“If I told you I should render my services valueless. You will have to trust everything to me.”
“You want me to sign a note, or promise; I couldn’t do that. It wouldn’t be good politics.”
“Then you will have to pay me something in advance. I must be secured in some manner.”
Lemuel Fogg had never yet bought a pig in a poke, and he did not intend to begin that doubtful practice now. He questioned Sibyl Dudley’s ability to do what she said. She was a very charming woman; he admired her very much; but beautiful women had never the power to make Lemuel Fogg cut his purse-strings. So he refused, very tactfully and graciously, as becomes a man who has to refuse anything to a pretty woman. She saw that it was a refusal, and final.
“What will you do, then?” she asked. “If Justin casts that vote you lose your senator. I can keep him from casting it.”
“If you will be quite frank with me, we’ll get on faster, Mrs. Dudley,” Fogg urged. “You could perhaps tell me something of your plans; I don’t ask to know too much. But five thousand dollars is a big sum of money.”
“It’s a small sum, Mr. Fogg, for what I propose to do. You don’t believe I can prevent Justin from voting against your man. I can see you don’t.”
“Well, I’ll say this much—nobody else could! Everything has been tried that could be thought of. The fellow is a fool, and it’s impossible to reason with a fool.”
“Justin is anything but a fool, but he has an uncomfortable lot of queer notions. I think he must have obtained them from that doctor he has been living with down in Paradise Valley. I chance to know something of the character of Doctor Clayton; and while he is, I suppose, one of the best men in the world, so far as pure goodness goes, he is as foolish and illogical as a cat, or a woman.”
“Yet you are a woman!”