got a crazy idea that I was the original Unpardonable -Sinner. And having made up her mind to it, she natcher’lly didn’t want -her opinions shaken by any remarks for the defence. So she left.” - -Gerald did not pursue the subject. He seldom, indeed, dwelt so long, -nowadays, on any one theme of talk. He moistened his dry lips once more, -sucked at his cigarette and slouched along in silence. His father asked -several questions that bore on the impending election, and was answered -in monosyllables. The cigarette burned down to its cork tip, and Gerald -lighted another at its smouldering stump. - -“Have a cigar?” suggested Caleb, viewing this operation with manifest -disgust. - -“No, thanks.” - -“It’s better’n one of those measly connecting links between fire and a -fool,” grunted Caleb. Gerald puffed on without answering. - -“I _said_,” repeated Caleb, a little louder, “the rankest Flor de -Garbage campaign cigar, with a red-and-yaller surcingle around its -waist, is a blamed sight better’n any Cairo, Illinois, Egyptian -cig’rette. Is there five minutes a day when you’re not smoking one?” - -“No.” - -“’Tain’t good for any man, smoking so much as that, ’spesh’ly a man with -a boy’s size chest like yours. Stunts the growth, too, I hear, and——” - -“I’ve got my growth.” - -“You sure have,” agreed Caleb, looking up and down his son’s weedy -length, “and you’d ’a’ had still more if so much of you hadn’t been -turned up for feet. Well, smoke away and drink away, too, if you like. -I’m not responsible for you. Only you’ll smash up or turn queer one of -these days if you don’t look out. Is it the booze or the near-tobacco -that makes your lips all dry like that? Neither of ’em usually has that -effect. Your hands are wet and cold all the time, too. Better see a -doctor, hadn’t you?” - -“Oh, I’m all right,” said the lad wearily. - -Caleb looked in doubt at his listless companion, seemed inclined to say -more on the subject, then changed his mind. - -“Be ready for the 7.15 to-morrow morning,” he ordered as they mounted -the broad marble steps of the Mausoleum. “Turn in early and get a good -rest. Lord! I hope this drizzle will turn into rain before morning. -Nothing like a rainy election day to drown reform. The honest heeler -would turn out in a blizzard to earn his two dollars by voting, but a -sprinkle will scare a Silk Socker from the polls easier’n a——” - -The great door was swung open. Outlined against the lighted hall behind -it was Mrs. Conover. She had seen their approach, and had hastened out -into the veranda to meet them. - -“Hello!” exclaimed the Railroader. “This is like old times! Must be -twenty years since you came out to——” - -“Oh, Caleb!” sobbed the little woman, and as the light for the first -time fell athwart her face, they saw she was red-eyed and blotched of -cheek from much weeping. “Oh, Caleb, how long you’ve been! I telephoned -the Democratic Club an hour ago, and they said you’d just——” - -“What’s the row?” broke in her bewildered husband. “Afraid I’d been ate -by your big nephew, or——” - -“Don’t, don’t joke! Something dreadful’s happened. I——” - -“Then come into the library and tell us about it quiet,” interrupted -Caleb, “unless maybe you’re aiming to call in the servants later for -advice.” - -The footman behind Mrs. Conover, at the door, tried to look as though he -had heard nothing, and bitterly regretted he had not been allowed to -hear more. But Letty was silenced as she always was when the Railroader -adopted his present tone. She obediently scuttled down the hall toward -the library, an open letter fluttering in her hand. Caleb followed; and, -at a word from his father, Gerald accompanied his parents. - -As soon as the library door closed behind the trio, Mrs. Conover’s grief -again rose from subdued sniffling to unchecked tears. - -“Oh, talk out, can’t you!” growled Conover. “What’s up? That letter -there? Is——?” - -“Yes,” gurgled poor Letty, torn between the luxury of weeping and the -fear of offending Caleb, “it’s—it’s from Blanche at Lake Como, -and—and—Oh, she isn’t married at all—and——!” - -“WHAT?” roared Conover. Even Gerald dropped his cigarette. - -“It’s—it’s _true_, Caleb!” wailed Letty. “She isn’t. And——” - -“What are you blithering about? Here!” - -Conover snatched the letter and glanced over it. Then with a snort he -thrust it back into his wife’s hand. - -“French!” he sniffed, in withering contempt. “Why in hell can’t the girl -write her own language, so folks can understand what she’s——?” - -“She’s always written her letters to me in French ever since she was at -school in Passy. They told her it——” - -“Never mind what they told her. What’s the letter say? Ain’t married? -Why——!” - -“She _was_ married. But she isn’t. And——” - -“You talk like a man in a cave. Is d’Antri dead, or——” - -Her husband’s frenzied impatience, as usual, served to drive the cowed -little rabbit-like woman into worse agonies of incoherence. But by -degrees, and through dint of much questioning, the whole sordid petty -tragedy related in the Como postmarked letter was at length extracted -from her. - -Blanche, thanks to her heavy dower and her prince’s family connections, -had cut more or less of a swath in certain strata of continental society -during these early days of her stay in d’Antri’s world. Her husband’s -ancestral rock with its tumble-down castle had been bought back, and the -edifice itself put into course of repair. A bijou little house on the -Parc Monceau and a palazzo at Florence had been added to the Conover -fortune’s purchases, and at each of these latter abodes a gaudy fête had -been planned, to introduce the American princess and her dollars to the -class of people who proposed henceforth to endure the one for the sake -of the other. - -Then, according to the letter, a château on the north shore of Como had -been rented for the autumn months. Here the bride and groom had dwelt in -Claude Melnotte fashion for barely a week when another woman appeared. - -The newcomer was a singer formerly employed at the Scala, but now just -returned from a prolonged South American tour. Her voice had given out, -and, faced by poverty, she had prudently unearthed certain proofs to the -effect that, twelve years earlier, she had secretly married Prince -Amadeo d’Antri, then a youth of twenty-two. - -Thus equipped, she had descended on the happy pair, and a most painful -scene had ensued. D’Antri, confronted with the documents, had made no -denial, but had tearfully assured Blanche that he had supposed the woman -dead. Be this as it might, the first wife had been so adamantine as to -refuse with scorn the rich allowance d’Antri offered her, and had -carried the matter to the Italian courts. - -There it was promptly decided that, as Amadeo’s princely title was -chiefly honorary, and carried no royal prerogatives of morganatic -unions, the first marriage held. - -“So I am without a home and without a name,” laboriously translated -Letty, punctuating her daughter’s written sentences with snuffle and -moan. “What am I to do? Poor Amadeo is disconsolate. It would break your -heart to witness his grief. But he cannot help me. Most of our ready -money has gone into the houses we have bought and other necessaries. The -bulk of my dot is, of course, deeded to Amadeo, according to continental -custom, and it seems the poor fellow’s ignorance of finance has led him -to invest it in such a way that for the present it is all tied up. I am -without money, without friends. _Helas!_ I——” - -“In other words,” interpolated Caleb, “he’s got her cash nailed down, -and now he’s kicking her out dead broke, while he and the other woman——” - -“I start to-morrow for Paris,” continued the letter. “I have just about -money enough to get me there, and I shall stay with the Pages until you -can send for me. Oh, Mother, _please_ make it all right with Father if -you can. Don’t let him blame poor Amadeo. You know how Father always——” - -“Well, go on!” commanded the Railroader grimly. - -“That’s about all,” faltered Letty. “The rest is just——” - -“A eulogy on the old man, eh? Let it go at that. Now——” - -“Oh, what _are_ we to do?” drivelled the poor woman, sopping her eyes. -“And all the——” - -“All the splurge we made, and the way our dutiful girl was going to -boost us into the Four Hundred?” finished Caleb. “Thank the Lord, it -comes too late for a campaign document! But I guess it about wrecks my -last sneaking hope of landing on the social hay-pile. Never mind that -part of it now. We’ll have all the rest of our lives to kick ourselves -over the way we’ve been sold. And I’ll give myself the treat, as soon as -I can get away, of running over to Yurrup and having Friend d’Antri sent -to jail for bigamy and treated real gentle and loving while he’s there, -if a million-dollar tip to the right politicians in Italy will do it. -And I guess it will. But I _can’t_ get away till after this election -business is all cleared up. And Blanche’s got to be brought home right -off. Jerry!” - -His son’s momentary interest in the family crisis had already lapsed. He -was sitting, stupid, glazed of eye, staring at the floor. At his -father’s call he glanced up. - -“You’ll have to go to Paris