Dick stepped back, raising his hand to quiet them all as they crowded around, staring at the motionless man in the chair. "Get back!" Dick whispered fiercely. "Get him rattled now and it's all up. Can't you see?" They softly moved aside and intense quiet fell, in which the measured ticking of the big clock sounded unbelievably loud. They watched the meagre figure in the chair with an odd fascination. O'Byrn, as if fairly hypnotized by Glenwood's words, was bending forward, hands pressed tightly against his temples, eyes closed and brow contracted in the supreme effort to marshal the dormant resources of his brain. So he sat, without word or motion, while the moments crawled by and the suspense grew into actual pain for every watcher in that great room. Once Harkins, with an expression of keen torture, slowly lifted a clenched hand and let it fall silently, an impetuous word restrained by a warning gesture from Glenwood, who had not once taken his piercing eyes from O'Byrn's face. Even as he gazed, the face of the other seemed curiously to change, as if a dead thing were stirring into life. It was as if Glenwood's iron will reinforced O'Byrn's weaker one, infusing into it the power of concentration, helping it to rise superior to deadening influences, to assert itself in a hard-won triumph of mind over matter.
At last Micky raised his head, looking straight into Dick's eyes, which shone with satisfaction, for they read coherence in O'Byrn's own. The day was saved and there was a universal sigh of relief. O'Byrn extended his hand. Reading the gesture aright, Dick placed in it the notes which shortly before had been produced for Harkins' inspection. Micky looked them over briefly, scanned the damning packet a moment, and turned to the waiting stenographer.
Then came the story which swept the town that morning in a mighty wind that drove a monstrous tidal wave of public indignation thundering over an illicit crew and blotted out a corrupt municipal history. Yes and more, for the waters encroached even to foul halls in the capitol and washed them clean. It was a story involving so scathing an arraignment of those in high places that hardened veterans in the great room, listening to its steady flow from the lips of the drowsy man in the chair, gasped and looked at each other in momentary incredulity; momentary, because every astounding disclosure was fortified by the most incontrovertible of proofs. Micky had been a veritable sleuth hound on the track of that story. His scent had been unerring and in the marshaling of his verified facts he had shown positive genius. There was nothing asserted that collected statements and figures did not prove; no man arraigned, from Judge Boynton down, who was not pilloried in the proof. Noisome legislative deals, heretofore blanketed by respectability, were laid bare in exposed horror. The city government was savagely assailed. The vesture of fair seeming in the present campaign was torn away and there was revealed rottenness. The growth of graft, in repulsive forms, under the sinister genius of Shaughnessy, was claimed and proved and the telling ruined some flourishing careers. So on to the end, the arraignment transcending the expectation of all in its ugly features, as indeed it had Micky's own. It left no doubt of the swift dynamic effect upon the election, now close at hand. Truly it was the story of a lifetime.
He told it from beginning to end always in that strange, monotonous voice, as if he were muttering in his sleep, his eyes at times fixed absently on the stenographer, at others half-closed or turning blankly toward the ceiling. He seemed wholly unconscious of his surroundings after his task was begun, being absorbed in dreamy contemplation of his theme. As the physician had said, his brain was working like an insensate machine, driven for a while by the force of powerful stimulants. Yet always his wonderful memory, an instinctive force with him, was a potent line that led his groping mind unerringly through the gloomy labyrinth of the brain. At times he would falter for a moment, but once more grasping the thread was off again. So, unmindful of anything save the task he was mechanically pursuing, he swept on toward the end. Stenographers quietly relieved one another, typewriters rattled madly at the other end of the room, Harkins and an assistant fairly flew in the preparation of the copy; boys hurried by with it, take by take, everywhere was the sharp hum of the belated machinery, at last in motion. O'Byrn never noticed, but went serenely, logically, sleepily on, dictating as he would have written it. One might imagine he saw himself, as one detached, writing as he proceeded.
But now the fuel had spent its force. He was growing horribly drowsy, yet struggled on, impelled by a latent sense of duty. At last he faltered in the middle of a sentence and stopped short. His chin sank on his breast.
Someone was shaking him, he numbly felt a dash of something cold and wet in his face and opened his eyes. He tried to wipe away the water that trickled down his cheeks, when somebody's handkerchief was passed over them and he heard a voice, familiar yet far away.
"Wake up, Micky!" it appealed. "You can't give up now, you're almost through!"
"All right, Dick," he sighed wearily. "Where was I?"
Dick prompted him and he resumed at the break, still in the same even, expressionless monotone, and continued until the dark shadows again gathered before his eyes and he swayed in his chair. Dick's voice again rang its sharp rally in his ears and he braced desperately, dictating the closing paragraphs. "That's all," he murmured. The receding footfalls of the stenographer sounded. Then came Dick's voice, a ghost of a voice from the other side of the world.
"Now you can sleep," it said.