CHAPTER V
A MEETING, AN INTERRUPTION AND A LETTER
The campaign was on in sober earnest. Conover, who kept as well posted on his foe’s movements as though the League itself sent him hourly reports, grew vaguely annoyed as, from day to day, he learned the headway Standish was making in Granite. The better classes, almost to a man, flocked to Clive’s standard. By a series of fiery speeches he succeeded in rousing a certain hitherto dormant enthusiasm among the business men of the town. They found to their surprise that he was neither a visionary nor a mere agitator; that he based his plans not on some Utopian Altruria of high-souled commonweal, but on a practical basis of clean government.
He pointed out to them how utterly the Machine ran the Mountain State; how the railroads and the vested interests of the party clique sent their own representatives to the Legislature, and then made them grant fraudulent franchise after fraudulent franchise to the men who sent them there. How the taxes were raised and so distributed that the brunt fell upon the people who least profited by the State expenditures and by the legalized wholesale robberies. How, in fact, the populace of Granite and of the whole Mountain State were being ridden at will by a handful of unscrupulous men.
That Caleb Conover was the head and front of the clique referred to everyone was well aware, yet Standish studiously avoided all mention of his name, all personal vituperation. Whereat Caleb Conover wondered mightily. Stenographic reports of Clive’s speeches and of the increasingly large and enthusiastic meetings he addressed were carefully conned by the Railroader. And the tolerant grin with which he read the first of these reports changed gradually to a scowl as time went on.
He had made no effort to suppress or in any way to molest these early meetings. He wanted to try out his young opponent’s strength, gauge his following and his methods. But when, to his growing astonishment, he found Clive was actually winning a respectful, ever larger, hearing in his home town, he decided it was high time to call a halt. Accordingly he summoned Billy Shevlin.
“What’s doing?” he asked curtly, as he received his henchmen in the Mausoleum study.
“To-night’s the big rally at Snyder’s Opera House, you know,” replied Billy. “Standish’s booked to make his star speech before he starts on his State tour. He’s got a team of Good Gov’ment geezers from Boston to do a spiel, and he’s callin’ this the biggest scream of the campaign so far. Say, that young feller’s makin’ an awful lot of noise, Boss. When are you goin’ to give us the office to put the combination on his mouth? On the level, he ain’t doin’ you no good. Them speeches of his means votes. The Silk-Socks is with him already, and he’s winner with the business bunch in fam’ly groups.”
“Look here,” said Caleb, pointing out of the study’s north window, which commanded a view of exclusive Pompton Avenue and its almost equally fashionable cross streets, “how would you figure up the population of that district?”
“The Silk-Sockers? You know’s well as me. Thirty-eight hundred in round numbers.”
“And over there?” pointing east.
“Th’ business districk? An easy 12,000.”
“Say 16,000 in both. S’pose they are all for the young Standish. Now look here.”
He crossed the long room and ran up the shade of one of the south windows. The great marble house stood on the edge of a hill-crest, overlooking a distant vista of mean, winding streets, dirty, interminable rows of tenements, factories and small shops. Through the centre, like a huge snake, the tracks of the C. G. & X. wound their way, and over all a smeared pall of reek and coal smoke brooded like some vast bird of prey. Coal yards, docks, freight houses, elevators, shanties—and once more that interminable sea of dingy, squalid domiciles.
“What’s the population down there, Billy?”
“Hundred’n ten thousand, six hundred an’—” began Shevlin glibly. “An’ every soul of them solid for you, Boss. Sixteen thousand to hundred-’n’-ten-thous——”
“That’s right. So as long as the youngster’s content to speak his little pieces here in Granite, I’ve stood by and let him talk. It would be time enough to put in a spoke when he started across country. But this blowout to-night is different. The stories of it will get in the Boston and Philadelphia and New York papers. So——”
“Well?”
“So there won’t be any meeting?”
“If you say so, it goes. Will I give the boys the office to rough-house the joint?”
“And have every out-of-State paper screeching about ring rule and rowdyism? Billy, you must have been born more ignorant than most. You never could have picked up all you don’t know, in the little time you’ve lived.”
Shevlin looked duly abashed and awaited further orders.