for her,” went on Conover, “and bring her -back. Take the next steamer. There’s boats sailing on most of the lines -Wednesdays. Let’s see, this is Monday. Go to Ballston, as you were going -to, to-morrow morning. Get that package from Lanier, and send it to me -from there by registered mail. Be sure to have it registered. Then catch -the afternoon train to New York. That ought to get you in by five-thirty -or six. I’ll telegraph Wendell to-night to find out what’s the fastest -steamer sailing next morning, and tell him to take passage for you. Hunt -him up as soon as you reach town. And sleep on board the boat. That’ll -cut out any chance of your missing it. Bring Blanche back here to us by -the earliest steamer from France or England that you can get. And while -you’re in Paris, if you can hire some one on the quiet to drop over into -Italy and put d’Antri into the accident ward of some dago hospital for a -month or two, I don’t mind paying five thousand for the job. Come up to -my study, and I’ll fix you up financially for the trip, and give you -that note to Bruce Lanier.” - -Gerald heard and nodded assent to the rapped-out series of directions -with as little emotion as though commanded to transmit some campaign -message to Billy Shevlin. His father, noting the quiet attention and -response, was pleased therewith. And the latent fondness and trust which -were slowly placing his recent contempt for his only and once adored -son, perceptibly increased. - -As the two men left the room, Mrs. Conover looked lovingly after Gerald -through her tears. - -“Poor dear boy!” she soliloquized. “He’s getting to be quite his old -bright self again. When Caleb mentioned his going to New York his eyes -lighted up just the way they used to when he was little.” - -All unaware that she had detected something which even the Railroader’s -vigilance had overlooked, the good woman once more abandoned herself to -the joys of a new and delightfully unrestrained fit of weeping. - -When at last she and her husband were together, alone, that night, Mrs. -Conover had some thought of commenting upon that fleeting expression she -had caught on Gerald’s face. But Caleb was so immersed in his own -unpleasant thoughts she lacked the courage to intrude upon his -reflections. - -Which is rather a pity, for had she done so, the inefficient little -woman might have changed the history of the Mountain State. - - - - - CHAPTER XIII - THE FOURTH MESSENGER OF JOB - - -The rain Caleb Conover had so eagerly desired as a check on fair weather -reformers’ Election Day zeal began soon after midnight, and with it a -gale that is still remembered as the “Big November Wind.” - -The wind-whips lashed the many-windowed Mausoleum, and the roar and -swirl of dashing water echoed from roof and veranda-cover. The autumn -gale-blasts set the naked trees to creaking and groaning like sentient -things. Here and there a huge branch was ripped from its trunk and -ploughed a gash in the lawn’s withered turf. More than one maple and ash -on the Conover grounds crashed to earth with a rending din that was -drowned in the howl of the storm. - -A belated equinoctial was sweeping the Mountain State, driven on the -breath of a tornado such as not one year in twenty can record, east of -the Mississippi. Its screaming onset unroofed houses, tore up forest -giants, wrecked telegraph lines, buffeted fragile dwellings to their -fall and dissolved hayricks into miles of flying wisps. - -Yet none of the three members of the Conover family, sheltered within -the Mausoleum, were awakened by the bellow of the cyclone, for none were -asleep. Letty, alone in her great, hideous bedroom, lay alternately -praying and weeping in maudlin comfortlessness over her absent daughter; -and at sound of the hubbub outside wept the more and prayed with an -added terror. - -Gerald, despite the early start he must make in the morning, was still -dressed, and was slouching back and forth in his suite of apartments, -muttering occasionally to himself, and at other times pausing to gaze -lifelessly ahead of him. As the ever-louder voice of the storm broke in -on his thoughts, he stopped short in his aimless march, his dry lips -twitching and on his face the nervous terror of a suddenly awakened -child. He shambled into an inner chamber, unlocked and opened a drawer -in his chiffonier, fumbled for a moment or two with something he took -therefrom, then closed and locked the drawer and returned to the light. -In a few moments the nervousness had died out of his face and bearing, -and with a return of his habitual listless air he had resumed his walk. - -Caleb Conover, stretched on a camp-bed in the corner of his study, -smiled contentedly as the rain beat in torrents on the panes. But when -the gale waxed fiercer and the rain at last ceased, he frowned. - -“Going to blow off clear and cold after all!” he grumbled, turning over. -“And the Weather Bureau’s the only one that can’t be ‘fixed.’” - -But even the shriek of the storm could not long hold his attention. The -Railroader was vaguely troubled as to himself. Heretofore, like -Napoleon’s, his steel will had been able to dictate to Nature as -imperiously as to his fellow-man. When he had commanded the presence of -Sleep, the drowsy god had hastened on the moment to do his bidding. He -had slumbered or awakened at wish. On the eve of his greatest crisis he -had been unable to sleep like a baby. Yet for the past few weeks he had -been aware of a subtle change. Sleep had deserted him, even as had so -much else that he had loftily regarded as his to command. - -He had acquired an unpleasant habit of lying awake for hours in that big -lonely study of his, of seeking in vain to recover his old-time power of -perfect self-mastery. Thought, Memory, Unrest—a trio that never could -unduly assail him in saner hours—now had a way of rushing in upon the -insomniac with the extinguishing of the last light. To-night these -unwelcomed guests were lingering still longer than usual, and all the -Conover’s dominating will power failed to banish them. - -At length he gave over the struggle and let his vagrant fancies have -their will. Was he growing old, he wondered, that his forces—mental, -physical and political—thus wavered? - -Worry? He had heard others complain of it, and he had laughed at them. -Nerves? Those were for women. Not for a man with an eighteen-inch neck. -Then what ailed him? He had been this way ever since—ever since—Yes, it -was the night Anice Lanier left that he had first lain awake. - -Anice Lanier! He had never analyzed his feelings toward her. He had been -dully satisfied to know that in her presence he ever had an unwonted -feeling of content, of sure knowledge that she would understand; that -she was as unlike his general idea of women as he himself differed from -his equally contemptuous estimate of other men; that he was at his best -with her. Had he been less practical and more given to hackneyed phrases -of thought, he would have said she inspired him. - -But now? The Railroader could not yet force himself to dwell on the -jarring end of all that. He tried to think of something else. Blanche? -Yes, _there_ was a nice sort of complication, wasn’t it? Another -international marriage and the usual ending thereof. - -“These foreigners can give us poor Yankee jays cards and spades at the -bunco game!” he mused, half-admiringly. “They beat _our_ ‘con’ men hands -down, for they don’t even need to pay out cash in manufacturing green -goods and gold bricks, and they don’t get jugged when they’re found out. -When’ll American girls get sense? When their parents do, I presume.” - -And this unwelcome answer to his own question brought him back to the -memory of his joy at hearing of Blanche’s proposed marriage to d’Antri. -It had seemed to him to set the capstone of fulfilment to his social -yearnings. As father of a princess, he had in fancy seen himself at last -exalted amid the close-serried ranks of that class to whom only his -wealth had heretofore entitled him to ingress. And money—even _his_ -money—had failed to act as _open sesame_. But surely as father-in-law to -a prince—— - -Even the very patent fiasco attendant on his one effort to use this -relationship as a master key to the portals of society had not wholly -discouraged him. Later, when, practically by acclamation, he should have -won the Governorship, and when the Princess d’Antri’s European triumphs -should be noised abroad in Granite, surely _then_—— - -But now there was no question of acclamation. If he should win it would -be by bare margin. He knew that. And, as for Blanche—well, if he could -keep the worst of the scandal out of the American papers and make people -think his daughter had come home merely because her husband abused her, -or because she was tired of her surroundings—if he could achieve this -much it would be the best he could expect. - -Gerald, too; he had hoped so much from the boy’s glittering New York -connections. Now _that_ illusion was forever gone. Though his son’s more -recent behavior had in a slight measure softened the hurt to paternal -pride and hope, yet the hurt itself, Caleb knew, must always remain. And -that particular pride and hope were forever dead. - -The Railroader was not in any sense a religious devotee. For appearance -sake, however, and to add still further force to his liberal gifts to -the Catholic clergy, he semi-occasionally attended mass at the -Cathedral. He also, for other reasons, occupied now and then, with -Letty, his higher-priced pew in the Episcopal church of St. Simeon -Stylites, religious rendezvous of Granite’s smart set. - -At one of these two places of worship—he could not now remember -which—and, after all, it didn’t matter—he had heard, some time recently, -a Scripture reading that had held his attention more closely than did -most passages of the sort. It was a story of some man—he could not -remember whom—the recital of whose continued and unmerited ill-luck had -stamped itself on the hearer’s mind. The man had been rich, prosperous, -happy. Then one day four messengers had come to him in swift succession, -with tales of disaster to goods and family, each narration telling of -worse misfortunes than had its predecessor. And the fourth had left its -recipient stripped of wealth and family. - -In a quaint twist of thought Conover, as he lay staring up into the dark -and listening to the noisy rage of the storm, fell to fitting the -biblical story to his own case. - -“The first message I got,” he reflected, becoming grimly entertained in -his own analogy, “knocked over my plans for Jerry. Then the second stole -from me the only square woman I ever knew and all my chances of a -campaign walkover. The third smashed my idees for Blanche, and for -making a hit in society. The fourth—well, I guess the fourth ain’t -showed up yet. Will it clean me out when it _does_ come, I wonder, like -it did the feller in the Bible? Let’s see, _he_ had a whiny fool for a -wife, too, if I remember it straight. Yes, there’s a whole lot of points -in common between me and him. I wonder if he ever run for any office. -How was it all those messages of his wound up? ‘And—and I only am -escaped alone to tell thee.’ That was it. - -“I wonder was he the same chap that had all those devils cast out of -him. I don’t just remember, but whoever it was that had ’em cast out, -I’d like to ’a’ known him, for he was a _man_. Most folks’ natures ain’t -big enough to hold a single half-size devil, let alone a whole crowd of -’em. If that Bible chap had all those it showed he was a man enough to -hold ’em. And if only one of ’em had been cast out it’d ’a’ been a -bigger thing he did than it would be for a dozen ordinary men to turn -into saints. Maybe I’m a little bit like _that_ feller, too.” - -After which plunge into the theological exegesis—the first and last -whereof he ever was guilty—Caleb Conover turned his thoughts to the -morrow’s election, and thus communed with himself till dawn caught him -open-eyed and unsleepy, his splendid strength and energy in nowise -diminished by forty-eight hours of wakefulness. - -It was a tattered, desolate world that met the Railroader’s eyes as he -gazed down from his window across the broad grounds and over the city -that lay at their foot. The wind had fallen, and a pink-gray light was -filling the clean-swept sky. Nature seemed ashamed to look on the -results of her own violence, for the dawnlight crept timidly over the -sleeping houses. - -Everywhere were strewn signs of the hurricane. Tree branches, toppled -chimneys, unroofed shanties, swaths of telegraph and telephone wires, -overturned fences; these and a thousand other proofs of the gale’s brief -power lay broadcast throughout Granite’s streets. - -And, with the first glimmers in the east, the people of city and State -were afoot, for history was to be made. Election Day had begun. - - -Midnight had again come around. The election was long since over, yet -the city did not ring with the uproar incident on such affairs. For the -result was not yet known. The storm of the previous night had cut off -telegraph and telephone communication in twenty parts of the Mountain -State. Granite itself was isolated. Hundreds of mechanics were at work -repairing the various lines of broken wire and replacing overthrown -poles. But the work had not yet sufficiently progressed to allow the -full transmission of election returns from the up-State counties. - -Train service remained unimpaired, save for an occasional broken trestle -on one or two of the minor branches of the C. G. & X. And since -nightfall some of the returns had been brought to Granite by rail, but -these merely proved the closeness of the conflict, and gave no true hint -as to the actual outcome. The Granite vote was all in, hours ago. From -the slums and the dark places of the city’s underworld the long-trained -servants of the Machine had swarmed to the polls, overwhelming all -opposition from the smaller and more respectable element, and had -carried Granite tumultuously for Conover. - -The Railroader, with a dozen or more men—district leaders, ward captains -and picked adherents of his own—sat about the big centre table of his -study, an Arthur, somewhat changed in the modernizing and surrounded by -equally altered Paladins. A telegraph operator sat at an instrument in a -far corner of the room, jotting down and carrying to the table such few -despatches as were at last beginning to trickle in. At Conover’s left a -ticker purred forth infrequent lengths of message-laden tape. - -The table was littered with papers, yellow sheets of “flimsy,” bottles, -glasses and open cigar boxes. The henchmen lounged about, drinking and -smoking in nervous suspense, fighting over again the day’s battle, and -hazarding innumerable diverse opinions on the bearing each new despatch -would have on the general result. All were in a greater or less state of -tension, and relieved it by frequent resource to the battalion of -bottles that dotted the board. - -Conover, alone of them all, touched no liquor. Before him was a big cup -of black coffee, which a noiseless-treading footman entered the room -every few minutes to renew. - -“Ain’t that li’ble to keep you awake to-night, Boss?” asked Shevlin, as -he watched the fourth cupful vanish at a swallow. - -“It don’t bother me any more,” returned Caleb, “I’m too used to it. But -I can remember when a single cup of it at Sunday morning breakfast would -make me so I couldn’t sleep a wink all church time. I’d toss from one -end of my pew to the other the whole morning. I couldn’t seem to drowse -no matter how long Father Healy’s sermon was. ’Nother county heard -from?” as the operator laid a message before him. “Read it, Billy.” - -“Delayed in transmission,” spelled Shevlin. “Jericho County, with two -precincts missing, gives Conover 7,239, Standish 4,895.” - -A yell went around the table. Bourke scribbled hurriedly on a pad, then -announced: - -“That offsets the Standish lead in Haldane by 780. Two to one you’ve got -Bowden, too.” - -A purr from the ticker, and Caleb caught up the tape. - -“This machine don’t agree with you,” he reported. “Bowden complete gives -me 5,861 and Standish 6,312. That cuts us down a bit.” - -“Did you ever see such a rag-time ’lection!” growled Shevlin. “It’s like -a seesaw board. One minute it’s you, and the next minute it ain’t. -What’s the hay-eaters up-State thinkin’ about, anyhow? A year ago they’d -no more ’a’ dared to——” - -“A year’s a long time, son, in a country that makes a hero to order one -day and puts him into the discard the next.” - -“Oh, if you’d ’a’ only just let us work like we always have before! We’d -’a’ sent this Standish person screechin’ up a tree. He’d ’a’ thought a -whale had bit him! But with all this amachoor line of drorin’-room -stunts at the polls an’ givin’ him the chance to——” - -“That’s _my_ business,” replied Caleb. “Cut it out.” - -And Billy relapsed into grumbling incoherence. Nor did any of the rest -dare voice their equally strong opinions on the subject of Conover’s -recent mystifying campaign tactics. Had a less powerful Boss dictated -and carried out such a senselessly honest plan of battle, his leadership -would have ended with the issuance of his first order. Impregnable as -had been Conover’s position in the machine, he himself well knew he had -strained his power and influence well-nigh to the breaking point. Should -he, in spite of his self-confidence and the wondrous skill he had -employed along this new line of warfare, lose the day—— - -“Coming in better now,” remarked the operator after a fusillade of -clicks had held his attention to the instrument for a minute or two. -“They’ve got the lines patched up enough to allow you straight service. -The stuff’ll all be here in a rush pretty soon.” - -“Here comes some more ticker reports!” cried Staatz, leader of the Third -District, and strongest man, next to Conover himself, in all the -Machine. “Why can’t it hurry up? Here—‘Pompton County complete gives -Conover 28,042, Standish 6,723.’” - -Another and louder yell from the tableful, and a battering of bottles -and glasses on the board. Conover alone sat calm through the din. Bourke -again did rapid figuring. - -“Hooray!” he yelled. “That brings it up all right. Pompton County and -the city of Granite together give you enough