CHAPTER XVIII
During the sitting of the legislature John Spurrier was a sporadic onlooker, and his agents were as vigilant as sentinels in a danger zone. The last day of the term drew to a wintry sunset, and when the clock registered midnight the body would stand automatically adjourned until gavel fall two years hence.
Spurrier, outwardly a picture of serenity, but inwardly tensed for the final issue, sat in the visitors’ gallery of the Senate chamber. The charter upon which all his hopes hung as upon a fulcrum was all but in his grasp. Seemingly the enemy slept on. Presumably in those last tired hours the authorizing bill would slip through to passage with the frictionless ease of well-oiled bearings.
The needed men had been won over. Carping critics might prate, here and there, of ugly means that savored of bribery, but that was academic. The promise of forth-coming victory remained. Methods may be questionable. Results are not, and Spurrier was interested in results.
A. O. and G. had corrupted and suborned certain public servants. He had discovered their practice and played their own cards to their undoing. His ostensible clients were perhaps little cleaner-handed than their adversaries, but certainly, those other clients who did 243 not even know themselves to be represented stood with no stain on their claims.
Those native men and women had not asked him to safeguard them, and had they been able to see what he was doing they would have guessed only that, after winning their faith, he was bent on swindling them. But Spurrier knew not only the seeming facts but those which lay beneath and he fought with a definite sense of stewardship.
First the coup must succeed, since that success was the foundation of all the rest, and the moment was at hand.
For this he had slaved, faced dangers and deprived himself of the contentment of home and the society of his wife. Now it was about to end in victory.