“I hear the gas main that serves Snyder’s Opera House isn’t in very good order,” resumed the Boss. “I shouldn’t wonder if all the lights went out just as the meeting opens to-night. That’ll mean a lot of confusion. And my friend, Chief Geoghegan, being a careful man, will disperse the crowd to prevent a riot, and to keep pickpockets from molesting those pure patriots. I want you to see Geoghegan and the gas company about it, right away. But look here, there mustn’t be any rough-house or disorder. Tell the boys to keep away. I’ll have work enough for them to do when Standish takes the road.”
Billy Shevlin, a great light of joy in his little beady eyes, departed on his mission, while Caleb, summoning Anice Lanier, set about his daily task of dictation. His always large mail was still more voluminous during the past week or so, and he had been forced to double his staff of stenographers. He and his secretary toiled steadily for three hours to-day, then laid aside the remaining work until later on.
“How’ll you like being secretary to the Governor, Miss Lanier?” asked Caleb, as he lighted his cigar and stretched out his thick legs under the table.
“Fully as much as you’ll like being Governor, I fancy,” she answered.
“I guess you won’t have to be very much wedded to the job at that,” sighed Conover. “Do you know, I’d give a year’s income if I’d never made that measly speech. But now that I’m in for it, I’m going to make the fight of my life. Everybody in the Mountain State will sure know there’s been a big scrap, and when it’s over, our young friend, Standish, is going to be just a sweet, sad memory.”
“I hear he is making some strong speeches.”
“And I hear you went to hear a couple of them,” retorted Caleb, grinning.
“Do you mean,” she cried indignantly, “that you’ve actually been spying on me? You have dared to——?”
“Now, don’t get woozey, Miss Lanier. What on earth would I spy on you for? Your time, outside work hours, is your own. And besides, I’ve got all sorts of proof that you’re always loyal to my interests.”
“Then how——”
“How’d I find it out? While I don’t keep tabs on you, I do keep tabs on Nephew-in-law Standish, and on his meetings and what sort of people go there. And a couple of times my men happened to mention that they saw my pretty secretary in the audience. There, now, don’t get red. What harm is there in being found out? Only it kind of amused me that you never spoke about it here.”
“Why should I? I——”
“No reason at all. A person’s got a right to lock up what’s in their minds as well as what’s in their pockets. I always have a lot of respect for folks who keep their mouths shut. If you keep your mouth shut about your own affairs, you’ll keep it shut about mine. That’s why I have a kind of sneaking respect for liars, too. Folks who guard what’s in their brains by making a false trail with their mouths. The public’s got no more right to the contents of a man’s brain than it has to the contents of his safe. And the man who ain’t ashamed to lock his safe needn’t be ashamed to tell a lie.”
“Is that your own philosophy? It’s a dangerous one.”
“Oh, I’m not speaking of the man who lies for the fun of it. Telling a lie when you don’t need to is tempting Providence.”
The girl laughed; so simple and so totally in earnest was he in expounding his pet theory. It was only to her that the Railroader was in the habit of talking on abstruse themes. Despite her habitual reserve, he read an underlying interest in his odd ideas and experiences, and was accordingly lavish in relating them. She served, unconsciously to both, as an escape valve for the man’s habitual dominating self-restraint.
“So you agree with Talleyrand,” she suggested, “that words are given us to hide our thoughts?”
“Talleyrand?” he asked, puzzled. “Oh, one of those book characters you admire so much, I s’pose. Yes, he was all right in that proposition. But a lot of times the truth will hide a man’s thoughts even better. It was by telling the truth I got out of the worst hole I ever was in. Ever tell you the mix-up I had with the Mountain State Coal Company?”
“Coal Company? I didn’t know there was any coal in the Mountain State.”
“No more there is. Only I didn’t know it then. A chap came along and interested me in the deal. He said he’d struck a rich coal vein up in Jericho County. Showed me specimens. Got ’em somewhere in Pennsylvania, I s’pose. And got me to float a company. Well, the stuff they took out of the measly shaft was a sort of porous black slate or shale or something, and it wouldn’t burn if you put it in a white-hot blast furnace. One look showed me that. And there I was with a company capitalized at $300,000—half of it my own money—and suckers subscribing for the stock and all that, and a gang of a couple of hundred Ginneys and Svensks at work in the pit. It wasn’t that I minded the cash loss so much as I minded being played for a jay, and the black eye it would give any companies I might float in the future.
