"You've got to give me a bed to-night," said Brassfield, as the last of the delegations Alvord had brought to the Turkish room retired in apparent satisfaction. "I don't care to go to my rooms—there are too many folks up there at the hotel who seem anxious to see me. And I want to be where I can talk the situation over with you."
"Glad to have you," said Alvord. "Come on, and we'll turn in. As for the situation, how can you improve it? If Conlon and Sheehan and Zalinsky can't control these caucuses, I'm mistaken. Put them along with the saloons and the others that depend on police permission for existence, and you've got a dead open-and-shut."
As they walked along the street they noticed a motley crowd emerging from a public house and moving in a body to another, seemingly under the leadership of a little man with Jewish features. Alvord took Brassfield's arm and hurried him on.
"You see what Edgington's up to?" asked Brassfield. "He's got Abe Meyer out taking the crowd down the line in McCorkle's interest. I wonder if they won't turn things over somewhat."
"Turn nothing!" said Alvord. "They'll make the noise to-night; we'll have the votes to-morrow night. The boys'll rake in McCorkle's money now, and in the morning the word will be passed that the best interests of the town require every one to boost for you. They won't know what hit 'em!"
"I hope you're right," answered Brassfield, "but Edgington's no fool. I wouldn't have him for my lawyer if he was."
"Of course he's no fool," was Alvord's reply, "but he's handicapped by the personality of his man. Edge's doing pretty well, considering. He probably is wise to the situation. He didn't expect anything like a contest, you know, owing to that confounded blunder one of you two made. Now he's doing the best he can; but his man's been too strong in the God-and-morality way in years gone by to wipe out the stain by one evening of free booze. On the other hand, your life has been perfect—always careful and sound in business, no isms or reform sentiments on any line, a free spender, a paying attendant of the richest church, but not a member, and no wife full of wild ideas for the uplifting of folks that don't want to be uplifted. Why, Mrs. McCorkle's advanced ideas alone are enough to make him lose out."
"I don't know about that," said Brassfield. "McCorkle and his wife are not the same in these affairs."
"Well, don't you fall down and forget it," said Alvord, "that the fellows on the seamy side won't see it your way. They've got good imaginations, and they can see the colonel on one side of the table and his wife, the president of the Social Purity League, pouring tea on the other, and they can see the position it would put the mayor in to do the right thing along liberal lines—and he sort of strict in habits himself. No, sir, my boy, you go to bed and sleep sweetly. You are about to reap the reward of living the right kind of a life."
And sweetly Mr. Brassfield slept, with none of the anxiety felt by Judge Blodgett as to whether he would awake as Brassfield or Amidon.