plurality to stall all the -jay counties except——” - -“It hangs on the one city of Grafton now,” interposed Caleb, who had as -usual gripped the whole situation before his lieutenant had jotted down -the first line of figures. “We’ve got enough reports to bring it up to -that. We know where we stand everywhere else, except in a few places too -small to count. As Grafton goes, the State will go. That’s a cinch.” - -“That’s right,” admitted Bourke after another spasm of ciphering. “But -how’d you get onto us when the rest of us——?” - -“If I didn’t get onto things before the rest of you did, one of you -would be sitting at the head of this table instead of me.” - -The Railroader glanced, as by accident, toward Staatz, who coughed -raucously and plunged at once into talk. - -“Pete Brayle tried to backtrack us on the sly in Pompton County, I -hear,” said the latter. “Thought it’d get him a soft place in the reform -gang in case they won. A lot of good it did him.” - -“Brayle’s always looking for soft places,” observed Caleb dryly. “And he -ain’t the only one. Such fellers gen’rally end up in a soft place, all -right. Only it’s apt to be a swamp, and that’s——” - -“Jericho County complete returns,” translated the operator aloud, as his -machine began again to click out its news, “Conover 7,910, Standish -5,495.” - -“Why don’t we hear from Grafton?” asked Staatz. - -“They’re patching up the connection now,” answered the operator. “It’s -farthest city on the line. You’ve got all the rest of the returns from -its county.” - -“That place is a regular nest of reformers, from the mayor down,” -commented Bourke. “And besides, Standish won a lot of votes by his -grand-stand scrap in the op’ra house there last month. It looks bad.” - -“Most reform places do after they’ve tried a dose of their own medicine -for awhile,” answered Caleb. “But we’ve spent enough good dough there to -square the whole noble army of martyrs. I guess Grafton’s O. K.” - -“Boss,” said Billy Shevlin, “you’re the only man in this whole shootin’ -match what ain’t all hectic over this fight. An’ you’re the one man -who’s _It_ or out in th’ woolly white snow accordin’ to th’ way that -genial beast of prey th’ free an’ independent an’ otherwise bought-up -voters jumps. Ain’t you worried none?” - -“What good’d that do? No use paying twice, if there’s anything to worry -about. And if there ain’t, what’s the use of wasting a lot of good -anxiety? Start my phonograph going.” - -“Phonograph?” hotly protested Staatz. “At a time like this, when -everything hangs on the next half hour and——” - -“Well,” drawled Caleb, and if his words were light, his steady eyes -fixed the district leader’s vexed gaze as a wasp might pierce an angry, -blundering bumblebee, “I don’t believe the voters of the Mountain -State’ll rise in arms to any extent and demand a new election and a new -Boss just because they hear I wanted a little music. I like the -phonograph. It’s the only musical instrument I ever had time to learn to -play. And it’s the only one that’ll play over the pieces I like as often -as I want to hear ’em, and won’t make me listen to a lot of opera -war-whoops in Dutch and Dago. But, say, Staatz, I’m not forcing other -folks to listen to it. If you’re not stuck on the way I amuse myself, -there ain’t nobody exactly imploring you to stay on here.” - -Staatz, his red face redder than its wont, and his great gray mustache -abristle at the Railroader’s tone and look, nevertheless mumbled some -apology. But Caleb did not hear him out. He broke in on the words with a -curt nod, then said to Shevlin: - -“Start it up, Billy. Any old tune’ll do. There’s none there but the kind -I like. Might try——” - -Again the footman came in. This time not with coffee, but with a card. - -“I thought I told Gaines I wasn’t to be broke in on this evening,” began -Conover, glowering at the intruder. “Say I can’t see anyone. I’m busy, -and——” - -He had taken the card as he spoke. Now, as he read it, his order trailed -off into perplexed silence, even as Billy Shevlin, his face one big grin -at Staatz’s discomfiture, started the phonograph on the classic strains -of “Everybody Works but Father.” - -“Turn off that measly racket!” roared Caleb. “Ain’t you got any better -sense than to go fooling with toys a time like this? I’ll be back in a -few minutes, boys. My New York lawyer wants me for something.” - -He left the study and hurried downstairs to where, in the hall, a man -stood awaiting him. - -“Come in here, Wendell,” directed the Railroader, shaking hands with his -new guest, and leading the way to the library. “What’re you doing in -this part of the country? Glad to see you.” - -“I bring you bad news—very bad news, I am afraid,” began the lawyer as -Conover closed the library door behind them. - -“I know that,” snapped Caleb. “I knew it as soon as I saw your face, but -I didn’t want you shouting it out in the hall where my butler could hear -you. That’s why I—well, what is it? Tell me, can’t you?” - -“Your son——” - -“Yes, Jerry, of course. I knew that, too. But what’s he done this time?” - -“This is, as I said, a very serious——” - -“Good Lord, man! I didn’t s’pose you’d took a four-hour train ride from -New York a night like this to tell me he’d won a ping pong prize or -joined the Y. M. C. A. The chap that’s got to have news broke to him has -a head too thick for truth to be let into it any other way. Don’t stand -there like a lump of putty. What’s up?” - -The lawyer, flushing at the coarse invective, spared the father no -longer. He spoke, and to the point. - -“Your son,” he said, “is in the West Thirtieth Street police station on -a charge of murder.” - -Conover looked at him without a start, without visible emotion. For a -full half minute he made no reply, no comment. Nor did his light, keen -eyes flicker or turn aside. - -Then—and Wendell feared from his words that the tidings had turned -Caleb’s brain—the Railroader muttered, half to himself: - -“‘And I only am escaped alone to tell thee.’” - - - - - CHAPTER XIV - CALEB CONOVER LOSES AND WINS - - -“I don’t quite understand,” ventured the puzzled lawyer. - -“Neither do I,” said Caleb. “Tell me your story as brief as you can.” - -“Your son reached town a little after six o’clock this evening,” -answered Wendell. “It seems he went directly to a restaurant in the -theatre district of Broadway, a place frequented by men of a certain -class and by the women they take there. It was early, but on account of -the election night fun to come later many people were already dining. -Gerald afterward told me he went there in the hope of catching a glimpse -of his former wife. He saw her there. With her was a man she had known -before she met your son, a bookmaker named Stange, whom Gerald—or -Gerald’s money—had originally won her from, and for whom he always, it -appears, retained some jealousy. Gerald walked straight up to the table -where they sat, drew a revolver and fired four times point-blank in -Stange’s face. Any one of the shots by itself would have been fatal. -Then he tossed the revolver to a waiter and spent the time until the -police arrived in trying to console this Montmorency woman and to quiet -her hysterics. They took him to the Tenderloin station and he got the -police to telephone for me. I found him in a state of semi-collapse. A -police surgeon was working over him. Heart failure brought on by -excitement. His heart was already in a depressed, weakened state, the -surgeon said, from an overdose of morphine. The poor boy apparently was -in the habit of taking it, for they found a case with a hypodermic -syringe and tablets in his pocket. And one of his arms——” - -“So that was the ‘third thing’ beside booze and cigarettes?” - -It was Caleb’s first interruption. During the recital of his son’s crime -he had stood motionless, expressionless. Not until this trivial detail -was reached had he spoken. And even now his voice was as emotionless as -was his face. The inscrutable Spartan quiet that had so often left his -business and political opponents in the dark was now upon him. Wendell -saw and wondered. Mistaking the other’s mental attitude for the first -daze of horror, he resumed: - -“He came around in a few minutes. I did what I could for him. Then I -tried to reach you by long-distance telephone. But the wires were down -all through this State. I had no better fortune in telegraphing. So I -caught the eight-ten train and came straight here. I thought you ought -to be told at once, so that——” - -“Quite so. Thank you. It was very white. I’m sorry I was so brisk with -you awhile ago.” - -The lawyer stared. Conover was talking as though a mere financial matter -were involved. Still supposing his client suffering from shock that -dulled his sensibilities, Wendell continued: - -“Morphine and jealousy combining to cause temporary insanity. That must -be our line of defence. You agree with me of course?” - -“Suit yourself. I’ll stand by whatever you suggest.” - -The lawyer drew out his watch. - -“Twelve forty-five,” he said. “The New York express passes through -Granite at one twenty. We’ll have plenty of time to catch it. If you -will get ready at once, we’ll start. We can discuss details during the -trip.” - -“‘We’?” echoed Caleb. “What d’ye mean? _I’m_ not going to New York with -you.” - -“Mr. Conover!” exclaimed Wendell, shaking his inert host by the shoulder -to rouse him from his apparent stupor, “you don’t realize! Gerald is in -a cell on a murder charge. To-morrow he will be sent to the Tombs—our -city prison—to remain until his case comes up. Then he will be tried for -his life and——” - -“I know all about the course of such things. You don’t need to tell me.” - -“But this is a life-and-death matter!” - -“Well, if _I_ can keep cool over it, I presume _you_ can, can’t you? -It’s very kind of you to explain all this to me, but it ain’t necessary. -I understand everything you’ve told me, and I understand a lot you’ve -overlooked. For instance, the pictures that’ll be in all to-morrow’s -evening papers of my boy on his way to the Tombs, handcuffed to a -plain-clothes man, and pictures of that chorus woman of his in all sorts -of poses, and pictures of the ‘stricken father’—that’s me—and Letty -figuring as the ‘aged mother, heart-broke at her son’s crime.’ And my -daughter and her—the Prince d’Antri. And my house and a diagram of the -restaurant where the shooting was done. And there’ll be interviews with -the Montmorency thing and accounts of her being brave and visiting Jerry -in the Tombs. And a maynoo of what he’ll have for Thanksgiving dinner in -his cell. And——” - -“I’ll do what I can to prevent publicity. I——” - -“You’ll do nothing of the sort. What happens in public the public has a -right to read about. If Jerry’s dragged us into the limelight, can we -kick if the papers let folks see us there?” - -“But surely——” - -“That’s the easiest part of it. I’ve got to face my wife with this -story. Not to-night, but to-morrow anyhow. Sweet job, eh? A white man -don’t enjoy squashing the life out of even a guinea-pig in cold blood, -let alone a boy’s mother. And reporters’ll begin coming here by sunrise -for interviews, and folks’ll be staring at us in the street and offering -their measly sympathy and then running off to tell the neighbors how we -took it. And every paper we pick up will be full of the ‘latest -d’vel’pments’ and all that. And those of us who know Jerry will get into -the pleasing habit of remembering what a cute, friendly kid he used to -be when he was little, and the great things we used to dream he’d do -when he grew up, and how we hustled so’s he’d have as good a chance in -life as any young feller on earth. And then we’ll remember he’s waiting -in jail to be tried for murdering a chorus slattern’s lover, and all the -black, filthy shame he’s put on decent folks that was fools enough to -love him, and the way he’s fulfilled them silly hopes of ours. Oh, yes, -Wendell, I guess I ‘realize,’ all right, all right. I don’t need no -‘wakening sense.’ But maybe I’ve made it clear to you now why it is I -don’t go cavorting off by the next train to console and cheer up the boy -who’s brought this on us. I don’t just hanker——” - -“Don’t take that tone, I beg, sir!” pleaded the lawyer, deeply pained by -what underlay the father’s half-scoffing, ironical tirade. “He may live -it down. He is only twenty-four. The jury will surely be lenient. After -all, there’s the ‘unwritten law’ and——” - -“And of all the slimy rot ever thought up by a paretic’s brain, that -same ‘unwritten law’ is about the rankest specimen,” snarled Caleb. “By -the time a man’s learned to live up to all the _written_ laws, I guess -he won’t have a hell of a lot of leisure left to go moseying around -among the unwritten ones. Whenever a coward takes a pot-shot at some one -within half a mile of a petticoat, up goes the ‘unwritten law’ scream. -Use it if you like in the trial, but for God’s sake cut out such -hypocritical bosh when you’re talking to _me_. ‘Unwritten law!’ Why -don’t the Legislature take a day off and write it?” - -“Then you won’t come with me to town?” asked the lawyer, with another -covert glance at his watch. - -“Come with you and tell Jerry how sorry I am for him, and how I -sympathize with him for killing his mother—for that’s what it’ll come -to—and for wrecking a name I’ve spent all my life building up for him, -and for making me the shame of all my friends? No, Wendell, I guess I’ll -have to deprive him of that treat. I’ll think up later what’s best to do -about him. In the meantime get him acquitted.” - -“Acquitted? That is not so easy. But——” - -“Not so easy? Why ain’t it? Didn’t I tell you to draw on me for all you -wanted? I’ve got somewhere between forty and fifty millions all told. -The jury don’t live this side of the own-your-own-cloud suburbs of -heaven that hasn’t at least one man on it that $100,000 will buy. If not -that, then $1,000,000. I’ll leave the details to you. Buy enough jurors -to ‘hang’ every verdict till they get tired of trying Jerry and turn him -loose to save the State further expense. If a murderer ain’t convicted -on his first trial, it’s a cinch he’s never going to be on his second or -third. Now, it’s up to you to buy that drawn verdict for the first -trial, and then for the others till they acquit him or parole him in -your custody. It’s been done before, and it’ll be done again. This ain’t -a ‘life-and-death matter’ as you called it. It’s a question of dollars -and cents. And as long as I’ve got enough of those same dollars and -cents, no boy of mine’s going to the death-chair or to life imprisonment -either. You’ll have to hustle for that train. If you miss it, come back -and I’ll put you up for the night.” - -Tense excitement, as was lately his way, had made the formerly taciturn -Railroader voluble. He now, as frequently since the night of his speech -at the reception, noted this, himself, with a vague surprise. - -“If Jerry wants any ready money, just now——” he began, as he escorted -the lawyer to the door. - -“He seems to have plenty for any immediate needs,” returned Wendell. “I -saw the contents of his pockets that the police had taken charge of. -Besides the morphine case and a few cards and a packet of letters in a -sealed wrapper, there were large-denomination bills to the amount of——” - -“Packet of letters—sealed?” croaked Conover, catching the other’s arm in -a grasp that bit to the point of agony. “Letters?” he repeated, his -throat dry and contracted. - -“Oh, I meant to speak to you about them. Gerald asked me to bring them -along. He said he got them for you from a man in Ballston to-day, and -was to have sent them to you by registered mail. But in the hurry of -catching the New York train and the excitement over the prospects of -seeing——” - -“Where are they? Did you bring them?” - -“I couldn’t,” answered Wendell, marveling at the lightning change in his -client’s voice and face. “The police, of course, took charge of them. -They will have to be examined by the district attorney’s office -before——” - -“You must hurry or you’ll miss your train. Good night.” - -Conover slammed the door on his astonished guest and walked back into -the library. - -In the middle of the room where he had so vainly sought to inculcate -into his family the “pleasant home hour” habit, the Railroader now stood -alone, silent, without motion, his shrewd face an empty, expressionless -mask of gray, his eyes alone burning like live coals, showing that the -brain within in no way shared the outer shell’s inertia. - -“I’ve got to work this out later, when I’ve more time,” he muttered. - -And with the resolve came the impulse so common to him when troubled or -excited. - -“Gaines!” he called to the butler, who, late though the hour was, had -not received permission on this great night to retire, “Gaines! order -Dunderberg saddled and brought around in fifteen minutes, and have Giles -ride with me to-night.” - -Caleb went up to his dressing-room and hastily changed into his riding -clothes. - -As he strapped on the second of his spurs a confused babel of sound -arose just beyond his dressing-room. This apartment served as a sort of -antechamber to the study. The noise, therefore, must have come, he knew, -from the bevy of men he had left there. This patent fact dawned on -Conover as a surprise. He had forgotten his followers’ existence, -forgotten the undecided election, the impending Grafton returns on which -its result would hang. He had even, since Wendell’s departure, forgotten -Jerry’s plight and his own rage and mortification thereat. All life—all -the future—now concentrated, for him, about the Denzlow packet, whose -contents must by this time, or by morning at latest, be known to the -authorities. This last and greatest blow had filled all his emotions, -driving out lesser thoughts, fears, hopes and griefs, as a cyclone might -rip to thin air the dawn mists over a lake. - -Now, at the clamor in the study, he pulled himself together. The iron -will still held. He strode to the connecting door and opened it. The -tumult had died down, and Staatz alone was now speaking. So intent were -the speaker and his hearers that none noted the Boss’s advent from so -unexpected a quarter. On the threshold stood Caleb, surveying the scene -with quiet contempt. - -“And that’s how it is!” Staatz was declaiming. “We’re licked. _Licked!