There were indications that the entrenched, corrupt forces which dominated the city were getting ready to invite their own destruction. Was it not Shaughnessy who held the whip hand, and was not Shaughnessy going crazy? Verily, it seemed so, and Shaughnessy, apparently drunk with the power invested in his acquired authority, seemed likely to exercise it to his own destruction. "The man is mad," remarked the leaders of the Citizens' movement, one to the other, and rubbed their hands. For Shaughnessy's candidate for the nomination, the man for whom, as he calmly stated, the convention would, at his word, vote as one man, was so notoriously inadequate, so miserably unfit, that the prospect of his nomination set a resentful growl to circulating even among many of the chosen delegates to the Democratic, otherwise the Shaughnessy, convention. Dare Shaughnessy, so cocksure of his evil hold upon the city, thrust such a candidate upon his party? Certain of Shaughnessy's supporters grumbled, while the leaders of the Citizens' movement ground their teeth and figuratively removed their coats.
True to his promise to Shaughnessy, on the occasion of that worthy's call upon the owner of the Courier, Colonel Westlake's paper was firing hot shot at the local boss. The effrontery and callous indifference to all considerations, save his own sweet will, which Shaughnessy was displaying in his choice of a candidate for the mayoralty, was dished up daily, in attractive and toothsome guise, for the Courier's readers. Westlake was certainly pounding Shaughnessy.
Meanwhile, strange whispers began circulating around the town, things that savored of disloyalty to Shaughnessy. The unpopularity of the candidate, whose fortunes he had espoused, was evidently breeding a revolt among Shaughnessy's followers, of which he seemed strangely oblivious. At all events, he was wholly indifferent to it. To add seriousness to the situation, some of the boss' most trusted lieutenants had been heard to utter words that sounded strangely from the lips of faithful followers. These little seeds of dissension were sown cautiously, but they fell where they seemed sure to bring forth the fruit of contention. When ex-Alderman Goldberg, supposed to be retired from politics, the lanky Dick Peterson, and the moon-faced Willie Shute, men known to have been for years identified with Shaughnessy's interests, began treacherously knifing him, the Fusionists pricked up their ears and polished their eyeglasses. Might there not be a disastrous factional Democratic fight?
The day before the convention occurred there was a tense, growing expectancy through the city, a vague, intangible premonition of an unguessed something on the morrow. What is was to be nobody knew, but that there was a rift in the Shaughnessy lute,—or "loot," as one Fusionist wag expressed it,—was now plainly apparent to all parties. The existence of a plot against him was recognized, yet Shaughnessy made no sign. His insolent programme was known; he proposed on the morrow to thrust his preposterously unfit candidate for the mayoralty, together with a few other objectionable nominees for divers offices, down the throat of the convention. The programme of the opposition was not known, but Goldberg, Peterson and Shute, with others whose fidelity to the interests of the boss had hitherto been unquestioned, had been busy. They had toward the end thrown off the pretense of secrecy and had declared the boss' programme to be suicidal to the chances of Democratic success. The array of malcontents grew larger and more formidable. It was increased by the well circulated report that Goldberg had tried to remonstrate with the boss and been freezingly turned down.
"The delegates won't stand for it, Shaughnessy," Goldberg had said. "It's out of all reason."
The sneer in Shaughnessy's reply had inflamed an army of hitherto faithful adherents against him. "The delegates will do as I dictate," he had said. "This convention, let me tell you, will name my ticket, and the kickers will be kicked out of the party."
Surely Shaughnessy was going mad. "I understand he said lately that he didn't intend to figure in local politics much longer," said Colonel Westlake one day to the Fusionist candidate for the mayoralty, Theodore Packard, though without apprising him of the circumstances under which the boss made that statement. "Well, do you know, I begin to believe this dissension in their ranks has been brewing for some time. 'When thieves fall out,' you know. I think he foresaw this scrap and is risking the issue on a last desperate game, which he is growing rather afraid of losing."
"Yes, but why is he espousing such a notorious ticket?" inquired Packard. "It seems to me that he is beaten in advance, with a handicap like that, and ought to have sense enough to know it."
"He probably had his programme laid out months ago," replied the Colonel, "when he felt more secure than he does now. His opponents are cunning. They played foxy Judas till the last moment, and then they began to knife him. It's a slick game. He can't back down now, he's got to stand by his guns. To knuckle would be a confession of weakness, and that would be fatal. It looks to me as if he had a Waterloo coming in his own camp. They've got something up their sleeve, depend upon it. I wish I knew what it was."
Decidedly, the ordinary expressionless face of Shaughnessy, could he have heard this conversation, would have been worth seeing.