The Gold Brick by Brand Whitlock - HTML preview

REFORM IN THE FIRST

THE senatorial convention in the First District was to convene at ten o’clock, in a dingy little hall in lower Clark Street, lighted by windows so long unwashed that they looked like ground glass. From the chandeliers, black and sticky with dead flies, shreds of tissue paper fluttered, relics of some boisterous fête an Italian society had given there long ago. The floor was damp in arabesque wrought by a sprinkling-can, for the janitor had sprayed water there to lay the dust he was too indifferent to remove. Perhaps a hundred chairs were set in amphitheatrical order, and before them stood a kitchen table, on which was a white water pitcher, flanked by a glass, thickened by various sedimentary deposits within.

In the saloon below, at nine o’clock, scores of delegates were already shuffling in the sawdust that covered the floor, holding huge schooners of beer in their hairy fists, gorging grossly at the free lunch table, with bologna, rank onions and rye bread. The foam of the beer clung to their mustaches, which, after each sip, they sucked between their lips. Most of them managed, at the same time they were eating and drinking, by a dexterous sleight-of-hand, to smoke cheap domestic cigars, and a cloud of white smoke rolled along the low ceiling. Each new arrival was greeted with some obscene but endearing epithet, and the room rang with laughter and profanity. A keg of beer had been provided by one of Conway’s managers, and the bartender, wiping his hands on a dirty towel, was rid, so long as the keg lasted, of the responsibility of keeping account of drinks, and of ringing up the change on the cash register. At eleven o’clock the keg was empty, the free lunch table abandoned to the flies, and the delegates scuffled up the dingy stairs to the hall. Half an hour later the chairman of the senatorial district committee pounded the kitchen table with a leg of a broken chair, and shouted:

“The convention will be in order.”

This declaration made no impression upon the babel of voices, the laughter, the profanity, the noise of shuffling feet and scraping chairs. The delegates were scrambling to their places, seating themselves by wards. Reporters flung themselves into seats at a second table and gazed about the room, noting who were there. The political men of the morning papers did not trouble themselves to take seats. They loafed among the politicians in a way superior to the reporters for the afternoon papers, as if they were politicians themselves, making history instead of recording it.

Meanwhile the noise did not abate, and the committeeman was growing red in the face. The morning was warm, and the room, already cloudy with tobacco smoke, was filling with a noisome human odor. The atmosphere was feculent. Delegates removed their coats, hanging them over the backs of their chairs. Finally the chairman of the committee, growing impatient, split the table with his club and yelled:

“Damn it all, boys, come to order!”

And then, eager to resign such a difficult command, he hastened to announce:

“The committee has named Honorable John P. Muldoon to act as temp’ry chairman.”

He handed the chair leg to John P. Muldoon, who, stroking back his curly hair from his brow, began to beat the table impartially.

All this while Underwood stood against the wall, looking on. The question that had been agitating him for weeks was about to be decided, but now that the ordeal was actually upon him, the consciousness beat numbly against his brain, so that the whole scene lacked reality, almost interest. He was dazed. He was about to take his baptism of political fire, and he trembled like a white novitiate.

Underwood belonged to one of the oldest families of Chicago—the name had been known there before the fire. His father, who had lately taken him into his law firm, continued to cling in his conservatism to an old stone house in Michigan Avenue long after his neighbors had abandoned their mansions to uncertain boarders, and either retreated farther south or advanced to the North Side. John Underwood had come out of Harvard with a young lawyer’s ambition in politics, an ambition that had the United States senate merely as a beginning of its home stretch, and when the year rolled around in which state senators were to be elected in the odd numbered districts he decided that it was time to begin.

