A quizzical smile just curled his lips, and it broadened into a laugh as
he saw my own rather shamefaced smile of understanding. "Seems to me,"
said he, "that I read somewhere once how a king, perhaps it was an
emperor, so hankered for the quiet joys that he got off the throne and
retired to a monastery--and then established lines of post-horses from
his old capital to bring him the news every half-hour or so. I reckon
he'd have taken his job back if he could have got it."
"I reckon," said I.
"Well," said he, "the news is that they're about to oust you from the
chairmanship of the national committee and from control in this state."
"Really?" said I, in an indifferent tone--though I felt anything but
indifferent.
"Really," said he. "Burbank is throwing out our people throughout the
country and is putting Goodrich men in place of 'em--wherever our
fellows won't turn traitor. And they've got hold of Roebuck. He's giving
a dinner at the Auditorium to-morrow night. It's a dinner of eleven
covers. I think you can guess who ten of 'em are for. The eleventh is
for Dominick!"
That was enough. I grasped the situation instantly. The one weak spot in
my control of my state was my having left the city bosses their local
power, instead of myself ruling the cities from the state capital. Why
had I done this? Perhaps the bottom reason was that I shrank from
permitting any part of the machine for which I was directly responsible
to be financed by collections from vice and crime. I admit that the
distinction between corporate privilege and plunder and the pickings and
stealings and prostitutions of individuals is more apparent than real. I
admit that the kinds of vice and crime I tolerated are far more harmful
than the other sorts which are petty and make loathed outcasts of their
wretched practitioners. Still, I was snob or Pharisee or Puritan enough
to feel and to act upon the imaginary distinction. And so, I had left
the city bosses locally independent--for, without the revenues and other
aids from vice and crime, what city political machine could be kept up?
"Dominick!" I exclaimed.
"Exactly!" said Woodruff. "Now, Mr. Sayler, the point is just here. I
don't blame you for wanting to get out. If I had any other game, I'd get
out myself. But what's to become of us--of all your friends, not only in
this state but throughout the country? Are you going to stand by and see
them slaughtered and not lift a finger to help 'em?"
There was no answering him. Yet the spur of vanity, which clipped into
me at thought of myself thrown down and out by these cheap ingrates and
scoundrels, had almost instantly ceased to sting; and my sense of weary
disgust had returned. If I went into the battle again, what work faced
me? The same old monotonous round. To outflank Burbank and Goodrich by
tricks as old as war and politics, and effective only because human
stupidity is infinite and unteachable. To beat down and whip back into
the ranks again these bandits of commerce disguised as respectable,
church-going, law-upholding men of property--and to do this by the same
old methods of terror and force.
"You can't leave us in the lurch," said Doc. "And the game promises to
be interesting once more. I don't like racing on the flat. It's the
hurdles that make the fun."
I pictured myself again a circus horse, going round and round the ring,
jumping the same old hurdles at the same old intervals. "Take my place,
Doc," said I.
He shook his head. "I'm a good second," said he, "but a rotten bad
first."
It was true enough. He mysteriously lacked that mysterious something
which, when a man happens to have been born with it, makes other men
yield him the command--give it to him, force it on him, if he hangs
back.
"What do you want me to do?" I asked.
"That dinner to-morrow night is in Suite L. Go to it--that's the
shortest way to put Roebuck and Dominick out of business. Face 'em and
they'll skulk."
"It's a risk," said I. I saw at once that he was right, but I was in a
reluctant humor.
"Not a bit of it," was his confident reply. "I had a horse that was
_crazy_--would run away on any old provocation. But no matter how busy
he was at kicking up the dust and the dashboard, you could always halt
him by ringing a bell once. He'd been in the street-car service. That's
the way it is with men, especially strong men, that have been broken to
the bell. They hear it ring and they can't resist. Go up and ring the
bell."
"Go ring it yourself," said I.
"You're the bell," said he.