"Good enough to be a novice, to start with. And I don't think you'll
stay a novice long."
Claire looked at him inquiringly, saying nothing.
"You, too, honey," he said. "Frank fixed it all up. You and Ray will
be admitted to the Fraternities, this afternoon. And that will remove
any objection to our being married."
"But ... how about the Senator?" she asked.
Prestonby shrugged. "It's all over the state now that you can read;
there's nothing that you can do about it. And Frank has a lot of
influence with him; he'll talk him around to where he'll be willing to
make the best of it, in a week or so."
* * * * *
Russell Latterman noticed that Major Slater was looking at him in a
respectfully inquiring manner. He said nothing, and, at length, the
Literates' guards officer broke the silence.
"You didn't go out with the others."
Latterman shook his head. "No, major; I'm an executive of Pelton's
Purchasers' Paradise, however unlike its name it may look at the
moment. My job's here. I'm afraid I'll have to lean pretty heavily on
you, until Mr. Cardon can get help to us. I'm not particularly used to
combat."
"You've been doing all right with that rifle," Slater told him.
"I can hit what I aim at, yes. But I'm not used to commanding men in
combat, and I'm not much of a tactician."
Slater thrust out his hand impulsively. "I took a sort of poor view
of you, at first. I'm sorry," he said. "Want me to take command?"
"If you please, major."
"What are you going to do, after this thing's over?" Slater asked.
"Stay on with Pelton's, provided Mr. P. doesn't find out that I
organized that trick with his medicine and the safe," Latterman said.
"Since Lancedale seems to have gotten on top at the Hall, I am, as of
now, a Lancedale partisan. That's partly opportunism, and it's partly
because, since a single policy has been adopted, I feel obliged to go
along with it. I'll have to get the store back in operation, as soon
as possible. Pelton's going to need money, badly, if he's going to try
for the presidency in '44." He looked around him. "You know, I've
always wanted to run a fire sale; this'll be even better--a battle
sale!"
* * * * *
Cardon watched Chester Pelton apprehensively as the bald-headed
merchant and senatorial candidate sipped from the tall glass in his
hand and then set it on the table beside him. His face was pale, and
he had the look of a man who has just been hit with a blackjack.
"That's an awful load of bricks to dump on a man, all at once,
Frank," he said reproachfully.
"You'd rather I told you, now, than turn on the TV and hear some
commentator talking about it, wouldn't you?" Cardon asked.
Pelton swore vilely, in a lifeless monotone, cursing Literacy, and
all Literates back to the invention of the alphabet. Then he stopped
short.
"No, Frank, I don't mean that, either. My own son and daughter are
Literates; I can't say that about them. But how long--?"
"Oh, for about a year, I'd say. I understand, now, that they were
admitted to the Fraternities six months ago," he invented.
"And they were working against me, all that time?" Pelton demanded.
Cardon shook his head. "No, Chet; they were for you, all the way. Your
daughter exposed her Literacy to save your life. Your son and his
teacher came to your store and fought for you. But there are Literates
who want to see you defeated, and they're the ones who made that
audio-visual, secretly, of the ceremony in which your son and daughter
took the Literates' Oath and received the white smock, and they're
going to telecast it this evening at twenty-one hundred. Coming on top
of the stories that have been going around all afternoon, and Slade
Gardner's speech, this morning, they think that'll be enough to defeat
you."
"Well, don't you?" Pelton gloomed. "My own kids, Literates!" He seemed
to have reached a point at which he was actually getting a masochistic
pleasure out of turning the dagger in his wounds. "Who'd trust me,
after this?"
"No, Chet; it isn't enough to beat you--if you just throw away that
crying towel and start fighting. They made one mistake that's going
to wreck them."
"What's that, Frank?" Pelton brightened, by about one angstrom unit.
"The timing, of course!" Cardon told him, impatiently. "I thought
you'd see that, at once. This telecast comes on at twenty-one hundred.