The newspapers had scented the sensation that lurked in the candidature of a young man like Underwood in a district like the First, and because he was rich, because he wore good clothes, because he went into what is called society, promptly dubbed him a reformer, and thus weighted he had set out upon his race for the nomination. He liked to see his name in the newspapers, liked to think of himself as a reformer, though he was embarrassed in this attitude by the fascinating figure of the political boss he had hoped to become—a well-dressed, gentlemanly boss, of course, who, while at home in those saloons where he permitted the convivial familiarity of the boys, nevertheless took his luncheons at his club. He fell into a way of speaking of the First as “my district,” spoke of it, in fact, as if he, instead of Malachi Nolan and “Cinch” Conway, owned it, and when certain ward politicians in the first days of the campaign called upon him, Underwood was pleased to lend them money, just as he was pleased to comply with the requests of certain others who organized the John W. Underwood First Ward Campaign Club, and sent a committee to inform him that they were assembled in the club rooms ready to transact business, and beer only four dollars a keg. He winked confidentially at himself in the mirror that night as he gave a final touch to his white cravat and surveyed his fine young form arrayed in evening clothes for the reform banquet at the Palmer House. His speech was The Tendencies of Modern Politics. The newspapers said it was a very brilliant speech, breathing lofty political sentiments that were bound to make John W. Underwood votes. Also, the Reform Club indorsed his candidature.

As Underwood leaned against the greasy wall of the little hall on lower Clark Street this morning, the whole campaign flashed before him, just as the events of a lifetime are said in books to flash before the mind of a drowning man. He recalled every vivid detail of the call Baldwin had made upon him, how he entered his private office without troubling the pale, pimpled office boy to announce him, how he lifted from his carefully parted hair his straw hat with its youthful band of blue, and laughed out, “John, my boy, how are you? Hot, isn’t it?” He could see Baldwin as he sat in the solid oak chair that stood intimately beside his roll-top desk, fanning his ruddy face with the hat, which had impressed a broad red band on his forehead. Underwood had been glad enough to close Cooley on Taxation and revolve his chair to face Baldwin, just as if he had been a client, for Baldwin was the most important politician who had ever called upon him professionally.

Underwood remembered clearly how Baldwin’s excellent teeth glistened when he smiled, how he lighted a Turkish cigarette and, tilting up his chin, blew a long, airy stream of blue smoke through the thick hairs of his mustache. He could even remember how carefully Baldwin sheltered the flame of the match for Underwood’s cigarette, in that curious spirit of economy men always practice with regard to matches, much as if there were only one match left in the whole world. And then he could recall almost word for word their conversation. Baldwin had frankly told him that Conway had him handicapped, because he had the city hall with him and controlled the Fifth Ward. Simmons, Baldwin had said, didn’t cut much ice; he had some labor leaders with him, and would get a bunch of delegates from his own ward, but that was about all. In fact, said Baldwin, concluding his judicial summing up, Conway could win out, hands down, if it were not for his recent quarrel with Malachi Nolan. Underwood remembered that during all this frankness he had reflectively drawn rude little geometrical figures on an envelope and had been somehow afraid to look up at Baldwin, for the noted lobbyist had sat there transfixing him with an eye that could read the mind of a man when it was impinged on politics—that is, practical politics—as easily as it could a poker hand across a table stacked with blue chips.

He knew Baldwin had come with some practical proposition, and when the lobbyist suggested that he was too respectable, and would run better in some residence district, that the boys looked upon him as a reformer, and that the silk stockings were not practical enough to help him, Underwood had felt that at last it was coming. It was simple enough. Baldwin had been talking that very morning about Underwood’s candidature to Mr. Weed of the Metropolitan Motor System, and to Mr. Peabody, president of the Gas Company, and they had been very much interested. They had an anxiety to see good men nominated that year, for they had large business interests that were more or less affected by legislation, and had feared they would have to settle on Conway. Conway had experience in legislative matters, and had been friendly enough in the city council, yet they felt they could hardly trust him—he was such a grafter, and in such things, Baldwin blandly assured Underwood, they had to depend upon a man’s honor alone, and so they had sent Baldwin to suggest that Underwood meet them at luncheon, and talk matters over. Baldwin, with his love of ease and luxury, had preferred a dinner over at the Cardinal’s in the evening, but Mr. Peabody had something on hand with the trustees of his church and couldn’t meet them then. Baldwin had taken out his watch at this point, with the air of a man who suddenly remembers some important engagement—the details all came back with a fidelity that was painful—and stood awaiting Underwood’s reply, with the open watch ticking impatiently in his palm.

