“It’s too late,” responded Wharton grimly. “He’s already bought. We’ve walked into their trap. We might as well go home.”
Spurrier sent for his whip, but he had come to the end of his resourcefulness and shook a dejected head.
“If you want to shoot him down as he stands there,” said the gentleman testily, “I dare say it would stop him short. I know no other way. He is having resort to the senatorial privilege of filibuster. We have let them slip up on us. A. O. and G. has outbid you, that’s all.”
“But how in God’s name did they get wise?”
The other laughed grimly. “Wise?” he snorted. “My guess is that they’ve been wise all the time and that hayseed Iscariot has been playing us along for suckers.”
Held by a deadly fascination, Spurrier sank back into his seat. The clock over the speaker’s desk traveled once, almost twice around the dial, and yet that nasal voice wandered on in an endless stream of grotesque bombast—talking the charter to a slow death by strangulation.
Now, reflected Spurrier bitterly, his connection 247 with the enterprise must seem to any eye that viewed it that only of Harrison’s jackal and lobbyist, who had signally failed in his attempt to raid A. O. and G.
To the mountain folk themselves, if the facts ever percolated into the hills, his seeming would be far from heroic and with nothing tangible accomplished, it would do no good to tell them that he had made his fight with their interests at heart. Such a claim would only stamp him in the face of contrary evidence as taking a coward’s refuge in lies.
Then when it seemed to him that he could no longer restrain himself, Spurrier heard the gavel fall. It was a light sound, but it crashed on his brain with thunders of destruction.
“Gentlemen,” declared the presiding officer, “The Senate stands adjourned, sine die.”