_ -Pretty sort of news for Democrats _this_ is!” picking up a newly-broken -length of ticker tape around which the other men had been clustering. -“‘City of Grafton, complete: Conover 5,100, Standish 12,351.’ Is it a -wonder you all went nutty when you got it? In Grafton, too, stronghold -of Democracy. This means the State for Standish by an easy 4,000, maybe -more. And who’s to blame? Are you? Am I? Not us! We’ve had—the whole -party’s had—our hands tied behind us. And we were sent in to fight like -that. Could we use the good old moves? Not us! It must be kid-glove, -silk-sock, amachoor politics, meeting Standish on his own ground. No -wonder he licked us! A Prohibitionist could have licked men that were -hampered like we were. And who was it tied our hands? Who got the party -beat and the Machine smashed? Who did it? Caleb Conover!” - -He paused panting and sweating with wrath. Then, encouraged by a murmur -of assent that ran around the ring of listeners, he bellowed: - -“We ain’t in politics for our health, are we? It’s our bread and butter. -That bread and butter’s been snatched away from us. Who by? Caleb -Conover! Are you going to be led by the nose any longer by a man who -betrays you like that? For my part _I’m_ tired of wearing his collar.” - -A growl of approbation greeted his query. His bellow changed to a lower -tone of persuasion. - -“I ain’t saying,” he resumed, “but what Conover’s done work for the -Machine. In his day he was a great man, but his day’s past. He’s -breaking up. Don’t this campaign prove he is? Makes us throw our chances -out of the winder for Standish to pick up. And when we’re waiting news -from the deciding city he plays a phonograph, and then wanders off and -most likely forgets we’re here. There’s another thing: How did Richard -Croker and Charlie Murphy and Matt Quay and N. Bonaparte and all the -rest of the big bosses hold their power? By keeping their mouths shut. -When Croker once began to talk, what happened? Down tumbled all his -power. Same with Quay. Same with N’poleon. Same with all of ’em. Talking -was the first sign of losing hold. Look at Conover’s case. We can all -remember when words was as hard to get out of him as dollars. How about -him now? Talks to any one. I tell you he’s breaking up. Unless we want -the Machine to break up for good and all, too, we got to get a new -Leader.” - -“If the new Leader’s _you_, Adolphe Staatz,” cut in a rasping snarl, -like a dog’s, from the group of politicians, as Billy Shevlin shouldered -his way forward and thrust his unshaven face close to the district -leader’s bristling gray mustache, “if _you’re_ the new Leader you’re -rootin’ for, let me put you wise to somethin’: You’ll go to the -primaries straight from the hospital, an’ with your shyster mug in a -sling. Fer, if I hear another peep out of you, roastin’ the Boss, I’ll -knock you from under your hat, and push your ugly face in till your back -teeth bend. _You_ take the Boss’s job? Chee! It’s to ha-ha! Go chase -yourself, ’fore I chase you so far you’ll d’scover a new street. _You’d_ -backtrack Mister Conover, would you’se? Why, if you go ’round Granite -spreadin’ idees of that kind in your own pin-head brain, I’ll sure be -c’mpelled to do all sorts of things to you. An’ when I’m finished with -you the Staatz family’ll be able to indulge in that alloorin’ pastime -called ‘Put Papa Together!’ _You_ fer Leader, eh? Say! I’m flatterin’ -you a whole heap when I call you——” - -“Let him alone, Billy,” intervened Bourke, as the startled Staatz backed -toward the wall, ever followed by that belligerent, blue-jawed little -face so close to his own—“let him alone. He’s talking straight. I for -one——” - -“You for one,” sounded a sneering voice from the dressing-room doorway -behind them, “you for one, friend Bourke, were starving on the street -when I took you in and fed you and got your kids out of the Protectory -and gave you a job.” - -At the first word the mumbled assent to Staatz’s and Bourke’s opinion, -that had welled up in a dozen throats, died into sacred silence. - -“You for another, ’Dolphe Staatz,” went on Caleb, still standing on the -threshold and viewing the group of malcontents with a cold disgust. “You -were on the road to the ‘pen’ for knowing too much about that ‘queer -paper’ joint on Willow Street, when I got the indictment quashed and -squared things with the district attorney and put you on your feet. - -“Caine,” turning to the _Star’s_ editor, “I think I heard _you_ agreeing -among the rest, didn’t I, hey? Diff’r’t sound from the kind you made -when you come to me twelve years ago and cried and said the _Star_ was -all in, and would I save you from going bankrupt by taking it over? And -there’s plenty more of you here with the same sort of story to tell.” - -He strode forward and was among them, forcing one after another to meet -his eye, dominating by his very presence the men who had sought to -dethrone him. In his hour of stress all the old power, the splendid -rulership of men, surged back upon the Railroader. He stood a king amid -awestruck serfs, a stern schoolmaster among a naughty band of scared -children. - -“Some one spoke about being tired of wearing my collar,” he said. “Is -there a man here who put on that collar against his will, or a man who -didn’t beg for it? Is there a man who hasn’t profited by it? A man who -hasn’t risen as I have risen and benefited when I benefited? Don’t stand -there, mumchance, like a lot of dago section-hands! You were ready -enough to speak before I came in. Why aren’t you, now? Is it because -you’re so sorry for this poor, broken old man, who talks too much and -ain’t fit to run the Machine any longer, eh? Spit it out, Staatz! If -you’re qualifying for my shoes you got to learn to look less like a -whipped puppy when you’re spoke to. Stand up and state your grievance -like a man, you Dutch crook that I lifted out of jail! You, too, Bourke! -Where’s your tongue? And all the rest of you that was on the point of -choosing a new Leader.” - -No one answered. The Boss’s instinct power rather than his mere words -held them sulky and dumb. Over each was creeping the old subservience to -the peerless will that had so long shaped the Mountain State’s destinies -and theirs. - -“I talk too much, eh?” mocked Conover. “Well, to prove that’s so, I’m -going to give you curs a little Sunday-school talk right now. You say I -cut out the old methods, this campaign. I did. And why did I do it? -Because if these reformers had thought they were licked unfair there’s -so many of ’em they’d ’a’ carried the case to every court in the land, -and ’a’ drawed the whole country’s op’ra-glasses onto this p’ticular -Machine, and started another such wave as swamped Dick Croker and -Tammany in ’94. And then where’d the Machine and you fellers have been? -There’s got to be reform in a State just so often, just like there’s got -to be croup in a nursery. Every other State’s had it. And each time -they’ve fished up something queer about their local Machine, and that -same Machine’s never been so strong again. Well, the Mountain State’s -turn for reform was overdue. It had to come. And this was the time. I -thought maybe I could beat ’em on their own ground. If I had, that’d ’a’ -ended reform here, forever and amen. Even if I was beat I knew the -people would get so sick of one term of reform, they’d come screeching -to us to take ’em back. And then’s the time my kid-glove stunts of this -campaign would shine out fine against a rotten reform administration. -The Machine would escape any investigation of the kind that follers a -crooked campaign, and we’d simply be begged to take everything in sight -for the rest of our lives. Maybe you think a chance of one term out of -office was too much to pay for such a future cinch?” - -The speech—reasons and all—was improvised as he spoke. And again it was -the Boss’s manner and his brutal magnetism rather than his words that -carried conviction. - -“Because I didn’t print this all out in big letters and simple words -that you dolts could understand,” resumed Caleb, “you forget the holes -I’ve got you and the party out of in the past, and go grouching about my -‘breaking up.’ Maybe my brain _is_ softening a bit, just to keep company -with the ninnies I travel with. But it’s still a _brain_. And that’s -more’n anyone else here can boast of having. Now, I’ve showed you how -the land lays. Which of _you_ would ’a’ carried the Machine over it any -safer, and how would he’d ’a’ done it? _You_, for instance, Staatz?” - -The big German sheepishly grumbled something unintelligible under his -breath. - -“Sounds about as clear and sensible as most of your ideas, ’Dolphe,” -commented Caleb. “You’ll have to learn more words’n that before you’re -Boss. Now, then,” he resumed, throwing aside his stolid bearing and -hammering imperiously on the table with his riding crop, “we’ll proceed -to choose a new Leader. It’s irregular, but there’s easy a quorum of -district leaders here. Who’ll it be that steps into Caleb Conover’s -shoes? Who’ll say he’s strong enough to hold the reins he thinks I’m too -weak to handle? Who’ll it be? I lifted the party and every man here from -the dirt to a higher, stronger place than anyone dreamed they _could_ be -lifted. Who’ll hold ’em there now that I stand aside? Speak up! Choose -your leader!” - -“_CONOVER!