Of course, Underwood had understood—and he wished ardently to be nominated and elected. He could see himself swinging idly in a big chair behind a walnut desk in the senate chamber, just as an actor sees himself, with an artist’s ecstatic, half-frightened gasp, in some new part he is about to study. The position would give him much importance, he would be riding back and forth between Chicago and Springfield on a pass, it would be so pleasant to be addressed as senator, to be consulted, to head delegations in state conventions and cast the solid vote for any one he pleased; besides, it would be a good training for Washington, he could practise in oratory and parliamentary law just as he practised on friendless paupers over in the criminal court when his father influenced some judge to appoint him to defend an indigent prisoner. It meant only one little word, he could be wary of promises. His heart had expanded, he had turned half around in his chair to face Baldwin, when suddenly the reformer within him rose to object, pointed to his ideals, rehearsed the speech on The Tendencies of Modern Politics, recalled all the good words the independent papers had spoken of him, urged the beauty of great sacrifices for principle. At the idea of self-sacrifice, Underwood had felt a melting self-pity, he admired himself in this new rôle of a self-sacrificing reformer. And so he flung the cigarette out of the window, watched it whirl down to the melting tar of the roofs below and said firmly:

“I have an engagement this morning, Mr. Baldwin. I’m sorry, but I guess I can’t come.”

Once more Underwood saw the pleasantness leave Baldwin’s face, saw him fleck a flake of ash from the white waistcoat he wore with his summer suit of blue, and snapping the lid of his watch shut, he once more heard him say in a final and reproachful tone:

“Well, all right; sorry, my boy.”

Underwood wondered that morning in the noisy convention hall, whether, if he had the decision to make over again, he would decline such influence. It had been the cause of much doubt and some regret at the time. The boss within him had protested—surely it was a political mistake—and the boss was louder than the reformer, and more plausible. He came forward with a brilliant scheme. He recalled Baldwin’s reference to the rivalry between Nolan and Conway. Underwood remembered that when he suggested the possibility of Nolan’s running for the nomination himself, Baldwin had shaken his head—there wasn’t enough in it, he said. Nolan could do very much better in the council, where he was. Besides, Mr. Weed and Mr. Peabody disliked him.

Underwood thought out his scheme that afternoon, while hunting in the digest for cases in point to be cited in a case his father was preparing for the appellate court. The work of looking up cases in point, while its results are impressive and seem to smell of the lamp, had in reality grown quite automatic to Underwood, and as he loafed over digests and reports and jotted down his notes, he elaborated the scheme, just what he would say and do, how he would appear, and so forth. And so, when he entered Malachi Nolan’s place in Dearborn Street, early that evening, he was fully prepared. The details of this incident came back just as the details of Baldwin’s visit had done—the empty saloon, the alderman himself leaning over his bar, his white apron rolled into a big girth about his middle, the cigar in the round hole at the corner of his mouth gone out, denoting that it was time for him to go down the alley to Billy Boyle’s and get his porterhouse and baked potato.

Underwood watched Malachi Nolan mix his Martini cocktail, splash it picturesquely into a sparkling glass and bejewel it with a Maraschino cherry, then gravely take a cigar for himself and stow it away in his ample waistcoat. Then, as Nolan mopped the bar with professional sweep of his white-sleeved, muscular arm, Underwood unfolded his brilliant scheme, skirting carefully the acute suspicions of an old politician. But Nolan mopped, blinking inscrutably, at last putting the damp cloth away in some mysterious place under the counter. The fat Maltese cat, waiting until the moisture on the bar had evaporated, stretched herself again beside the silver urn that held the crackers and the little cubes of cheese. Still Nolan blinked in silence, like a hostile jury with its mind made up, until at last, in desperation, Underwood blurted out his proposition. Nolan blinked some more, then, half opening his blue Irish eyes, grunted:

“Well, I like your gall.”