“I’ll tell you, I was pretty sore. I was younger in those days, you see. I ran up to Jericho to look over the wreck. Next day was pay day for the hands, and I hadn’t enough cash with me for half of ’em. I sat in my hotel that night thinking of the row and smashup there’d be next morning, and just wishing I had a third foot to kick myself with. The lamp got low, and I called for the landlord to fill it. Some of the kerosene leaked out while he was doing it and spilled over a handful of the ore that was lying on the table. That porous stuff soaked it up like a sponge. The mess made me sick, and I picked up the samples of near-coal and slammed ’em into the fireplace. They blazed like a Sheeney clothing store.”
“I thought you said it wouldn’t burn.”
“The pieces were soaked in kerosene, and of course they burned, just as a lamp would if you threw it in the fire. But it gave me the tip I wanted. I bolted out of that hotel and hunted up a couple of my own crowd. We had the busiest night on record. No use bothering you with details. A shed, three barrels of kerosene and a half a ton of ore. Then early next morning I wandered into the hotel office and did a despairful scream. I’d seen to it that the editor of the local paper was there, and I knew a bunch of the ‘big guns’ of the place always congregated in the office for an after-breakfast gossip. Well, I groaned pretty loud and hectic about the way I’d been stuck on the ore.
“‘What’s the matter with it?’ asked one of my two pals. ‘Won’t the stuff burn?’
“‘Burn!’ I yells. ‘It won’t do a thing but burn. It burns so hot, it’ll ruin any grate it’s put in. Why, heat like that is worse than none at all. It’ll burn out the best grate or furnace in a week. Nobody’ll be fool enough to buy such stuff. The company’s smashed!’
“They all stared at me as if I were looney. Then I made out I was mad clear through.
“‘Don’t believe me, eh?’ says I. ‘Then look at this.’
“I throws a pocketful of the ore into the grate, and it blazes up like mad. The whole office was torrid hot in five minutes. But the crowd was a blamed sight hotter. They went plumb wild over the new, wonderful fuel I’d discovered, and tried to explain to me that it had the heating power of ten times its weight of coal. But all the time I just shook my head, and kept on whining that no one’d buy it because it would burn out furnaces too quick.
“Well, the upshot of it was that the news travelled like a streak of lightning. By the time I got over to the shaft, the gangs were all on, and their padrones raked up a clause in the contract that permitted ’em to take their pay in stock, at par, if they chose to, instead of cash. Just a piece of technical red tape they used to stick in mining contracts. Those padrones fairly squealed for stock, and near mobbed me when I implored ’em to accept money instead. So I compromised by issuing ’em orders for stock at ten above. But before I’d do even that, I told ’em over and over that they were making fools of themselves and the stock and ore were worthless. They laughed at me, and thought I was trying to grab all the stock for myself. So I made ’em sign a paper saying that they took it at their own request and risk, and against my will and advice; and I gave ’em their stock orders and came back to town with my pay satchel still full.
“By the time I struck the hotel the place was jammed. Folks had flocked from all over to see the wonderful fuel and watch it burn. Rich farmers, capitalists from Granite and a lot more. The stock had been at 28¼. Inside of two days it was at 129, and still booming. Then I sold. But as president of the company I refused to let a single share be distributed without the buyer signing a blank that he took it at his own risk, and that I had told him the ore was worthless. And I kept on shouting that it was worthless, and that the public was robbing itself by buying such stuff. What was the result? The more I told the truth, the harder the suckers bit. Widows and ministers and such-like easy marks most of all, I hear. I got out of the company in disgust, and announced I’d have no dealings with such an iniquitous, swindling scheme. Folks thought I’d gone clean silly, and they bought and bought and bought, and then——”
“And then?” as Conover lighted a fresh cigar.
“Oh, then they woke up and screamed louder than ever.”
“What was done about it? Was there no redress?”