_” yelled Billy Shevlin ecstatically. - -“Shut up, you mangy little tough!” fiercely ordered Caleb; but a -half-score of eager voices had caught up the cry. About the Railroader -pressed the district leaders, smiting him on the back, striving to grab -his hands, over and over again vociferating his name; crying out on him -to stand by them, to lead them, to forgive their ingratitude and folly. - -And in the centre of the exultant babel stood Caleb Conover, unmoved -save for a sneering smile that twisted one corner of his hard mouth, the -only man present who was not carried away by that crazy wave of reactive -enthusiasm. - -“Staatz,” observed the Railroader, as the hubbub at length died down, -“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a wee peckle longer for that leadership. -But cheer up. Everything comes to the man who waits—till no one else -wants it. I’ve got one thing more to say, and then my ‘talking’ will be -done for good, as far as you men are concerned. I had a kennel of dogs -once, on my place here. A whole lot of pedigreed, high-priced whelps -that it cost me a fortune to buy. I thought maybe I’d enjoy their -society. It was so much sensibler’n politicians’. But somehow after a -while I got tired of ’em. For they didn’t take to me, not from the -first. Animals don’t, as a rule. Every now and then when I’d go to their -enclosure they’d forget to mind me, and once or twice they combined and -tried to get me down and throttle me. Of course I could lash ’em into -minding, and I could lash all the fight out of ’em when they started for -my throat. And I did. But by and by I got tired of having to lick the -brutes every few days in order to make ’em treat me decent. They weren’t -worth the trouble. So I got rid of them. Just as I’m going to get rid of -you fellers, and for the same good reason. I resign. I’m out of politics -for good. As far as I’m concerned the Machine is smashed for all time. -Now clear out of here, the whole kennelful of you. Be on your way!” - -Stilling the furious volley of protest that had arisen on all sides at -his announcement, Caleb flung open the outer door of his study. Several -of the dazed politicians essayed to speak, but the quick gleam in their -self-deposed Leader’s eye halted the words ere they were spoken. -Obedient, cowed to the last, the Machine’s officers and henchmen finally -yielded to that look and to the peremptory gesture of the Railroader’s -arm. One by one they filed out, Staatz in the van, Bourke with averted -gaze slinking along in the rear. - -With a grunt of ultimate dismissal Conover closed the door. - -Glancing over the scene of the late conflict before departing for his -ride, his glance fell on a solitary, ill-dressed figure seated at one -corner of the deserted table. - -“Billy!” exclaimed Conover, exasperated, “why didn’t you get out with -the rest!” - -“’Cause I don’t belong with that cheapskate push. I belong here with -you, Boss.” - -“But I’m out of it, you idiot. Out of the game for good and all. I’m -leaving Granite.” - -“When do we start?” - -Conover looked at his little henchman in annoyance that merged into a -vexed laugh. - -“I tell you,” he repeated, “I’m out of politics for good.” - -“So’m I, then,” cheerfully responded Billy. “D’ye know, Boss, I’m kind -o’ glad. Sometimes I’ve suspicioned politics wasn’t—well, wasn’t quite -square. Maybe it’s best that two pious men like us is out of it. Now, -say, Mister Conover,” he hurried on more seriously, “I know what you -mean. You want to shake the whole bunch. You’re sore on ’em all. You’re -goin’ to cut out Granite, too, after the lemon you’ve been handed. But -whatever your game is an’ wherever you spiel it, it won’t do you no harm -to have Billy Shevlin along with you as a ‘also-ran.’ Now, will it? Why, -Boss, I’ve worked for you ever since I was no bigger’n—no bigger’n -Staatz’s chances of becomin’ a white man. An’ I ain’t goin’ to cut out -the old job at this time of day. If it ain’t Caleb Conover, Governor, I -work for, then it’ll be Caleb Conover, Something-or-other. An’ that’s -good enough for W. Shevlin. So let’s let it go at that. I won’t bother -you no more to-night, ’cause I see you’re on edge. But I’m comin’ around -in the mornin’. An’ when I come I’m comin’ for keeps. Just like I’ve -always done. So long, Boss.” - -“Poor old Billy!” muttered Conover as the Shevlin slipped out too -hurriedly to permit of his Leader’s framing any reply to what was quite -the longest speech the henchman had ever made. “He’ll never make a hit -in politics till he gets rid of some of that loyalty. Next to gratitood -there ain’t another vice that hampers a man so bad.” - -Then, dismissing the recent events from his mind, the Railroader ran -downstairs, lightly as a boy, and to the outer entrance, where -Dunderberg was plunging and pivoting in the grip of two grooms. A third -groom, mounted on a quieter steed, sat well beyond range of the -stallion’s lashing heels. - -Late as it was, Mrs. Conover was still up. Caleb brushed past her in the -hall, cutting short the feeble remonstrances with which she always -prefaced one of his wild rides. - -“Oh, Caleb!” she pleaded as she followed him out on the broad veranda. -“Not to-night, dear! Just give it up this once, to please ME! He’s—he’s -such a terrible horse. I never saw him so wild as he is now. The men can -scarcely hold him. Oh, please——” - -[Illustration: “All right!” shouted Conover, in glorious excitement. -“All right! Let him go! Never mind the hat.” Page 313.] - -But the Railroader was already preparing to mount. - -“Don’t you worry, old girl,” he called back over his shoulder; “he’s -none too wild for my taste. There never was a horse yet could get the -best of me.” - -The wind was rising again. It whistled across the grounds, ruffling the -puddles and stirring the dead leaves. A whiff of it caught Conover’s hat -as he fought his way to the plunging stallion’s back. The exultance of -coming battle was already upon both rider and horse. - -“Your hat, sir!” called one of the grooms, as another sprang forward to -catch the falling headgear. But Caleb had no mind to wait for trifles. -The night wind was in his face, the furious horse whirling and rearing -between his vice-like knee-grip. - -“All right!” shouted Conover in glorious excitement, signalling to the -struggling groom to release the bit. “All right! Let him go! Never mind -the hat. Come on, Giles.” - -Dunderberg, his head freed, leaped forward as from a catapult. Master -and man thundered away down the drive, and were swallowed in the -blackness. The double roar of flying hoofs grew fainter, then was lost -in the solemn hush of the autumn night. - - - - - CHAPTER XV - DUNDERBERG SOLVES THE DIFFICULTY - - -Clive Standish had spent the evening at the Civic League headquarters, -awaiting reports of the day’s battle. The rooms were full of the -League’s minor candidates and officials, with a fair sprinkling of -women. Anice Lanier, chaperoned by her aunt, with whom she now lived, -was there, her high color and the light in her big eyes alone betraying -the fearful suspense under which she labored. - -The belated returns, which should have been telegraphed at once to the -League headquarters, were still further delayed by the fact that the one -wire now running into town had been preëmpted by Conover. Hence, it was -not until well after one o’clock that Clive received definite news of -his own election. Throngs of friends and supporters had, on receipt of -the final figures, flocked about him with congratulations and good -wishes. To all he had given seeming heed, yet among the crush he saw but -one face, read in one pair of brown eyes the praise and infinite -gladness he sought. - -And as soon as he could he departed with Anice and her aunt for the -latter’s home, where a little _souper à trois_ was to celebrate the -victory. - -They formed a jolly trio about the dainty supper table. Late as it was, -all were far too excited to feel sleepy or wish to curtail by one minute -the little feast of triumph. - -“To the next Governor of the Mountain State!” proclaimed Anice solemnly, -as she lifted her glass. “To be drunk standing, and with—No, no, Clive,” -she reproved as the Governor-elect also rose. “_You_ mustn’t drink it. -It’s——” - -“I’m not going to,” retorted Standish indignantly. “I’m getting up to -look for a dictionary.” - -“But what on earth——” - -“I want to find the feminine for Governor. And——” - -A whirr of the telephone bell broke in on his explanation. - -“Some stupid political message for you,” hazarded Anice, taking down the -receiver. “Yes, this is 318 R. Yes. Yes, this is Miss La—Oh!” with a -changed intonation, “Mrs. Conover?” - -A longer pause. Then Anice gave a little exclamation of sympathy, -listened a moment and said: - -“Yes, we will come at once. But I hope you’ll find it’s not as bad as -you think. Don’t break down. I’m sure it will be all right.” - -“What is it?” asked Clive and her aunt in a breath. - -“I’m not quite sure,” answered the girl. “She