"Then you will take up the case?" urged the latter eagerly, forgetting both his campaign manager and his campaign manners, and leaning forward almost like a prisoner in the dock to catch the words of the foreman of the jury. "You will trace down the forger of those pictures before it is too late?"
"I haven't said I'll do that yet," answered Craig measuredly. "I haven't even said I'd take up the case. Politics is a new game to me, Mr. Travis. If I go into this thing I want to go into it and stay in it - well, you know how you lawyers put it, with clean hands. On one condition I'll take the matter up, and on only one."
"Name it," cried Travis anxiously.
"Of course, having been retained by you," continued Craig with provoking slowness, "it is not reasonable to suppose that if I find - how shall I put it - bluntly, yes? - if I find that the story of Hanford has some - er - foundation, it is not reasonable to suppose that I should desert you and go over to the other side. Neither is it to be supposed that I will continue and carry such a thing through for you regardless of truth. What I ask is to have a free hand, to be able to drop the case the moment I cannot proceed further in justice to myself, drop it, and keep my mouth shut. You understand? These are my conditions and no less."
"And you think you can make good?" questioned Bennett rather sceptically. "You are willing to risk it? You don't think it would be better to wait until after the election is won?"
"You have heard my conditions," reiterated Craig.
"Done," broke in Travis. "I'm going to fight it out, Bennett. If we get in wrong by dickering with them at the start it may be worse for us in the end. Paying amounts to confession."
Bennett shook his head dubiously. "I'm afraid this will suit
McLoughlin's purpose just as well. Photographs are like statistics.
They don't lie unless the people who make them do. But it's hard
to tell what a liar can accomplish with either in an election."
"Say' Dean, you're not going to desert me?" reproached Travis.
"You're not offended at my kicking over the traces, are you?"
Bennett rose, placed a hand on Travis's shoulder, and grasped his other. "Wesley," he said earnestly, "I wouldn't desert you even if the pictures were true."