“Will you have a cigar, Mr. Cameron? Or a liqueur?”
“Nothing, thank you. If I can have a few minutes' talk with you—”
“If you mean that as a request for me to go out, I will remind you that I am heavily interested in this matter myself,” said old Anthony. “I have put in a great deal of money. If you people are going to drop out, I want to hear it. You've played the devil with us already, with your independent candidate who can't talk English.”
Willy Cameron kept his temper.
“No,” he said, slowly. “It wasn't a question of Mr. Hendricks withdrawing. It was a question of Mr. Cardew getting out.”
Sheer astonishment held old Anthony speechless.
“It's like this,” Willy Cameron said. “Your son knows it. Even if we drop out he won't get it. Justly or unjustly—and I mean that—nobody with the name of Cardew can be elected to any high office in this city. There's no reflection on anybody in my saying that. I am telling you a fact.”
Howard had listened attentively and without anger. “For a long time, Mr. Cameron,” he said, “I have been urging men of—of position in the city, to go into politics. We have needed to get away from the professional politician. I went in, without much hope of election, to—well, you can say to blaze a trail. It is not being elected that counts with me, so much as to show my willingness to serve.”
Old Anthony recovered his voice.
“The Cardews made this town, sir,” he barked. “Willingness to serve, piffle! We need a business man to run the city, and by God, we'll get it!”