“Don’t you fool yourself,” replied the night-clerk. “Maybe Tom Connors doesn’t get his name in the society news as often as the rest of them, but all the same he stands about as near next the Senator as anyone in town. Tom Connors has a big pull in Washington, and almost as big a one with the bankers here. With the chances he has the only reason Tom Connors ain’t a millionaire is because he’s such a spender. Tom is a working partner in a good many Senate deals or steals, whichever you want to call them, unless I’m much mistaken.”
The arrival of several guests put an end to the conversation. The room-clerk turned once more to his ledger and the night-clerk began reaching for keys and yelling, “Front!” An hour or two later the men behind the desk were at leisure again when “Ed” Wallace strolled up. To him the night-clerk imparted the information that the Senator was having some sort of a séance in his rooms, incidentally mentioning who were there.
Wallace hastened over to the corner where several members of that unorganized organization, “the political combination,” the brightest reporters of the big newspapers, were exchanging reminiscences. “The most news with the least work” is the motto of the “combination.” It means that whatever news one of them gets, all get—with considerably less labor than if each worked independently, and with the chance of a rival newspaper scoring a “beat” reduced to the minimum.
Various theories as to the meaning of the conference upstairs were suggested and rejected. The five men in the Senator’s rooms were not political allies—that the reporters well knew. That they were all, with the exception perhaps of the Western representative, warm personal friends, they knew equally well. But despite its knowledge of the men and its familiarity with the political situation, the “combination” was unable to deduce anything that could be printed.
“I’ll give it up,” said Stanley Titus. “The only thing I see is for Wallace to go upstairs and see what is going on. The Senator will talk to him if he’ll talk to anyone, and perhaps we can get a line on what’s doing.”
When Wallace, two minutes later, knocked on the door of the Senator’s sitting-room, it was the Senator himself who opened it—just about two inches—and peered impatiently into the hall.
“Oh, it’s you, is it, Wallace?” he said. “Well, my boy, what can I do for you?”
“The combination would like to know if you have anything to say for publication about the conference that is going on in there,” replied Wallace.
The Senator put his head a little farther out the door. “I will tell you something, but you will understand that it is not for publication,” he said, dropping his voice to a whisper as Wallace leaned forward expectantly. “I’ve got all the blues.” And the door was shut in Wallace’s face.
But there were no chips or cards on the table to which the Senator returned after shutting the door. The five men, their wrinkled brows betokening hard thinking, were intently studying neatly tabulated statements—long rows of figures—that might mean much or little, depending entirely on the observer’s information as to their purpose.