"I am stoically indifferent to your slanderous imputation," fumed the doctor, his manner a very Judas to his words; "but I assure you there is more to be said, and that I purpose to say it. I have yet to tell you that you are a blackguard, sir, a violent blackguard, whose proper level is the ward cesspools of the metropolis where crime and politics stalk hand in hand. Medical science will save the man you would have done to death."
Shelby passed the vituperation, puzzling how much the irate doctor knew.
"Is your patient's delirium contagious?" he asked.
"Ha!" cried the doctor. "You do take my meaning."
"It's clear enough that you are hinting at foul play on the flimsiest of evidence."
"Evidence, evidence! I want no surer evidence of your intent than poor Bernard's wanderings; there's method, sir, even in delirium. If I wished further proof, the fact that you too were in the canal that night would suffice."
"Fevered maunderings and a coincidence!" Shelby laughed him in the face, too contemptuous to set him right. "Keep your vote, you pompous ignoramus," he jeered, and left him sputtering.
Worsting the choleric physician in argument was a mere matter of keeping one's own temper, and Shelby took no pride in his victory. It was a relief to know that he knew so little, but the possibility remained that, in the weakness of convalescence, Bernard might let fall details more damaging than Dr. Crandall's tissue of half-knowledge and inference. Ruth and pneumonia eliminated, the quarrel might have become public property and welcome, with a likely chance of its working to his advantage; but, alas, he himself had dragged Ruth into it past all elimination, and now Bernard's sickness had whipped up a sea of maudlin sympathy which exposure might easily precipitate in a political tidal wave.
From this day forth, event crowded event. The news from the sick-room was the signal for renewed activity all along the line of battle, and the spectre of his great need haunted Shelby with added terrors. Bernard Graves's allies, apt disciples of the late Chuck O'Rourke as they were, jumped at the shining possibilities laid open by their candidate's condition, and, abetted financially by their State Committee, set a pace in corruption unprecedented in the checkered history of the Demijohn. Volney Sprague was powerless. The freebooters listened sedately to his protests and redoubled their offending, well aware that in their candidate's chamber politics could have yet no place. Far from the turmoil, the celebrity ate the jellies of his idolaters, and spent his waking hours in the impractical companionship of a certain Shelley and one John Keats.
The beset leaders strained the machine's every cog to meet the emergency. Out from a corner of the Chairman of the County Committee's safe came a pudgy manuscript book which few eyes ever saw,—a book made up of voters' names, their party, and at times their price set down in strange symbols which the initiated might translate into terms of dollars and cents. Probably every county committee in the Demijohn Congressional District could show the like. There was earnest thumbing of these volumes, with changing of symbols to fit changed conditions, and the call went out for money. Little came. The State Committee was deaf to argument or entreaty, and the Demijohn seemed drained. Shelby and Bowers personally did what they could. For reputation's sake, the old leader went down deep into his pocket, while Shelby tossed into the breach everything he realized from his mortgaged quarry interest which long outstanding debts did not require. Nor were these latter inconsiderable. Involved in innumerable schemes which sapped his capital without prospect of ready dividends, it seemed to him that every land syndicate, stock company, insurance policy, what not, of them all was demanding instant propitiation. Brave it out with Bowers as he might, Shelby walked none the less in the shadow of a mighty fear; and had not Mrs. Hilliard left town for her annual autumn round of the shops of New York, he could have gone to her prepared to accept her supremest charity.