Your final speech comes on at twenty-one thirty. As soon as they've
shown this business of Claire and Ray taking the Literate Oath, you'll
be on the air, yourself, and if you put on any kind of a show worth
the name, it won't be safe for anybody in this state to be caught
wearing a white smock. Now, if they'd only had the wit to wait till
after you'd delivered that speech you've been practicing on for the
last two weeks, and then spring this on you, that would have been
different. They'd have had you over a barrel. But this way, you have
them!"
Pelton took another gulp from the tall glass at his elbow, emptying
it. "Fix me up another of these, Frank," he said. "I feel like a new
man, already." Then his face clouded again. "But we have no time to
prepare a speech, now, and I just can't ad lib one."
Cardon drew a little half-inch record-disk from his pocket case.
"Play this off," he said. "I had it fixed up, as soon as I got wise to
what was going to happen. The voice is one of the girls in my office,
over at the brewery. Pronunciation, grammar, elocution and everything
correct."
Pelton snapped the disk onto his recorder and put in the ear plug.
Then, before he pressed the stud, he looked at Cardon curiously.
"How'd you get onto this, anyhow, Frank?" he wanted to know.
"Well ... I hope you don't ask me for an accounting of all the money
I've been spending in this campaign, because some of the items would
look funny as hell, but--"
"No accounting, Frank. After all, you spent as much of your own money
as you did of mine," Pelton interrupted.
"... But I bought myself a pipe line into Literates' Hall big enough
to chase an elephant through," Cardon went on, ignoring the
interruption. "This fellow Mongery, for instance." Elliot Mongery was
one of Literate Frank Cardon's best friends; he comforted his
conscience with the knowledge that Mongery would slander him just as
unscrupulously, if the interests of the Lancedale Plan were at stake.
"I have Mongery just like this." He made a clutching and lifting
gesture, as though he were picking up some small animal by the scruff
of the neck. "So, as soon as I got word of it, I started getting this
thing together. It isn't the kind of a job a Literate semanticist
would do, but it's all honest Illiterate thinking, in Illiterate
language. Turn it on, and tell me what you think of it."
While Pelton listened to the record, Cardon mixed him another of the
highballs, adding a little of the heart-stimulant the medic had given
him. Pelton was grinning savagely when he turned off the little
machine and took out the ear plug.
"Great stuff, Frank! And I won't have to ham it much; it's just about
the way I feel." He thought for a moment. "You have me talking about
my ruined store, there. Just how bad is it, anyhow?"
"Pretty bad, Chet. Latterman says it's going to take some time to get
it fixed up, but he expects to be open for business by Thursday or
Friday. He's going to put on a big Battle Sale; he says it's going to
make retail-merchandising history. And the insurance covers most of
the damage."
"Well, tell me about it. How did you get the riot stopped, after you
got me out? And how did you--?"
Cardon shook his head. "You play that record over again; get yourself
in the mood. When you go on, we'll have you in a chair, wrapped in a
blanket ... you're supposed to have crawled back out of the Valley of
the Shadow of Death to make this speech ... and we'll have the wire
run down inside the blanket, so that you can listen to the speech
while you're giving it. Chet, this is going to be one of the great
political speeches of all time--"
* * * * *
Literate William R. Lancedale looked up from his desk and greeted his
visitor with a smile.
"Well, Frank! Sit down and accept congratulations! I suppose you got
the returns?"
Cardon nodded, dropping into a chair beside the desk. "Just came from
campaign headquarters. This automatic tally system they use on the
voting machines is really something. Complete returns tabulated and
reported for the whole state within forty minutes after the polls
closed. I won't be silly enough to ask you if you got the returns."
"I deserved that, of course," Lancedale chuckled. "Can I offer you
refreshment? A nice big stein of Cardon's Black Bottle, for instance?"
Cardon shuddered and grimaced horribly. "I've been drinking that slop
by the bucketful, all day. And Pelton's throwing a victory party,
tonight, and I'll have to choke down another half gallon of it. Give
me a cup of coffee, and one of those good cigars of yours."
Lancedale grinned at him. "Ah, yes, the jolly brewer. His own best
advertisement. How's Pelton reacting to his triumph? And what's his
attitude toward his children? I've been worrying about that; vestigial
traces of a conscience, I suppose."
