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.”