Underwood’s spirits fell, yet he was not disappointed. It was, after all, just what he had expected. It served him right for his presumption, if nothing more—though the subdued reformer within had hinted at other reasons. He hung his head, twirling his empty glass disconsolately. He did not see the light that twinkled in the blue eyes, he had not then known how very ready Nolan was to form any combination that would beat Conway and Baldwin, especially with a reformer like himself who had money to spend on his ambitions. He had not discerned how badly the man whom the newspapers always cartooned with the First Ward sticking out of his vest pocket, needed a reformer in his business, as the saying is. Hence his glad surprise when Nolan wiped his big hand on his apron like a washer-woman and held it out, saying:

“But I’m wit’ ye.”

Then the campaign, under Nolan’s management, in the most wonderful legislative district—a cosmopolitan district, bristling with sociological problems, a district that has fewer homes and more saloons, more commerce and more sloth, more millionaires and more paupers, and while it confines within its boundaries the skyscrapers, clubs, theaters and hundred churches of a metropolis, still boasts a police station with more arrests on its blotter than any other in the world. Night after night, with Nolan’s two candidates for the house, he spent in saloons where a candidate must treat and distribute his cards that the boys may size him up; lodging houses and barrel houses in lower Clark Street, where sweating negroes and frowsy whites drank five-cent whisky with him; blazing saloons along the levee, where even the poor, painted girls at the tables lifted their glasses when he ordered the drinks for the house; crap games and policy shops in lower Clark Street, the Syrian, Arabic, Chinese and Italian quarters down by the squalid Bad Lands, and at last a happier evening along the Archey Road. Underwood had three weeks of this, and as he stood in the convention hall that morning, unwashed, unshaven, his linen soiled, his shoes muddy, his own friends would not have known him, though he cared little enough for this now—they had all forgotten to go to the primaries the day before, and those for whom he had sent carriages had been too busy, or too respectable, to respond. The taste of bad beer and the scorch of cheap cigars still smacked in his mouth—indeed, he did not get them entirely out until he came back from Mt. Clemens two weeks after the nomination.

But they were balloting for permanent chairman now. It would be a test vote; it would disclose his own strength and the strength of Conway. He looked over the red faces before him. He saw Conway himself moving among the delegates, snarling, cursing, quarreling with the friends of years; he saw Conway’s candidate for the house, McGlone, over in the Second Ward delegation, his coat off, a handkerchief about his fat neck, a fuming cigar between his chubby fingers, turning on his heavy haunches to revile some man who was numbered with Nolan’s crowd; he saw in the First Ward delegation, Malachi Nolan, clean-shaven, in black coat and cravat, his iron gray hair cropped short, calm alone of all the others. He would have looked the priest more than the saloon-keeper, had he smoked his cigar differently. Now and then he solemnly raised his hand, with almost the benediction of a father, to still the clamor of his delegation, which, with its twenty-one votes, was safe at all events for Underwood.

Muldoon was Conway’s man—they would try to make the temporary organization permanent. D’Ormand was Underwood’s candidate. And Muldoon won. Underwood had lost the first round.

The candidates for senator were to be placed in nomination first. Underwood stood in the crowded doorway and heard Conway’s name presented. Then, in the cheering, with his heart in his sanded throat, he heard the chairman say:

“Are there any other nominations?”

There was a momentary stillness, and then he heard a thick, strong voice:

“Misther Chairman!”

“The gentleman from the First Ward.”

“Misther Chairman,” the thick, strong voice said, “I roise to place in nomynation the name of wan—”

It was the voice of Malachi Nolan, and Underwood suddenly remembered that Nolan was to place his name before the convention. He listened an instant, but could not endure it long. He could not endure that men should see him in the hour when his name was being thus laid naked to the world. Reporters were writing it down, perhaps the crowd would laugh or whistle or hiss. Besides, candidates do not remain in the convention hall; they await the committee of notification in some near-by saloon. He squeezed through the mass of men who stood on tiptoes, stretching their necks to see and hear the old leader of the First Ward, and fled.

