THE Home Secretary-elect found his chief supporters heavily cast down.
“They’ve got a long start of us, already, Mr. Endor, and let me tell you, sir, they are out for blood.” Such was the greeting of Mr. Ambrose Furley, a tall, thin gentleman, not by nature an optimist, who wore, as became the fine flower of Blackhampton’s intelligentsia the black cord of his gold-rimmed eyeglasses round a red left ear. “And if I may be so bold as to offer an opinion, there’s only one thing can save us from getting it fairly in the neck.”
The member for East Blackhampton was not unused to the somber half-tones of his agent’s mind, but he did not look for such out-and-out pessimism, even in Mr. Ambrose Furley.
“You see, sir,” continued Mr. Furley, “from what I hear, the U. P. has made up its mind to do you in, no matter what it costs them.”
John Endor, unshaken, smiled the smile of the happy warrior.
The pessimism of Mr. Ambrose Furley grew a shade less defiant. “However, you may have a dog’s chance, Mr. Endor, and that’s about all. But take it from me, sir, even that chance depends, as you might say, on one contingency.”
“So you think we may still venture to hope?” There was a light in the eye of John Endor.
“I don’t put it as high as a hope, sir.” In his use of the English language Mr. Furley liked to be precise. “A shadow of a hope is more like it. And as I have already said even that depends upon one contingency.”
With the urbanity that all the Member’s supporters so greatly admired, Mr. Endor waited patiently while Mr. Ambrose Furley in his own good time proceeded to show what “the contingency” was. “It’s like this, do you see, sir? We mustn’t be blind to the fact that we are up against a ticklish situation. The voting in this election is going to be very cross. Now that you’ve come out so strong, much too strong most of us think here, against the U. P. there’s bound to be a big turnover of votes, unless we can get one man to come down on the right side of the fence. It’s just on the cards, if the gentleman in question does that, that we may not be beaten to a frazzle. But I don’t say he will. At the moment he’s seated on it. By nature he’s a blue, a regular blue—but there’s just a chance that, by a bit of management, he may come over to us. And if he does—well, sir, as I say, the voting at this election will be very cross.”
At this point the Member ventured tactfully to ask the name of the unknown power.
“Sir Josiah Munt,” said Mr. Furley, impressively. “Blackhampton’s Big Noise. In fact, sir,” Mr. Furley became almost lyrical, “Blackhampton’s Grand Old Man.”
“You think there’s a chance of Sir Josiah coming over?” The Member, for all his air of detachment, knew far more about local politics than appeared on the surface. “By Jove, that would be one up to us.”
“You bet it would, Mr. Endor. Sir Josiah is not everybody’s pretty boy, but he carries weight in this city. He’s a very honest man and he’s dead against ‘graft.’ It seems to me, sir, strictly between ourselves”—Mr. Ambrose Furley had all the shrewd penetration of a true Blackhamptonian—“that the U. P. is playing things up so high that there’s a poss-i-bil-ity, so far as Sir Munt is concerned, that it may overreach itself if it doesn’t watch it.”
“Good news if it is so. Can you suggest a means, Mr. Furley, of taking advantage of the fact?”
“Well sir, let us get down to brass tacks. Sir Munt is a bit of a One. He can’t be hustled. He can’t be driven. But he can see as far through a brick wall as most people. And last evening, as he was leaving the Floral Hall after the Sacred Harmonic Society’s annual performance of the Golden Legend in the company of Alderman Kearsley, another old-fashioned blue, he was overheard to remark, ‘I’m sorry to say it, Kearsley, but I’m afraid there’s going to be awful graft at this election.’”
The Member agreed.
“Coming from a gentleman in Sir Munt’s position those words mean a great deal. He knows very well that the graft is on his own side. The U. P. is so slick nowadays that it is beginning to give the Old Man cold feet. There’s such a thing as being too clever in this world, Mr. Endor, and strictly between you and me, sir, the over cleverness of the other side is the only chance we’ve got.”
At this point Mr. Ambrose Furley paused dramatically to readjust the cord of his eyeglasses round his left ear. It was an infallible sign on his part of constructive thought. “Do you know, sir,” he said after a long moment of silence, “what I should do if I were you? It may be a little infra dignitatem, but I should take the earliest opportunity of stepping across the Market Place to the Mayor’s Parlor and having a little heart-to-heart talk with Sir Munt. It may be infra dignitatem, as I say, but if you put the case against the U. P. only half as well as you put it in Parliament the other day, you’ll lose nothing by it. Sir Munt is a patriot, an imperialist, a protectionist, and all that, but when it comes to a showdown he’s a man who knows how many beans make five.”
The Agent’s argument found prompt favor in the sight of John Endor. It came to him, in fact, rather in the light of an inspiration. A shrewd race these Blackhamptonians! There and then he decided to have an interview with the famous and admired Sir Josiah Munt.