“Nothing is impossible. I must see him at once. The matter is one of the very gravest importance. After the cabinet meeting will be too late.”
The secretary hesitated. “Can you tell me your business?” he asked.
“I should rather not. You know, Mr. Loren, none better, that I am no friend of the President’s. That I came here at all is evidence that my errand is important. That I come at such a time ought to be evidence that it is of national and not merely of personal importance. I want one minute’s speech with the President. After that, he can go back to the cabinet meeting—if he wants to. This is serious, Mr. Secretary! Very serious!”
The secretary rose briskly. When he gave way, he gave way absolutely. There was no half-way surrender about Loren. “I’ll tell the President,” he conceded, as he passed to an inner door; “on your head be the consequences.”
In a moment the President bustled in. Curtly he nodded to McNew. “You want to see me, Mr. McNew?” he questioned, brusquely.
“Yes! Read this, please.”
Neither man troubled to show much courtesy. Each hated the other with a cordial hatred that caused any meeting between them to resemble that between two bulldogs ready yet hesitating to fly at each other. McNew had published vitriolic things about the President and the President had retorted more calmly but more bitterly. Each really considered the other a menace to the country.
Further, the President was vexed at being interrupted. Theoretically cabinet meetings are affairs of tremendous dignity, not to be lightly intruded upon. Actually, if rumor speaks true, their importance is sometimes in inverse ratio to their secrecy.
Nevertheless, the President took the paper that McNew extended to him, and ran his eye down it. The look of suspicion faded from his face; and he read it again more slowly. Then he looked up.
“The importance of this lies more in what it infers than in what it says,” he asserted, sternly; “and both depend on who wrote it. I do not recognize the signature.”