“‘Redress’ nothing! What redress could there be for a pack of get-rich-quick guys who had insisted on buying my stock after I’d told them just how worthless it was? Didn’t I have their own signed statements that I——”
“And you call that transaction an instance of truth-telling?”
“Oh, well, the real truth’s too precious to squander foolishly where it won’t be appreciated. It’s like whiskey: got to be weakened to the popular taste. And speaking of liars, have you kept your eye much on Jerry lately?”
“No, why?”
“That young ass has got something on the thing he calls his mind, and I’ve a good working notion the ‘Something’ is a scheme to get even with me. I just judge that from what I know of him. He gets his morning letter from that chorus missus of his, and then he sits and rolls his eyes at me for half an hour. He’s framing up something all right, all right. What it is, I don’t know. That’s the advantage a fool has over a wise man! You can dope out some line of action on a man of brains, but the Almighty himself don’t know what a fool’ll do next. So I’m kind of riding herd on Jerry from afar.”
“Perhaps if you tried a new tack—took him into your confidence——”
“There wouldn’t be any confidence left. No man’s got enough for two. Sometimes I’m shy on even the little I once had.”
“The campaign?”
“The campaign? That ain’t a question of confidence any more than knowing the sun will rise and Missouri will go Democratic. I was thinking of the confidence I had of winning the Pompton Avenue crowd by that measly reception.”
“You haven’t succeeded?”
“Not so’s you’d notice it. A few of the people who are so tangled up in my deals that they are scared not to be civil, nod sort of sheepish at me when I meet ’em. The rest get near-sighted as soon as I come round the corner. As for calling on us or inviting me to any of their houses, why you’d think I was the Voice of Conscience by the way they sidestep me.”
“But the season hasn’t really opened. In most cities, people aren’t even back from the seaside or mountains yet. Perhaps, later on——”
“Later on the present performance will be encored by popular request. Say, Miss Lanier, I was half jagged that night. But I can remember telling you that I was happier just then than I’d ever been before. I was in society at last. My boy was a member of the smart set in New York. My girl was a princess. I was going to be Governor.”
“Yes?”
“Well, look at me now. Jerry’s made a lifelong mess of his future. Blanche is on the way to Yurrup with a bargain counter prince that I’d hate to compliment by calling deuce-high. My deebut into society was like the feller in the song, who ‘Walked Right in and Turned Around and Walked Right out Again.’ The Governorship’s the only thing left; and I’m getting so I’m putting into that all the hopes I squandered on the rest. And when I’ve nailed it, I’ve a half mind to try for President. That’d carry me clear through society, and on out on the other side.”
Anice listened to him with a sort of wonderment, which always possessed her when he spoke of his social aspirations. That a man of his indomitable strength and largeness of nature should harp so eternally and yearn so strenuously in that one petty strain, never ceased to amaze her.
“The feet of clay on the image of iron,” she told herself as she dismissed the thought.
“By the way,” asked Conover, as she rose to leave the room, “were you thinking of going to the Standish meeting to-night?”
“Yes,” she answered, meeting his quizzical gaze fearlessly, “if you can spare me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I’m afraid I can’t. I’ve about a ream of campaign stuff to go through, and I shall need your help.”
“Very well,” answered Anice, and he could decipher neither disappointment nor any other emotion in those childlike brown eyes of hers.
“Lord!” he muttered to himself as she went out, “what a politician that woman would have made! The devil himself can’t read her. If I had married a girl like that instead—I wonder if that heart-trouble of the wife’s is ever likely to carry her off sudden.”
An hour or so of sunlight remained. Anice, tired from her all-day confinement indoors, donned hat and jacket and sallied forth for a walk. She turned her steps northward toward the open country that lay beyond Pompton Avenue. There was a sting in the early fall air in that high latitude which made walking a pleasure. Moreover, after the atmosphere of work, tobacco, politics and reminiscences that had been her portion since early morning, it was a joy to be alone with the cool and the sweetness of the dying day. Besides, she wanted to think.
But the solitary stroll she had planned was not to be her portion, for, as she rounded the first corner, she came upon Clive Standish deep in talk with Ansel. Clive’s tired eyes brightened at the sight of her. The look of weariness that had crept into the candidate’s face since she had last seen him went straight to Anice’s heart. With a hurried word of dismissal to his campaign manager, Standish left his companion and fell into step at Miss Lanier’s side.
