The enemy had been caught napping, and the victory would be his. Certainly he had been as fair as the foe. What now remained was a perfunctory confirmation by the Senate, and in these final wearied hours it would slip through easily in the general wind-up of uncontested affairs.
Spurrier had not slept for two days—or had slept little. When this ended he would go to his bed and lie there in sunken hours of restoration the clock around—and after that back to Glory. Already he carried in his pocket the brief message which he meant to put upon the wires to Harrison, at the moment of midnight and success. Characteristically it read: “Complete victory. Spurrier.”
Now as the clerk droned through the mass of unfinished matters that burdened the schedule, the clock stood at ten in the evening, and a spirit of disordered peevishness proclaimed itself in the chamber. 244 Seats were vacated. Voices rose in unparliamentary clamor.
From the desk where a mountain senator sat in touseled disarray, a flask was drawn and tipped with scant regard to senatorial dignity. Then the chairman of the committee which had the steering of Spurrier’s affairs arose and handed a paper to the clerk.
Spurrier himself maintained the same unemotional cast of countenance with which, years before, he had watched a horse in the stretch battling for more than he could afford to lose, but Wharton, who sat at his side, chewed nervously on an unlighted cigar. Sleepy reporters yawned at the press tables as the clerk droned out his sing-song, “An act entitled an act conferring charter rights upon the Hemlock Pipe Line Company of Kentucky.”
The reading of the measure seemed devoid of interest or attention. It went forward in confusion, yet when it was ended the mountain man who had taken the swig out of his flask, came slowly to his feet.
“Mr. President of the Senate,” he drawled, “I want to address a few incongruvial remarks to the senators in regards to this here proposed measure.”
With a sudden sense of premonition Spurrier found himself sitting electrically upright.
That man was Senator Chew who had sat in council with him and advised him; his right hand in action and his fox-brain in planning, yet now, with every moment invaluable he was burning up time!
He was a pygmy among small men, and as he drooled on he seemed to urge no pertinent objection. 245 Yet before he had been five minutes on his feet his intent was clear and his success assured.