"Got ten," said his companion—"ten on account. I get fifty for the caucus."
"Too many machine Republicans in my town, and he knows it," said the other. "The best I could do was fool him out of twenty-five. But that's doing well—in these times. This Spinney stir has made it cost Everett more than it has cost any candidate for ten years. I really didn't have the heart to crowd him for any more. He's been jounced down good and hard as it is."
Harlan took one more look at the unconscious and fatuous Everett, and went out of the room. Twenty feet away, as he knew, sat his grandfather, ready and able to smash the candidate's dreams and chances as a child bursts a soap-bubble. And the man's money—thrown to the winds when a word might have held his hand and closed his pocket-book! Harlan, grandson of Thelismer Thornton, tried to put the thing out of his mind.
"Politics," said a man in the corridor in his hearing, "has got the pelt off'm second-story work, as they're running the political game in this State right now. But it's only petty larceny. And that's why the whole thing makes me sick."
"Me too," said his listener. "You could brag some about a political safe-blowing, but we all have to turn to and hush up this sneak-thief work."
Harlan, walking on, wondered whether the coup that was then in process of elaboration in State Committee headquarters would not be considered by Everett and his supporters as arising to the proper dignity of political crime.
To his surprise Spinney's rooms were practically deserted. The candidate was there, perched on the edge of a table, nursing his knee in his clasped hands and talking vigorously to a few of his intimates. The defection was not bothering him, apparently. Harlan promptly understood why. As he stood for a moment, making sure that neither Linton nor Wadsworth was there, he heard the mellow blare of distant band music. Spinney jumped off the table.
"The boys are coming!" cried one of his friends, and stepped out through
the window upon a balcony. "Wait till after I call for the cheers,
Arba!" he called back. "Step out when they strike up Hail to the
Chief."
"This will make the Everett bunch sit up and take notice," said a man at Harlan's elbow. "There'll be a thousand men in line behind that band when she swings into the square, here! And a Spinney badge on every one of 'em!"
He was challenged promptly. The corridor was full of Everett men.