“The radio’s playin’ hell with politics!”
With this sententious remark, a long speech for Boss Quaid, the big
fellow, who had just taken the end seat at the speakers’ table, glared
at the microphone opposite the toastmaster’s seat halfway down the long
alley of snowy linen. His pale little eyes betrayed secret anxiety
through their slits of fat.
“How so?” asked the lean, dapper gentleman at Quaid’s right.
“Why, it’s this way, Mr. Forsythe,” broke in the rat-faced little man at
the boss’s left. “Take this dinner tonight, for instance. In the old
days when we pulled a keynote dinner like this, that was to set the pace
for the campaign, we could pretty much keep it bottled up. We had the
newspaper boys fixed, and if anybody made the wrong turn, or started
puttin’ tacks on the pike, maybe we could keep it out of the papers.
“Anyhow, we could get it toned down, or if worse came to worse, have a
statement of our own printed along with it. Now everybody has a radio
and gets the gas right hot from the cylinder. He should worry about what
the papers say next morning.”
“Barney’s right. They don’t even go to meetings any more,” mourned the
boss.
“Unless they’re hand-picked, like this one,” Barney chuckled.
“Barney’s right,” the boss echoed the chuckle.
Barney Fogarty, the big fellow’s secretary, was as loquacious by nature
and profession as his chief was silent. But his speech was the thought
of Quaid, O. K.’d by the big fellow’s guttural “Barney’s right.”
“I take it I better be careful what I say tonight,” the elegant Forsythe
murmured with mock anxiety, as if his utterances were to be his own
spontaneous outbursts.
“If you want the boss to get you nominated for Governor, you had,”
Barney laughed. “As long as you’re cagy about the State power
proposition, it doesn’t matter a whoop what else you say. It’s some dark
horse popping up here tonight that we’re afraid of. Every yahoo in the
State will know it as soon as we do.”
“Barney’s right,” Boss Quaid sighed again. “People hear too damn much
these days.”
Boss Quaid’s domain had for twenty years been practically a one-party
State, dominated by the machine which Quaid till lately held tight in
his fat hand. But lately he had felt his power slipping a little with
this ominous growth of modern publicity. Walls had developed too many
ears.
Now on the eve of the county conventions he was not quite sure he would
get enough hand-picked delegates to dominate the coming State convention
which would nominate a Governor this year. The question of State control
of water power on which the boss saw fit to hedge was threatening
internal disruption.
To-morrow was county convention day. He was hoping that Forsythe’s
speech at this dinner tonight would swing sentiment in enough doubtful
counties to give him a majority of pledged delegates when the State
convention opened.
But he was uncomfortably conscious of that great unseen radio audience
in a hundred thousand homes already settled before their “speakers,”
listening eagerly to the preliminary gossip of the announcer as the
faithful gathered around the tables.
He knew that a wrong note struck at this dinner might start a
thunderstorm up-State over which he would have no control.
Forsythe was worrying, too, under his suave exterior.
“Suppose somebody did break loose tonight,” he remarked, leaning
insinuatingly toward the boss’s secretary. “Couldn’t an accident happen
to the radio temporarily?”
“Oh, nothing raw like that!” Barney deprecated with outpushed palm.
“They’d smell something rotten to the end of the State. No, I got a
better way.”
He glanced at a smaller table adjoining the low platform on which the
speakers’ table stood. It was surrounded by a group of dashing and
determined-appearing young men. At the end of this table, facing them,
sat a dark youth, even more rat-visaged than the red-headed Barney. He
winked knowingly at the latter.
“Who’s that young gunman?” Forsythe asked a little distastefully.
“That’s Jim Neenan,” Barney told him. “He’s a vaudeville actor and a
friend of the organization. Jim and his little pals will kind of
unofficially supervise what goes over the radio. Watch ’em if anything
breaks.”
And something did break. It held off so long that less acute observers
of political nature than Boss Quaid were beginning to breathe freely.
