“Not that I knew,” said Bigler, shaking his head in disgust. “In fact it was openly said, that there was no money in the election. It’s perfectly unheard of.”
“Perhaps,” suggested Philip, “it was effected on what the insurance companies call the ‘endowment,’ or the ‘paid up’ plan, by which a policy is secured after a certain time without further payment.”
“You think then,” said Mr. Bolton smiling, “that a liberal and sagacious politician might own a legislature after a time, and not be bothered with keeping up his payments?”
“Whatever it is,” interrupted Mr. Bigler, “it’s devilish ingenious and goes ahead of my calculations; it’s cleaned me out, when I thought we had a dead sure thing. I tell you what it is, gentlemen, I shall go in for reform. Things have got pretty mixed when a legislature will give away a United States senatorship.”
It was melancholy, but Mr. Bigler was not a man to be crushed by one misfortune, or to lose his confidence in human nature, on one exhibition of apparent honesty. He was already on his feet again, or would be if Mr. Bolton could tide him over shoal water for ninety days.
“We’ve got something with money in it,” he explained to Mr. Bolton, “got hold of it by good luck. We’ve got the entire contract for Dobson’s Patent Pavement for the city of Mobile. See here.”
Mr. Bigler made some figures; contract so much, cost of work and materials so much, profits so much. At the end of three months the city would owe the company three hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars-two hundred thousand of that would be profits. The whole job was worth at least a million to the company—it might be more. There could be no mistake in these figures; here was the contract, Mr. Bolton knew what materials were worth and what the labor would cost.