The first ballot was taken—Conway, 31; Underwood, 30; Simmons, the dark horse, 8; necessary to a choice, 35. The vote was unchanged for twenty-six ballots, till the afternoon had worn away, and the trucks had jolted off the cobblestones of Clark Street, till the lights were flaring and hot tamale men, gamblers, beggars, street walkers, all the denizens of darkness were shifting along the sidewalks, till the policemen had been changed on their beats, and Pinkerton night watchmen were trying the doors of stores, till Chinamen shuffled forth, and Jewesses and Italian women emerged for their evening breath of air, bringing swart and grimy children to play upon the heated flags. The hall was lighted, just as if some Italian festival were to be held there. The reporters’ places at the table were taken by the men who did politics for the morning papers, themselves reduced at last to the necessity of taking notes. They brought reports of the results in other senatorial conventions held about town that day—it seemed to be assured that John Skelley had carried the country towns, Lemont, Riverside, Evanston, and so on. In certain west side districts this man had won, in certain north side districts that man had been successful. It looked as if the old gang was going to break back into the legislature.

And so the interest in this one remaining convention deepened, the strain tightened, the crowd thickened. The delegates, tired and sullen, shed their waistcoats, tore off their moist and dirty collars and settled down to an angry fight. The amphitheatrical arrangement of the chairs had long been broken. The ward delegations now formed circles about their leaders. The damp arabesques wrought by the janitor’s superficial sprinkling-can had long since been superseded by arabesques of tobacco juice. The floor was littered with scraps of paper, the spent ballots with which the stubborn contest had been waged. The First Ward delegation was in a solid ring, and in the center of it sat Malachi Nolan, his elbows on his knees, tearing old ballots into tiny specks of paper and strewing them on the floor, but keeping all the while a surveying eye on the Fifth Ward delegation, now divided into two groups, one of which surrounded Howe, the other huddling about Grogan, the lawyer, who, with disheveled hair, a handkerchief about his neck, stood glaring angrily at Nolan, his eyes shadowed by heavy circles telling of weariness and the strain.

Now and then the leaders made desperate attempts to trade, harrying Simmons, offering him everything for his seven votes. Simmons himself, in his turn, tried to induce each faction to swing its strength to him.

But the situation remained unchanged.

Once Nolan sent for Underwood and whispered to him. He thought he knew one or two Conway men who could be got very cheaply, but the boy shook his head—the reformer within him demurred—and yet he smiled sardonically at the reformer thinking of the primaries and the convention itself.

Then Malachi Nolan caught the chairman’s shifty eye and moved an adjournment until morning. But even as he spoke, Grogan scowled at Muldoon, shook his head at his followers, and the room rang with their hoarse shouts:

“No! no! no!”

Heartened by this confession of weakness on Nolan’s part, they kept on yelling lustily:

“No! no! no!”

They even laughed, and Muldoon smote the table, to declare the motion lost.

On the forty-seventh ballot, one of the Simmons votes went over to Conway, and there was a faint cheer. On the forty-eighth, one of the Simmons votes went to Underwood, and parity was restored. On the forty-ninth, Underwood gained another of Simmons’ votes—Nolan, it seemed, had promised to get him on the janitor’s pay-roll in the state house—and the vote was tied. This ballot stood:

The Simmons men were holding out, waiting to throw their strength to the winner. When the sixty-seventh ballot had been taken, Muldoon, squinting in the miserable light, at the secretary’s figures, hit the table with the chair leg and said:

“On this ballot Conway receives 32, Underwood 32, Simmons 5. There being no choice, you will prepare your ballots for another vote.”

Just then one of the Conway men from the Second Ward left his place, and touched one of Nolan’s fellows in the First Ward delegation—Donahue—on the shoulder. Donahue started. The man whispered in his ear, and returned to his delegation, keeping his eye on Donahue. Underwood looked on breathlessly. Nolan, revolving slowly, held his hat for every vote—last of all for Donahue’s. The man dropped his folded ballot into the hat and hung his head. Nolan calmly picked the ballot out of the hat and gave it back to Donahue, who looked up in affected surprise.