was so upset I could -hardly understand her. Besides, the wires are still in bad condition. -But it seems some accident or injury has happened to her husband. Gerald -is away, and there is no one the poor woman can turn to, so she -telephoned for me. And, Clive, she wants to know if you won’t come, too. -Please, do. You’re the only relative she has. And she’s so unhappy.” - -“Just as you wish,” acceded Standish, with no great willingness, “but -I’ll be sorry to have to-night’s happiness marred by another row with -Conover.” - -“I gather from what she says he is in no condition for a ‘row’ with -anyone. I told her we’d come at once. Please hurry, dear. I hate to -think of that frightened little woman trying to meet any sort of a -crisis alone.” - - -In the great, comfortless drawing-room of the Mausoleum, on a couch -hastily pushed into the centre of the room under the chandelier, lay -Caleb Conover, Railroader. Two doctors, who had been working over him, -had now drawn back a few paces and were conferring in grave undertones. -At the foot of the couch, clad only in nightgown and slippers, as she -had been aroused from bed, her sparse hair tight-clumped in a semicircle -of kid curlers, Mrs. Conover crouched in a moaning, rocking heap. -Scared, whispering groups of servants blocked the doorways or peered -curiously in from behind curtains. The air was thick with the pungent -smell of antiseptics. - -The Railroader, lying motionless beneath the unshaded glare of a -half-dozen gas jets, was swathed of head and bandaged of arm. He was -coatless, and his shirt and waistcoat were thrown open disclosing his -mighty chest. Across the couch-end his feet, still booted and spurred, -protruded stiffly as a manikin’s. - -It was upon this scene that Anice and Clive entered. At sight of the -girl, Mrs. Conover scrambled to her feet, and with a wild outburst of -scared sobs, scuttled forward to meet her, the bedside slippers -shuffling and sliding grotesquely along the polished floor. Anice took -the panic-stricken, weeping creature into her arms and whispered what -words of comfort and encouragement she could. - -Meanwhile Clive, not desiring to break in on the doctors’ conference, -turned to the doorway again and asked a question of one of the servants. -For reply the groom, Giles, was thrust forward and obliged to repeat, -with dolorous unction, for the tenth time within an hour, the story of -the accident. - -“You see, sir,” he said, lowering his voice as though in the room with a -corpse, “Mr. Conover sent word for me to ride with him. We started off -at a dead run, and my horse couldn’t noways keep up with Dunderberg, so -I follows along behind as fast as I could, but I couldn’t keep up to the -right distance between us, to save me. Mr. Conover turns out of the -drive, up Pompton Av’noo, sir, and on past the Humason place, me -a-followin’ as fast as I could. All of a sudden I catches up. It’s in -that dark, woody patch of road just this side the quarries. The way I -happens to catch up is because Dunderberg was havin’ one of them -tantrums of his an’ Mr. Conover was givin’ it to him for all he was -worth, crop an’ spur, an’ Dunderberg a-whirlin’ around and passagin’ an’ -tryin’ his best to rear. An’ every time that horse’s forelegs goes up in -the air Mr. Conover’d bring his fist down between his ears an’ down’d -come Dunderberg on all-fours again. They was takin’ up all the road, -wide as it is, an’ Dunderberg was lashin’ an’ plungin’ like he was -crazy, an’ Mr. Conover stickin’ on like he was glued there an’ sendin’ -in the spurs and the whacks of the crop till you’d ’a’ thought he’d kill -the brute. Then, Dunderberg makes a dive ahead an’ gets out alongside -the quarry-pit an’ tries to rear again. Right on the edge of the pit.” - -“Yes,” said Clive excitedly, as the groom paused, “and then?” - -“Why, sir, I can’t rightly tell, the light was so bad. If it’d been -anyone else but Mr. Conover, I’d say he lost his nerve, an’ when -Dunderberg reared up he forget to bring him down like he’d done those -other times, or maybe he _did_ hit the horse between the ears again an’ -didn’t hit hard enough. Anyhow, over goes Dunderberg backward—clean -fifteen feet drop—into the quarry. An’ Mr. Conover under him. An’ -then——” - -But Clive had moved away. The doctors had finished their consultation, -and one of them—Dr. Hawes, the Conover family physician—had again -approached that silent figure on the couch. - -At sight of Standish the second doctor came forward to meet the young -man. - -“No,” he whispered, reading the unspoken question in Clive’s face, “no -possible hope. He can’t last over an hour longer at most. Another man, -crushed as he was, would have been killed at once. As it is, he probably -won’t recover consciousness. Nothing but his tremendous vitality holds -the shreds of life in him so long as this.” - -“Does his wife know——?” - -“She is not in a state to be told. I wish we could persuade her to leave -the room. Perhaps Miss Lanier——” - -A gesture from Dr. Hawes drew them toward the couch. - -“He is coming to his senses,” said the family physician, adding under -his breath, so that only his colleague and Clive could hear; “it is the -final rally. Not one man in a thousand——” - -But Clive had caught Anice’s eye and beckoned her to lead Mrs. Conover -to the side of the couch. - -The Railroader’s face, set like carven granite, began to twitch. The -rigid mouth relaxed its set whiteness and the eyelids flickered. Mrs. -Conover, at these signs of life, prepared for a fresh attack of -hysteria, but a gentle, firm pressure of Anice’s hand in hers -forestalled the outburst. With an aggrieved look at the girl, Letty -again turned her scared attention to her husband. - -Dr. Hawes was bending once more over the prostrate man, seeking to -employ a restorative. Now he rose, and as he did so, Caleb’s eyes -opened. - -There was no bewilderment, no surprise nor pain in the calm glance that -swept his garish surroundings. - -“Is he suffering?” whispered Anice. “Or——?” - -“Horribly,” returned Dr. Hawes in the same tone. “He——” - -The shrewd, pale eyes that scorned to show trace of physical or mental -anguish, slowly took in the group beside the couch, resting first on the -two physicians, then on Anice Lanier. - -As he saw and recognized Anice the first change came over the dying -man’s hard-set features. A look of perplexity that merged into glad -surprise lighted his whole face, smoothing from it with magic touch -every line of care, thought or time; transfiguring it into the -countenance of a happy boy. Long he sought and held her sympathetic -glance, that look of youth and gladness growing and deepening on his -face, while all around stood silent and marvelling. - -It was Mrs. Conover who broke the spell. - -“Oh, Caleb!” she wailed querulously, “you _said_ no horse could get the -better of you. And now——” - -At her words the beatific light was gone from Conover’s eyes. In its -stead came a gleam of grim, ironical amusement. Then, his gaze -travelling past Anice to Clive Standish, his brows contracted in a frown -of displeasure. But this, too, faded. The swathed head settled lower -among the cushions, the powerful body seemed to shrink and flatten. The -eyes closed, and Conover lay very still. - -His wife, divining for the first time the actual state of affairs, flung -herself forward on her knees beside the silent figure, her sobs scaling -to a crescendo cry of terror. - -Slowly Caleb Conover opened his eyes. Reluctantly, as though drawn back -by sheer force from the very threshold of the wide portals of Rest, his -spirit paused for an instant longer in its earthly abode—paused and -flared up, as a dying spark, in the Railroader’s stiffening face. - -For a moment his eyes—already wide with the awful mystery of the -Beyond—strayed over his kneeling wife; over the sparse locks bunched up -in that halo of kid curlers; over the pudgy shape so mercilessly -outlined by the sheer nightgown; over the tear-swollen red eyes, the -blotched cheeks, the quivering, pursed-up mouth. - -“Letty,” he panted, in tired disgust, “you look—more like a measly -rabbit—every day!” - - - THE END - ------------------------------------------------------------------------- - - - - - TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES - - - 1. P. 262, changed “its waist, it a blamed” to “its waist, is a - blamed”. - 2. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in - spelling. - 3. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed. - 4. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_. - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CALEB CONOVER, RAILROADER *** - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the -United States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part -of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project -Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm -concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, -and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following -the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use -of the Project Gutenberg trademark. 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