"Oh, it's your own business, you know, but a sort of shock to the feelings and finances of the community all the same. Not that it affects me, or that many know of it, but the inner circle is disturbed—and, mind, I'm leading up to Edgington's flop."
"I see," said Brassfield. "Go on!"
"Well," said Alvord, "the mystery comes in right here. He says he went up to see you and you flew up and took a high moral attitude and said it was a dirty mess, and you wouldn't touch it. He thought it was some of Bess's isms that she brought home from college—civic purity, and all that impractical rot that these intellectual women get, and he says he began hunting for some one to run in to fill the vacancy caused by the declination of E. Brassfield. He was knocked numb when he found out that you were out for the place. You must have said something to him, you know. Now what in the name of Dodd was it?"
Brassfield walked up and down the room for a few moments, wringing his hands and alternately hardening and relaxing the muscles of his arms as if engaged in some physical culture exercise, but saying never a word. This blank Cimmeria of his past, into which he had stared vainly for five years, seemed about to deliver up its secret, or a part of it. Already, it was clear, it had disgorged this man Blodgett, and these other questionable characters at the inn. But they would find him ready for them. This man that was looking over his books would discover that what Eugene Brassfield wanted he took, and what he took he held. They were after his money, no doubt. Well, he would see. And in the meantime, Edgington's defection should not be allowed to disarrange matters. The business interests involved were too great. When he turned to answer Alvord, he was pale as death, but calm as ever.
"Oh, Edgington misconstrued entirely what I said," he answered. "I can't just repeat it—we had some talk along the lines he mentioned, but I never said anything that he ought to have understood in that way. Is he on the square, do you think?"
"On the dead square," said Alvord. "I'll stake my life on that."
"Well, what has he done?"
"He's got McCorkle out for the nomination."
"To stay?" asked Brassfield. "Can't we give Mac something else, later?"
"No, Edgington says not: you see, the colonel has wanted to be mayor a long time. Edgington can't pull him off, and as long as he sticks, Edge's got to stick by him. Edgington's for you as hard as ever after the caucuses—if you win."