"Well, I had to keep him steamed up, till after he went off the air,"
Cardon said. "Chet isn't a very good actor. But after that, I talked
to him like a Dutch uncle. Told him what a swell pair of kids and a
fine son-in-law he had. He got sore at me. Tried to throw me out of
the house, a couple of times. I was afraid he was going to have
another of those attacks. But by the time Ralph and Claire get back
from their honeymoon and Ray finishes that cram-course for Literate
prep school, he'll be ready to confer the paternal blessing all
around. I'm going to stay in town and make sure of it, and then I'm
taking about a month's vacation."
"You've earned it, all right." Lancedale poured Cardon's coffee and
passed him the cigar humidor. "How's Pelton's attitude toward the
Consolidated Illiterates' Organization, now?"
Cardon, having picked up the Italian stiletto to puncture his cigar,
looked at it carefully to make sure that it really had no edge, and
then drew it quickly across his throat.
"Just like that. You know what really happened, yesterday afternoon,
at the store, don't you?"
"Well, in general, yes. I wish you'd fill me in on some of the
details, though, Frank."
"Details he wants. Well." Cardon blew on his coffee and sipped it.
"The way we played it for propaganda purposes, of course, there was
only one big riot, and it was all the work of the wicked Literates and
their Independent-Conservative hirelings. Actually, there were two
riots. First, there was one the Independents had planned for about a
week in advance; that was the one Sforza tipped us on, the one that
started in China. Graves knew about it, enough to advise Latterman to
get all the Literates out of the store before noon, which Latterman
did, with trimmings.
"Then, there was another riot, masterminded by a couple of
Illiterates' Organization Action Committee people named Joe West and
Horace Yingling, both deceased. That was the result of Latterman's
bright idea to trap Claire and/or me into betraying Literacy. These
Illiterate fanatics made up their minds, to speak rather loosely, that
the whole Pelton family were Literates, including Chet himself. They
decided that it was better to kill off their candidate and use him for
a martyr two years from now than to elect him and have him sell them
out. They got about a hundred or so of their goons dressed in
Independent-Conservative KKK costumes, bought air support from Patsy
Callazo's mob, up in Vermont, and made that attack on the top landing
stage, after starting a fake riot in North Jersey, to draw off the
regular Radical-Socialist storm troops. Incidentally, when I found out
it was Callazo's gang that furnished those fighter bombers, I hired
another mob to go up and drop a block-buster on Callazo's field, to
teach him to keep his schnozzle out of politics."
Lancedale nodded briskly. "That I approve of. How about West and
Yingling?"
"Prestonby's muscle man, Yetsko, killed West. I took care of Comrade
Yingling, myself, after I'd gotten reinforcements to the store--first
a couple of free-lance storm troops that the insurance company hired,
and then as many of the Radical Rangers as I could gather up."
"And Pelton knows about all this?"
"He certainly does! After this caper, the Illiterates' Organization's
through, as far as any consideration or patronage from the Radicals is
concerned."
"Well, that's pretty nearly the best thing I've heard out of the whole
business," Lancedale said. "In about eight or ten years, we may want
to pull the Independent-Conservative party together again, to cash in
on public dissatisfaction with Pelton's socialized Literacy program,
which ought to be coming apart at the seams by then. And if we have
the Illiterates split into two hostile factions--"
Cardon finished his coffee. "Well, chief, I've got to be getting
along. O'Reilly can only cover me for a short while, and I have to be
getting to this victory party of Pelton's--"
Lancedale rose and shook hands with him. "I can't tell you, too many
times, what a fine job you did, Frank," he said. "I hope ... no,
knowing you, I'm positive ... that you'll be able to engineer a
reconciliation between Pelton and his son and daughter and young
Prestonby. And then, have yourself a good vacation."
"I mean to. I'm going deer hunting, to a place up in the mountains,
along the old Pennsylvania-New York state line. A little community of
about a thousand people, where everybody, men, women and children, can
read."