"Jim," he cried, "have you seen this?"
"No," answered Alvord. "It ain't that Scarlett business? I thought I'd got that——"
"No, no! It isn't that!" groaned Edgington. "But we're done, all the same! Done to a finish! You might as well close the headquarters and go home, for if we win, on this platform, we lose, and all the money we've put in is lost! I tell you, Jim, 'Gene Brassfield is either insane—and I believe it's that—or he's the damnedest traitor and sneak and two-faced hound that ever stepped, and I'll have it out with him! Some way, if I wait ten years, I'll have it out with him, if I have to do it with a gun! His business leaves my office at once. Why, there aren't words fit for me to use, to describe the miserable, false, lying——"
"See here, Edge!" said Alvord. "We may be done, as you say, but Eugene Brassfield has made you, and he's my friend, and you'd better not go on like that, here! Let me see that paper!"
Edgington threw it to him. In heavy type he saw the fateful platform summarized in a black-bordered panel on the first page:
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BRASSFIELD'S PLATFORM 1. Strict enforcement of early closing regulations for saloons. 2. No franchises except on public bidding, and ample provision for subsequent acquisition by the city. 3. Gambling laws to be strictly enforced. 4. Segregation of vice. 5. Vote of the people on all important measures. 6. Appointments non-partizan on the merit system. 7. Publication of all items of campaign expenses. |
Alvord fell back in utter dismay. Then he read in full the manifesto which Amidon and Elizabeth had prepared; and, folding up the paper, he stuck it in a drawer, which he locked, as if thereby to seal up the direful news. For a moment he felt betrayed and utterly defeated. Then he straightened himself for a resumption of the battle.
"See here, Edge," he said insinuatingly, "this is pretty bad, I admit. I think, myself, that Brass is off his head. He 'phoned me once about this, but he's such a josher, and it was such wild-eyed lunacy that I thought he was kidding. You'd have thought so, too, in my place. But we can pull through yet. We can convince the sports that this high-moral business is only for the church people, and the civic purity push. Why, Brassfield himself couldn't make Fatty Pierson believe he stands for this stuff. It's so out of reason,—the safe and sane life he's lived. And I'll undertake to keep the God-and-morality folks lined up, because these are really the things they say they want. This ain't going to be so very bad, after all, Edge!"
"Bad!" ejaculated Edgington. "Why, Alvord, you're so wrapped up in Brassfield that you're ready to go crazy with him!"
"Well, I want to say right here," shouted Alvord, "that if you think I'm going to quit on a man I've eaten with and slept with and sworn to stay by—By gad, I won't!"