X.
The doings of Edgar Braine, during the few weeks following his negotiations with Waverley Cooke, were a riddle to those who knew of them; but Thebes was so well used to his puzzling methods that the little ripple of talk raised at this time did not swell into a wave of chatter, as it might in another man's case.
In the first place, he borrowed a very considerable sum of money from Hildreth, and insisted upon so arranging the terms of the loan, that he could repay the money at any time after ninety days, but should be free to retain it for a year upon renewals, if that suited him better.
Hildreth was willing enough to lend him the money, but he speculated a little as to what Braine was going to do with so large a sum. He did not find out.
Next, Braine jauntily upset all the plans for the marriage, which he and Helen had so laboriously formed. It was on the evening of the special charter election that he did this. Up to that day he had worked ceaselessly at the task of persuading the people of Thebes that the best thing they could do with their one valuable municipal possession was to give it away to the Central Railroad Company. He had found time in the interval, however, to see Helen almost every day. He had not contented himself with supporting the measure in the Enterprise, but had organized support for it in quarters where support was not to be expected, and in quarters in which it was supposed that he of all men had least influence. The machinery of his own political party was easy to handle, but Braine boldly undertook to control that of the opposing party as well.
A city clerk, to replace the one who had defaulted and run away, was to be chosen by the City Council, in which Braine's own party was dominant. Braine seized upon this circumstance as his lever. He boldly offered the place to the leader of the opposite party in return for that party's support of the levee transfer proposal, which, being in no respect a political question, men of either party might advocate or oppose at will. Having made the bargain he set to work to induce the aldermen of his own party to carry it out. He reckoned upon their venality as a stronger motive than their party zeal, and his reckoning was not amiss.
"Hildreth is to pay those rascals for voting the transfer, of course," he reasoned; "and they can't vote it unless this election is carried to authorize it. Hildreth isn't fool enough to pay them till the thing is done. Very well. There is a ring in the nose of every scamp of them."
And it was so. The aldermen were angrily reluctant to surrender a political office, and the one with whom Braine negotiated at first flatly refused. But Braine knew his ground.
"Very well," he said, "but reflect a little. This election is very close. We need all the help we can get. Davidson has his men perfectly in hand, and now that I've offered the thing to him he will vote them to a man on the other side if this isn't carried out."
"Why in thunder did you make him such an offer, then? Nobody authorized it."