III.
That same evening Warren Hammond arose from a hurried dinner and gave his pretty young wife an affectionate goodnight kiss.
“Don’t wait up for me, ladybird,” he warned her. “I’ve got to speak at two meetings, and I may be out till all hours.”
“I wish I could go with you to your first meeting. I’ll be thinking of you. I’m so proud of my big boy.”
“Even if he does traffic with the powers of darkness and employ black magic to make himself invisible,” he laughed.
“I think you’re mean, Warren, not to tell me the truth about that mysterious radio speech. I think everybody there must have been drunk as one of the papers hinted, and you don’t want to let me know it.”
Hammond laughed boyishly.
“Why, it was so simple I’m ashamed to tell it. When I do tell you, you’ll be ashamed to think you didn’t guess it.”
“But do you think it’s nice to fib to everybody about it?”
“Nary a fib,” he denied. “I’ve told nothing but the truth, so help me. Now stop worrying and go to bed early.”
He kissed her again and was off.
But Warren Hammond did not get to his first meeting. In fact, he got no more than a scant hundred yards down the narrow country road that led from his suburban home into the capital city.
He was just shifting his gears into first when he felt the front end of the car swaying violently back and forth. He threw out the clutch and jammed on the brakes, but it was too late.
The front of the car lurched over to one side, dropped to the ground, and plowed down into the ditch at the roadside. He was thrown forward felt a stinging blow on the head, and then went unconscious.
A few minutes later a passing car saw the wreck and stopped. Hammond came to in the ditch beside his car to find a neighbor applying first aid.
Besides the blow on the head, which had left an ugly welt across his scalp, both legs were broken. Fortunately the glass in his car was nonbreakable, and he had suffered no disfiguring cuts.
The cause of the accident proved to be a loose front wheel, which had come off, completely tipping the car half over. It had all occurred so suddenly that he had no clear notion of just what had happened to him, but he assumed that his head had hit one of the top braces, and that his legs had been broken when he was thrown over the door.
Never at any time did he suspect that his accident had been inspired and carefully planned.
But a few days later Jim Neenan, with a smile more deeply insinuating than ever, again called at the offices of Thomas Forsythe. He carried with him a copy of an afternoon paper just off the press.
“Perhaps you’ve noticed that I’ve made good on that radio campaign stuff,” he announced, pointing to a story on the front page.
Forsythe took the paper and read an announcement by Hammond’s political manager. The latter would be confined to his room and bed until long after the State convention, his doctor had predicted, but would doubtless be restored to complete health by election time.
In the meantime the physician saw no reason why the patient should not carry on such mental labor as the pre-convention campaign required, as soon as he had completely recovered from the first shock of the accident. It had therefore been arranged that he should deliver a limited number of speeches by radio, from a telephone in his room connecting with the broadcasting station.
He would also have a final statement to deliver at the convention in the same manner, assuming the privilege of a regularly elected delegate and a leading candidate for head of the ticket.
“How’s that?” Neenan gloated. “Barney tells me you are going to swing back with a big show of doing the sporting thing by agreeing to the same program yourself. So we’ve got our wish, and little Jimmie’s come for his pay.”
“How’s that?”
“Wasn’t I to get one grand if I arranged it so that Hammond would consent to a radio campaign?”
Forsythe was frankly puzzled for a moment, then saw a light.
“Look here, you young thug, do you mean you deliberately wrecked Hammond’s car? Suppose you’d killed him! Good Lord, did you think I meant anything like that? We talked about persuading.”
Neenan grinned.
“We’re practical politicians, ain’t we? There’s different kinds of persuadin’. Mind, I’m not confessin’ anything, but I leave it to your judgment if that looks just like an accident. There wasn’t a chance in the world of his being killed, with a guy hidden in the back of the car to stop him if he got to goin’ too fast with his wheel loosened up.
“Wasn’t it funny he wasn’t marred up, nothing wrong but a little tap on the head and a couple of broken legs that laid him up proper without any permanent hurt? He never guessed that he got that biff on the bean from a blackjack from behind him, and that his legs was broken nice and quiet by hand afterwards.”
“You cold-blooded devil!” Forsythe began, but checked himself on second thought. After all he couldn’t afford to antagonize this crafty little man.
“Look here,” he went on. “I haven’t got a thousand on hand just now, and I didn’t mean just that, but here’s a hundred cash on account, and I’ll make good on the two thousand all right if you can show you’ve put over my nomination without any more physical brutality and no danger of a comeback.”
There was a little argument over it, but in the end Neenan left with his hundred and a promise that he’d earn the big money yet