“What’s the trouble, Malachi?” he said as innocently as he could. He was not much of an actor.

“This won’t do,” Nolan said, giving the ballot back to the man.

“It’s all right, Malachi, honest to God it is!” protested Donahue.

“Thin I’ll just put this wan in for ye, heh?” said Nolan, drawing another ballot from the pocket of his huge waistcoat and poising it above the hat.

The crowd had pressed around the First Ward delegation. The convention had risen to its feet, craning red necks, and out of the mass, Grogan cried:

“Aw, here, Malachi Nolan, none o’ that now!”

Nolan turned his rugged face toward him and said simply:

“Who’s runnin’ this dillygation, you or me?”

“Well—none o’ your bulldozing—we won’t stand it!” replied Grogan angrily, his blue eyes blazing.

“You get to hell out o’ this.” And so saying, Nolan dropped the ballot into the hat and turned to face the chair.

“Have you all voted?” inquired Muldoon.

“First Ward!” the secretary called.

Nolan squared his shoulders, not having looked in his hat or counted the ballots there, and said slowly and impressively:

“On behalf av the solid dillygation av the First Ward, I cast twinty-wan votes for John W. Underwood.”

“Misther Chairman! Misther Chairman!” cried Grogan, waving his hand in the air, “I challenge that vote! I challenge that vote!”

“The gentleman from the Fifth Ward challenges the vote—”

“Misther Chairman,” said Nolan, standing with one heavy foot on his chair and leveling a forefinger at Muldoon, “a point of order! The gintleman from the Fifth Ward has no right to challenge the vote av the First Ward—he’s not a mimber of the dillygation!”

“Let the First Ward be polled,” calmly ruled Muldoon. Nolan took his foot from his chair and stepped to Donahue’s side. Every man in the First Ward delegation, as his name was called from the credentials, cried “Underwood!” As the secretary neared the name of Donahue, Nolan laid his hand heavily on the fellow’s shoulder.

“Donahue!” called the secretary.

The fellow squirmed under Nolan’s hand.

“Donahue!”

“Don’t let him bluff you!” cried some one from the Fifth Ward.

“Vote as you damn please, Jimmie!”

“T’row the boots into ’im, Donnie!”

“Soak him one!”

“Take your hands off him, Bull Nolan!”

So they bawled and Donahue wriggled. But the hand of Nolan, like the hand of Douglas, was his own, and gripped fast. Grogan, his face red, his eyes on fire, leaped from his place in his delegation, and started across the chairs for Nolan. The big saloon-keeper gave him a look out of his little eye. His left shoulder dipped, his left fist tightened. Grogan halted.

“Vote, Jimmie, me lad,” said Nolan, in a soft voice.

“Underwood!” said Donahue, in a whisper. His weak, pinched, hungry face turned appealingly toward Grogan. His blear eyes were filmy with disappointment.

“He votes for John W. Underwood, Misther Chairman,” said Nolan complacently. The vote was unchanged. The chairman ordered another ballot.

And then, all at once, as if a breath from a sanded desert had been blown into the room, Underwood was sensible of a change in the atmosphere. The air was perhaps no hotter than it had been for hours at the close of that stifling day, no bluer with tobacco smoke, no heavier with the smell borne in from Clark Street on hot night winds that had started cool and fresh from the lake four blocks away, a smell compounded of many smells, the smell ascending from foul and dark cellars beneath the sidewalk, the smell of stale beer, the ammoniac smell of filthy pavements, mingled with the feculence of unclean bodies that had sweated for hours in the vitiated air of that low-ceilinged, crowded room. It had a strange moral density that oppressed him, that oppressed all, even the politicians, for they ceased from cursing and from speech, and now sat sullen, silent, suspiciously eying their companions. It was an atmosphere charged with some ominous foreboding, some awful fear. Underwood had never felt that atmosphere before, yet, with a gasp that came not as an effect of the heat, he recognized its meaning.

