“Wait a minute. I want to think.” Helm went to the window and stared out into the capitol grounds. Sayler seated himself, lit a cigar and read a newspaper. Never had cake of his been spoiled by messing at the baking but unbaked dough. Helm took much more than the one minute he had asked for. When he turned, it was to say with the composure of a man under control:
“Thank you, Sayler—you’ve done me a good turn. I am nothing of a lady’s man. If you hadn’t interfered, I’d have done something that as you say would have been contemptible. I’m ready when you are.”
Rarely is there a successful man—even the crude seeker of petty power rising to foreman of the gang of laborers—who has not, however tough his skin or hide may seem to be, a supersensitive nervous system, more acute than that of ordinary men and women, though they may pretend to the most delicate sensitiveness. Sayler was as sensitive as he seemed phlegmatic. He never failed to sense the mood of the person he was with. Therefore, he dropped the subject of Eleanor and talked speeches.
Helm, another man of that same acute sensibility, responded as if he had no concern in the world beyond discussion of how speeches should be worked up and delivered. Sayler, deeply interested in the subject and in the man, led him on to describe his own method, this so sympathetically—rather than adroitly—that Helm took from his pocket an old letter on the blank side of whose single sheet he had outlined the “backbone” of a speech he was to make against a perpetual grant of a big trolley franchise. The franchise meant, of course, the creation of a huge mass of stocks and bonds which would enable many generations of a certain group of the upper class to live luxuriously by taking impudent toll from the masses in exchange for no service rendered.
“I shall take up the franchise in a series of speeches,” explained Helm. “In each speech I’ll make one point and only one. That’s always my method. If you want to dazzle a crowd, you make a speech full of good points. But if you want to convince them, you take one point and drive it home with a succession of blows, all on the head of that same nail.”
Sayler nodded. “Won’t you let me see that ‘backbone’ as you call it?” he asked.
“Nail is a better name,” said Helm.
“Nail for the lid of the coffin of the trolley franchise grab,” said Sayler.
“I hope so,” said Helm.
“So do I,” rejoined Sayler.