The harmless preliminary speakers had received polite applause. Boss
Quaid, after a glowing tribute from the toastmaster, had risen, bobbed
his head, grunted, and sat down to the tune of a thunderous ovation and
orchestral strains of “He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”
Then Forsythe, the favored son and real speaker of the evening, had
risen and said nothing dangerous, in burning, glittering language and at
considerable length.
But while his favorite was talking, the roving little eyes of the boss
had settled on the keen, quizzical face of a big, shaggy man at the
other end of the table. The man’s high, thoughtful brow corrugated as
the would-be candidate went on with his mellifluous platitudes. The
pleasant blue eyes, bent intently on the speaker, turned to gray steel.
Quaid nudged Barney.
“Watch out for Hammond,” he whispered.
When Forsythe sat down, Hammond sat bolt upright in his chair and stared
hard at the toastmaster.
It was not on the cards to have any more speeches. Forsythe’s address
had been planned as the climax of the evening. A half dozen lay figures
and uncertain quantities remained at the speaker’s table who would be
called on as a matter of form. All were supposed to know better than to
do more than rise and bow.
While the prolonged applause for Forsythe was still ringing, the
newspaper men gathered up their notes and departed, leaving the
Associated Press man to let them know if anything unexpected broke loose
at the last minute, not amply covered by the radio.
Then, in its perfunctory course, the name of Martin W. Hammond of
Gainsport was called.
The big man arose promptly. But instead of sitting down with a bow and a
word of greeting, as the man before him had done, he marched straight
down the table to the speakers’ position in front of the microphone.
“Gentlemen, I beg a moment’s indulgence,” he began in deep, mellow tones
that filled the suddenly silent hall and rang in the ears of the greater
radio audience in a hundred thousand homes. “I did not come prepared to
make a speech, but I cannot let this occasion pass without saying
certain things that the Honorable Mr. Forsythe left unsaid.”
Boss Quaid grunted and kicked Barney’s shins. Barney turned and winked
at Jim Neenan at the little table.
Neenan and his gang jumped to their feet with a yell of “Hurrah for
Forsythe! Hurrah for the next Governor! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!”
They chanted it in chorus, crowding to the edge of the platform, and
leaning almost over the speakers’ table, with their faces only a few
feet from the ringing microphone. They kept it up, their cheers
alternated with catcalls.
The tumult spread through the big hall like a contagion. The whole place
was in an uproar. For a minute or two Hammond stood facing the clamor, a
sardonic smile on his face. Then as the noise continued he leaned over
the microphone and tried to go on with his speech in an effort to reach
his radio audience at least.
But the young cheer leaders bent closer to the instrument and redoubled
their efforts. The ether waves bore only an inarticulate roar.
Twice when the confusion subsided a little he tried it again, only to be
thwarted by a renewal of the racket.
Here and there through the throng there were cries of protest from the
fairer-minded. There were growing indications that the meeting might
break up in a riot.
The toastmaster stood helpless, his eyes fixed on the boss, who regarded
him with an indulgent grin.
At length Hammond gave it up altogether. With a bow and a smile, he
turned and walked out of the hall.
At this gesture a partial hush fell on the crowd. There were cries of
“Shame!” “Call him back!” “Give him a chance!”
Several fist fights were threatened among some of the more explosive of
the faithful. The toastmaster began gesturing for silence.
Then Jim Neenan leaped to the center of the speakers’ table and gave an
elaborate caricature of the presiding officer’s gestures. As soon as he
could make himself heard, he shouted:
“Gentlemen, inasmuch as Mr. Hammond had to catch a train and could not
make a long speech, I’ve been asked to go on with it.”
Thereupon the vaudeville artist launched into a parody of a political
speech that in a few minutes had restored the crowd to hilarious good
humor. At length the orchestra struck up “Home, Sweet Home,” and the
crowd filed out, most of them convinced that the whole episode had been
a bit of horseplay staged to give a light touch to a successful
occasion.