“No! no! no!”
Heartened by this confession of weakness on Nolan’s part, they kept on yelling lustily:
“No! no! no!”
They even laughed, and Muldoon smote the table, to declare the motion lost.
On the forty-seventh ballot, one of the Simmons votes went over to Conway, and there was a faint cheer. On the forty-eighth, one of the Simmons votes went to Underwood, and parity was restored. On the forty-ninth, Underwood gained another of Simmons’ votes—Nolan, it seemed, had promised to get him on the janitor’s pay-roll in the state house—and the vote was tied. This ballot stood:
| First | Second | Fifth | ||
| Ward | Ward | Ward | Total | |
| Conway | — | 10 | 22 | 32 |
| Underwood | 21 | 4 | 7 | 32 |
| Simmons | — | 5 | — | 5 |
The Simmons men were holding out, waiting to throw their strength to the winner. When the sixty-seventh ballot had been taken, Muldoon, squinting in the miserable light, at the secretary’s figures, hit the table with the chair leg and said:
“On this ballot Conway receives 32, Underwood 32, Simmons 5. There being no choice, you will prepare your ballots for another vote.”
Just then one of the Conway men from the Second Ward left his place, and touched one of Nolan’s fellows in the First Ward delegation—Donahue—on the shoulder. Donahue started. The man whispered in his ear, and returned to his delegation, keeping his eye on Donahue. Underwood looked on breathlessly. Nolan, revolving slowly, held his hat for every vote—last of all for Donahue’s. The man dropped his folded ballot into the hat and hung his head. Nolan calmly picked the ballot out of the hat and gave it back to Donahue, who looked up in affected surprise.
“What’s the trouble, Malachi?” he said as innocently as he could. He was not much of an actor.