“This is better than I expected,” said he. “I always manage to include Pompton Avenue in my tramps lately, but this is the first time I’ve caught a glimpse of you.”
“You are looking badly,” she commented. “You are working too hard.”
“One must, in a fight like mine. It’s nothing to what I must do during my tour. Everything depends on that. I start to-morrow.”
“So soon? I’m sorry.”
“Why?” he asked in some surprise.
“I’m afraid you’ll find Mr. Conover stronger up-State than you think. I don’t like to see you disappointed.”
“You care?”
“Of course I do. I hate to see anyone disappointed.”
“How delightfully impersonal!” grumbled Clive, in disgust.
“I thought you were averse to personalities. You’ve said so in both the speeches I’ve heard you make.”
“You came to hear me? I——”
“One likes to keep abreast of the times; to hear both sides——”
“And having heard both——”
“One forms one’s own conclusions.”
“And yours are——”
“Quite formed.”
“Anice!” exclaimed Standish impatiently, “nature never cut you out for a Sybil. Can’t you be frank? If you only knew what your approval—your good wishes—mean to me, you would be kinder.”
“There are surely enough people who encourage you and——”
“No, there are not. I want your encouragement, your faith; just as I had it when we were boy and girl together, you and I!”
“You forget, I am in the employ of Mr. Conover. As long as I accept his wages, would it be loyal of me to——”
“Then why accept them? If only——”
“One must make a living in some way. I have other reasons, too.”
“That same wretched old mystery again! As for making a living, that’s a different thing, and it has changed too many lives. Once, years ago, for instance, when I was struggling to make a living—and a bare, scant one at that—I kept silent when my heart clamored to speak. I kept silent because I had no right to ask any woman to share my hard luck. But now I’m on my feet. I’ve made the ‘living’ you talk about. And there’s enough of it for two. So I——”
“I congratulate you on your success,” said the girl nervously. “Here is my corner. I must hurry back. I’ve a long evening’s work to——”
“Anice!”
“Good-by!”
“You must hear me. I——”
“Hello, Miss Lanier! Parleying with the enemy, eh? Come, come, that isn’t playing square. ’Evening, Standish!”
Caleb Conover, crossing the street from the side entrance of his own grounds, had confronted the two before they noted his approach. Looking from one to the other, he grinned amusedly.
“I’ve heard there was more’n one leak in our camp,” he went on, “but I never s’posed this was it.”
Trembling with confusion, perhaps with some deeper emotion, Anice nevertheless answered coolly:
“I hope my absence hasn’t delayed any of your work? I was on my way back, when you——”
“Now look at that,” exclaimed Caleb with genuine admiration. “Here’s my hated enemy as red and rattled as if I’d caught him stuffing ballot-boxes or cheering for Conover! And the lady in the case is as cool as cucumbers, and she don’t bat an eye. Standish, she’s seven more kinds of a man than you are, or ever will be, for all your big shoulders and bigger line of talk. Well, we won’t keep you any longer, son. No use askin’ you in, I s’pose? No? Then maybe I’ll drop around to your meeting this evening. I’d ’a’ come before, but it always makes me bashful to hear myself praised to the public. Good night.”
It was late that evening when Clive reached his rooms, for a few brief hours of rest before setting forth on his tour of the State. He was tired out, discouraged, miserable. His much-heralded meeting had been the dreariest sort of fiasco. Scarcely had the opening address begun and the crowded house warmed up to the occasion, when every light in the building had been switched off.
Inquiry showed that a break had occurred in the gas mains which could not be remedied until morning. Candles and lamps were hurriedly sent for. Meantime, though a certain confusion followed the plunging of the place into darkness, the crowd had been, on the whole, orderly. In spite of this, the chief of police, with twenty reserves, coming on the scene, had ordered Standish civilly enough to dismiss the audience. Then the policemen had filed up on the stage, illumining it by their bull’s-eye lanterns, and clustered ominously about the speakers.
