"I wish it had been Mr. Stoner himself who fell through those rotten stairs!" stormed Mary, her face white with indignation and her eyes blazing angrily. "I never felt such a mighty wrath rise up in me before! I could stop right here on the street corner and call out his name so all the town could hear. I'd like to shout 'Here's your model citizen! Here's the kind, benevolent man who buys your praise with his gifts to the poor. Look what he has done for the Reillys and for Dena!' It isn't as if he didn't know what condition the place is in. He'd been warned that the steps were unsafe, even before the first accident. And to think he let it go on ten years after it had been condemned and cost one life—"
She stopped abruptly, finding words futile to express her feelings, and Mrs. Blythe, taking the crumpled sheet, hastily scanned it. They were turning into Main Street when she finished, and with a glance at the clock in the front of the car she told the chauffeur to go around by Mr. Blythe's office.
"It may make us a little late for the first speech," she said, "but I must ask Mr. Blythe's advice. I shall tell this story of the two accidents of course. It will illustrate one point I am trying to make better than anything else I could say. But I don't know how personal I ought to make it. It would be a centre shot at the enemy, and might help to defeat Stoner in the election day after to-morrow if I could mention him by name, and emphasize the big rents he collects from those working girls and factory men, but it may not be wise for me to do it, in the interest of the bill. It might antagonize all his party, as he is one of the most influential of the local bosses. I must ask Mr. Blythe just how far I can go."
Two minutes later they stopped at the office, and Mary, watching from her seat in the car, saw Mrs. Blythe go in and the stenographer rise hurriedly from her desk beside the big front window, and come forward. Evidently what she was telling Mrs. Blythe was very unexpected and agitating, for she came out looking pale and frightened, and spoke only the one word, "Home," as she sank back limply in her seat.
"Dudley was taken suddenly ill a little while ago," she explained in hurried gasps. "Miss Nellie says it was something like an apoplectic stroke. They have been telephoning everywhere to find me. It must have happened just as I left the house. They have taken him home in an ambulance. Hurry, Hardy!"
Except for Mary's shocked exclamation of sympathy and alarm, no word was spoken until the house was reached. Mary ran up the stairs with Mrs. Blythe, stood a moment in the upper hall when the other left her, and then went on to the alcove at the end, which had been fitted up as a little office. There she sat down to wait. Three physicians, personal friends of Dudley Blythe, were in the room with him. The housemaid was running back and forth getting what was necessary, and the next door neighbor had come in.
There was nothing that Mary could do, and the moments of waiting seemed endless. A programme of the afternoon's meeting lay on the desk, and from time to time she glanced at it nervously, and then at the clock. The time for the first speech passed. The second one must have been well under way when Mrs. Blythe came out into the hall and saw her sitting in the alcove. Mary started up and went towards her impulsively, both hands out.
"Oh, isn't there something I can do?" she whispered.
"Not in there," was the answer in a low tone. "The doctors give me every encouragement to believe that he will come out of this all right, but I don't know—I'm so frightened and upset."
She passed her hand across her eyes, as if trying to remember something, then exclaimed, "It's just come to me! I had forgotten about that meeting. It's almost time for me to go on to speak, but, of course, I can't do that now. I couldn't leave him in the critical condition he is in, no matter what is at stake. There's only one thing to do, and that is to send you in my place. You'll have to go, Mary, and tell them why I couldn't come, and explain what it is that—"