"I'll say nothing about it," Pauline assured him.
Larkin came down from Indianapolis the next day and registered at the Palace Hotel. As soon as he could escape from the politicians and newspaper correspondents in the hotel office, he went by a devious route to a room on the floor below his own and, knocking, was admitted to Culver and Merriweather. He nodded to Dumont's political agent, then said to Culver: "You've got the dough?"
"Yes," Culver answered, in his best imitation of the tone of the man of large affairs. "In twenties, fifties and hundreds."
"I hope, mighty few hundreds," said Larkin. "The boys are kind o' shy about changing hundred-dollar bills. It seems to attract attention to them." He had large, dreamy, almost sentimental, brown eyes that absurdly misrepresented his character, or, at least, his dominant characteristics. His long, slightly bent nose and sharp chin and thin, tight mouth were more truthful.
"How do things look, Joe?" asked Merriweather.
"Yes, Mr. Dumont asked me to telegraph him after I'd talked with you," said Culver. "Has Scarborough made much headway?"
"I must say, he's raised a darn sight more hell than I thought he would," Larkin answered.
"The people seem to be in a nasty mood about corruption. Darn their fool souls, as if they wouldn't be in the rottenest kind of a fix, with no property and no jobs, if we didn't keep the ignorant vote under control and head off such firebrands as this fellow Scarborough."
"Got any figgers?" demanded Merriweather, who had listened to this tirade with an expression suggesting cynicism. He thought, and he knew Joe Larkin thought, politics a mere game of chance—you won or you didn't win; and principles and oratory and likes and dislikes and resentments were so much "hot air." If the "oil can" had been with Scarborough, Merriweather would have served him as cheerfully and as loyally as—well, as would Joe Larkin in those circumstances.
Larkin wrenched a big bunch of letters and papers from the sagged inside pocket of his slouchy sack coat; after some fumbling and sorting, he paused upon the back of a dirty envelope.