In response to Clive’s angry protest, the chief had simply reiterated his order, adding that his department was responsible for the city’s peace and quiet, and that the crowd showed an inclination to riot. Nor could the Arm of the Law be shaken from this stand. The audience, during the colloquy between Standish and the chief had grown impatient, and an occasional catcall or shrill whistle had risen from the darkened auditorium. At each of these sounds the police had gripped their nightsticks and glanced with a fine apprehension at their leader for commands.
The upshot of the matter had been the forced dismissal of the spectators. Standish had scouted Ansel’s suggestion that the whole catastrophe was a ruse of Conover’s, until, as he walked down the dark aisle toward the door, he heard a policeman whisper:
“I was waitin’ for the chief to give some of us the tip to pinch him.”
“An’ let him make a noise like a martyr?” grunted a second voice easily recognized as Billy Shevlin’s. “You must think the Boss is as balmy in the belfry as you blue lobsters. He’d ’a’ had Geoghegan broke if he’d——”
The rest of the reply had been lost.
No other disengaged hall could be found in the vicinity; and the meeting from which Clive had expected so much had gone by the board. He walked home in a daze of chagrin. How could he hope to fight a man who employed such weapons; who swayed such power in every city department; who thus early in the campaign showed plainly he would stop at nothing in beating his opponent?
Then the young candidate’s teeth clenched tight, and the sullen grit that for so many centuries has carried the bulldog race of yellow-haired, strong-jawed Anglo-Saxons to victory against hopeless odds came to his aid. He shook his big shoulders as if tossing off some physical weight, entered his rooms and switched on the electric light.
On his study table lay a special delivery letter, neatly typewritten, as was the single long sheet of foolscap it contained. Standish glanced at the bottom of the page. There was no signature. Then he read:
“The date for the various county conventions has not been formally set. It is unofficially given as a week from Saturday. Instead, the caucus will be held in three of the eight counties next Saturday. The Machine’s men know this. The League’s don’t. It will be sprung as a surprise, with two days’ notice instead of the customary seven. This will keep many of the League’s people from attending. At the Bowden and Jericho caucuses telegrams will be received saying you have withdrawn.
“At Matawan and Haldane the regular delegates will be notified to meet at the town halls. While they are waiting outside the locked front doors, the county chairman and his own crowd will step in the back way and hold their caucus and elect their delegates. Floaters will be brought into several counties. In Wills County the chairman will fail to hear the names of your delegates. Have your manager arrange for the Wills men to bolt at the right time. Force the State Committee at once to declare the date for the county conventions. Notify the League’s men at Matawan and Haldane of the ‘back door’ trick, and have the telegraph operators at Jericho and Bowden warned not to receive or transmit any fake message of your withdrawal.
“On your State tour you will find newspapers closed to your speeches and advertisements, and a number of the halls engaged before you get to the town. Arrange for injunctions restraining the papers from barring your notices, and have someone go ahead of you to secure halls. And arrange for police protection to break up rowdyism at your meetings.”
Clive Standish read and re-read this remarkable epistle. That it had come from the Conover camp he could not doubt. He had heard, before Caleb’s hint of the previous afternoon, that there was a certain discontent and vague rumor of treachery, in more than one of the multifarious branches of the Boss’s business and political interests. For the unexpected strength developed by the Civic League and the eloquence of its candidate had shaken divers of the enemy’s less resolute followers, and more than one of these might readily seek to curry future favor with the winning side by casting just such an anchor to windward.
In any case, there was the letter. Its author’s identity, for the moment, was of no great matter.
“Anonymous!” mused Standish, eyeing the missive with strong distaste. “Is it a trick of Conover’s or a bit of treachery on the part of one of the men he trusts? In either case, there’s only one course a white man can take with a thing of this kind.”
Picking up the letter, he crumpled it into a ball and threw it into the fireplace.
“Better not say anything about it to Ansel,” he decided as he watched the paper twist open under the heat and break into a blaze. “He’d only call me a visionary crank again. And if it’s a trap, the precautions he’d take would play straight into Conover’s hand.”
Some blocks away, in his Pompton Avenue Mausoleum, the Railroader was giving final orders to the henchmen to whom he had intrusted the details of watching Standish’s forthcoming tour. And some of these same details he had even intrusted to the unenthusiastic Gerald.