Colonel Dodd cursed under his breath. He had been on the trail of that convention, its movements, its progress, as a hound dog would follow the trail of a fox. He had seen it safely headed for the corner where it would be run to earth. He detected sudden peril in this threat of a detour.
“Good Jericho!” gasped a committeeman near him. “The chairman ain't letting this convention get away from him, is he?”
It was natural alarm in the case of a man who feared to allow any expression in a convention except such as had been arranged for previously and had been passed upon by those in power.
“This isn't the kind of convention that will get away!” hissed the colonel in reply, bolstering his own convictions that all was safely harnessed. “But I don't want any fooling.”
He caught the eye of his nephew and summoned him with an impatient jerk of the head.
Richard Dodd hastened across the platform and bent his ear close to his uncle's mouth—the colonel pulling him down.
“If your man can stop that fool now—quick—for five hundred dollars, I'll pay.”
Young Dodd gulped. He needed five thousand dollars!
“He won't consider less than I told you.”
“Well, let the idiot talk to us—he can't do any harm.”