“Oh, come! Don’t expect me to believe in you when you pose as a reformer!”
“See here, Bruce,” said the other a little sharply, “you’ve called me about every dirty word lying around handy in the Middle West. But you never called me a hypocrite.”
“No.”
“Well, I’m not coming to you now pretending that I’ve been holding a little private revival, and that I’ve been washed in the blood of the Lamb.”
“Then what’s behind this? What’s in it for you?”
“I’ll tell you—though of course I can’t make you believe me if you don’t want to. I’m getting pretty old—I’m sixty-seven. I may not live till another campaign. I’d like to see the party win once more before I go. That’s one thing. Another is, I’ve got it in for Blake, and want to see him licked. I can’t do either in my way. I can possibly do both in your way. Mere personal satisfaction like this would have been mighty little for me to have got out of an election in the old days. But it’s better than nothing at all”—smiling good-naturedly—“even to a cunning, unprincipled, hardened old rascal of a politician.”
“But what’s the string tied to this offer?”
“None. You can name the ticket, write the platform——”
“It would be a radical one!” warned Bruce.
“It would have to be radical. Our only chance is in creating a sensation.”