"Look here, Vard," exploded Thornton, "I've been pretty patient while you've been amputating a few fingers and toes of the Republican party of this State, but I'll be damned if I propose to see you cut its throat."
There was fresh knocking at the door, but the group within the parlor had enough to think about just then without entertaining callers.
"Now you're talking simply about yourselves and your office-holders and your dirty profits. You're calling that mess of nasty confederacy 'Our Party,'" declared General Waymouth, passionately. "When honesty kills a party, let it die—let its men get out and organize another one. But I tell you, you can't kill it by being honest, Thelismer. The trouble is you're sitting here and building for to-night—for to-morrow. I'm a Republican—you can't take that name away from me. But the badge doesn't belong on men who are using that name to cover up a rum-selling business."
Chairman Presson was livid. He leaped from his chair and drove his fist down on the table,
"Now you're insulting me personally!" he shouted.
"I deal in no personalities, sir. So long as I hide myself under the name of Republican and allow this thing to go on as it's going, I'm in the traffic myself; and I don't propose to continue in it—not when I have power placed in my hands."
"By the eternal gods, you won't have the power placed there!" roared the chairman of the State Committee.
Now some one called to them from outside the door, repeating the rapping.
"When you say that, you're confessing that the Republican party is a sneak, Presson," declared the General.
The Duke came along to the table. He ticked his forefinger against the paper that Waymouth was holding.