While Archie and his friend were busy with Colorado politics, the impeccable Japanese attended swiftly and intelligently to his duties, and the dinner, as Ottenburg at last remarked, was worthy of more profitable conversation.
“So it is,” the doctor admitted. “Well, we’ll go upstairs for our coffee and cut this out. Bring up some cognac and arak, Tai,” he added as he rose from the table.
They stopped to examine a moose’s head on the stairway, and when they reached the library the pine logs in the fireplace had been lighted, and the coffee was bubbling before the hearth. Tai placed two chairs before the fire and brought a tray of cigarettes.
“Bring the cigars in my lower desk drawer, boy,” the doctor directed. “Too much light in here, isn’t there, Fred? Light the lamp there on my desk, Tai.” He turned off the electric glare and settled himself deep into the chair opposite Ottenburg’s.
“To go back to our conversation, doctor,” Fred began while he waited for the first steam to blow off his coffee; “why don’t you make up your mind to go to Washington? There’d be no fight made against you. I needn’t say the United Breweries would back you. There’d be some kudos coming to us, too; backing a reform candidate.”
Dr. Archie measured his length in his chair and thrust his large boots toward the crackling pitch-pine. He drank his coffee and lit a big black cigar while his guest looked over the assortment of cigarettes on the tray. “You say why don’t I,” the doctor spoke with the deliberation of a man in the position of having several courses to choose from, “but, on the other hand, why should I?” He puffed away and seemed, through his half-closed eyes, to look down several long roads with the intention of luxuriously rejecting all of them and remaining where he was. “I’m sick of politics. I’m disillusioned about serving my crowd, and I don’t particularly want to serve yours. Nothing in it that I particularly want; and a man’s not effective in politics unless he wants something for himself, and wants it hard. I can reach my ends by straighter roads. There are plenty of things to keep me busy. We haven’t begun to develop our resources in this State; we haven’t had a look in on them yet. That’s the only thing that isn’t fake—making men and machines go, and actually turning out a product.”
The doctor poured himself some white cordial and looked over the little glass into the fire with an expression which led Ottenburg to believe that he was getting at something in his own mind. Fred lit a cigarette and let his friend grope for his idea.
“My boys, here,” Archie went on, “have got me rather interested in Japan. Think I’ll go out there in the spring, and come back the other way, through Siberia. I’ve always wanted to go to Russia.” His eyes still hunted for something in his big fireplace. With a slow turn of his head he brought them back to his guest and fixed them upon him. “Just now, I’m thinking of running on to New York for a few weeks,” he ended abruptly.
Ottenburg lifted his chin. “Ah!” he exclaimed, as if he began to see Archie’s drift. “Shall you see Thea?”
“Yes.” The doctor replenished his cordial glass. “In fact, I suspect I am going exactly to see her. I’m getting stale on things here, Fred. Best people in the world and always doing things for me. I’m fond of them, too, but I’ve been with them too much. I’m getting ill-tempered, and the first thing I know I’ll be hurting people’s feelings. I snapped Mrs. Dandridge up over the telephone this afternoon when she asked me to go out to Colorado Springs on Sunday to meet some English people who are staying at the Antlers. Very nice of her to want me, and I was as sour as if she’d been trying to work me for something. I’ve got to get out for a while, to save my reputation.”