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——”