Following the leader's entrance, the company waited silently for him to speak. He favored them with a moment's reflective stare, puffing billowing smoke clouds. Then he spoke, and his voice was as cold and impersonal as his white face.
"I called you together, boys," said he, "because there's work ahead for us." There was a significant nod from Goldberg. "It doesn't look bad at a first glance," continued Shaughnessy, "but a look-in will show you that it will pay to hump some. There's nothing open yet, but we've got to face the hottest fight we have had. Well," with a grim smile, "we'll do it and we'll win out. We've got to."
"Yes," remarked Peterson, with a deep sigh. "We've got to, all right, governor."
"That's what I was tellin' 'em, Shaughnessy," put in Goldberg, rolling his cigar to the lee corner of his mouth. "They wanted to give me the laugh. Thought everything was lovely. They'll know when they've sidestepped the shivers as often as we have. I tell you, the clearest day is the one you want to have your umbrella ready for, and that's no lie."
"No," assented Shaughnessy, "that's no lie. It's going to rain votes this fall and we've got to get busy in mortgaging the majority of 'em. If we don't, we get caught napping, that's all, and it's us to the woods. I needn't tell you, of course, that as late as a year ago we could have defied 'em to put the hooks on us, even if they'd got a look-in at the polls. We had things tied up so they couldn't have touched us; we could have stayed right on. But there've been some bad mistakes made; some instructions exceeded and some things we couldn't help, being forced into 'em. Truth is, boys, that if through any chance we're done up in this coming election, we're caught right out in the open with a wagonload of goods, and there's no time to hide 'em. That's the situation we're facing and it's one that calls for cutting out sleep till after election day."
"Well, we've done it before," remarked Willie Shute, the moon-faced gentleman, as he pressed the button for another round of drinks. "What the devil is sleep, anyway? Waste of time."
"It's a waste of time in politics," assented the leader, "unless you want to wake up to find you've been buried alive with no air tube." Willie Shute, following the laughter which greeted this grisly pleasantry, was discovered looking about him with vague apprehension.
"Thought I heard someone snickerin'," he explained. "Before we did."
Peterson glanced significantly at Shute's whisky glass. "Preliminary to the main event," he commented. "Saw off, or you'll be hearing bands of music in the morning."
Shaughnessy leaned forward upon the table. "Well, let's get down to business," he remarked. "Let's talk things over, look at all we've got to buck against and plan to buck it in the good old way. Give us another whack at this and in the next two years we'll be ready to retire with a trail blinder than an eyeless fish in the Mammoth Cave. But it would be all day with us to lose just now; we can't afford it. In some ways we're better fixed for the fight than we've been before. We own one newspaper body and soul, though we're not advertising it. We've practically clinched another of 'em, there's a couple that don't count anyway, and then, there's that damned Courier."