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.