A hush fell. Muldoon, his black, curly locks shining with perspiration, was leaning on his improvised gavel, his keen eye, the Irish eye that so readily seizes such situations, darting into every face before him.

And suddenly came that for which they were waiting. A man entered the hall and strode straight across the floor into the Fifth Ward delegation, into the group where the Underwood men were clustered about their leader. He wore evening clothes, his black dinner-coat and white shirt bosom striking a vivid note in the scene. He walked briskly, but his mind was so intent upon his pose that it was not until he had removed his cigarette from his lips and had observed Underwood, that his white teeth showed beneath his reddish mustache in the well-known smile of George R. Baldwin. He elbowed his way into the very midst of the Underwood men from the Fifth Ward, and leading one of them aside, talked with him an instant, and then returned him, as it were, to his place in the delegation. Then he brought forth another, whispered to him for an earnest moment, and sent him back, with a smile and a slap on the shoulder. The third delegate detained him longer, and once, as he argued with him, the slightest shade of displeasure crossed Baldwin’s face, but in an instant the smile replaced it, and he talked—convincingly, it seemed. Before Baldwin returned this man to his delegation, he shook hands with him.

The secretary was calling the wards, and Nolan had announced the result in his delegation. The Fifth Ward was a long while in preparing its ballots. There was trouble of some sort there, among the Underwood men. Nolan was urging, expostulating, cursing, commanding. The air was tense. It seemed to Underwood that it must inevitably be shattered by some moral cataclysm in the soul of man. Grogan’s brow was knit, as he waited, hat in hand. The delegates voted. Feverishly, with trembling fingers, Grogan opened and counted the bits of paper. Then he sprang to his feet, with a wild, glad light in his face.

“Misther Chairman!” he cried, “the Fifth Ward casts twenty-five votes for Conway and four for Underwood!”

The three bolters in the Fifth Ward delegation sat with defiance in their faces, but they could not sustain the expression, even by huddling close together. They broke for the door, wriggling their way through masses of men, who made their passage uncertain, almost perilous. A billow of applause broke from the Conway men, and submerged the convention. Delegates all over the hall were on their feet, clamoring for recognition, but Malachi Nolan’s voice boomed heavily above all other voices. His fist was in the air above all other fists.

“Misther Chairman!” he yelled, “I challenge that vote!”

“Misther Chairman!” yelled Grogan, “a point of order! The gentleman isn’t a member of the Fifth Ward delegation and can not challenge its vote!”

“The point of order is well taken,” promptly ruled the chair. “The gentleman from the First Ward is out of order—he will take his seat.”

Men were screaming, brandishing fists, waving hats, coats, anything, scraping chairs, pounding the floor with them. There were heavy, brutal oaths, and, here and there, the smack of a fist on a face. In the tumult, the five Simmons votes went to Conway. Muldoon was beating the table with his club and crying:

“Order! order! order!”

“To hell with order!” bawled some one from the First Ward delegation.

“On this ballot,” Muldoon was calling, “there were sixty-nine votes cast; necessary to a choice, thirty-five. James P. Conway has received forty votes; John W. Underwood, twenty-nine, and George W. Simmons”—he paused, as if to decipher the vote—“none. James P. Conway, having received the necessary number of votes, is therefore declared the nominee of this convention.”

Underwood was stunned. He staggered through the horrible uproar toward the door. He longed for the air outside, even the heavy air of lower Clark street, where the people surged along under the wild, dazzling lights, in two opposite, ever-passing processions. His head reeled. He lost the sense of things, the voices about him seemed far away and vague, he felt himself detached, as it were, from all that had gone before. But as he pressed his way through the crowd that blocked the entrance, and plunged toward the stairs, he saw Baldwin, mopping the red band on his white brow. Baldwin recognized him, and said, with his everlasting smile:

“Sorry, my boy—next time!”