Boss Quaid was chuckling contentedly as he entered his limousine with
Forsythe, Barney Fogarty, and Jim Neenan. He had expressed his
satisfaction and his gratitude to the manipulators by giving the
dignitaries the slip, with the exception of Forsythe, and inviting the
trio to supper at his favorite roadhouse where neither henchmen nor
reporters would search him out.
“Now we’re all set,” Barney assured Forsythe as they rolled away. “There
were three or four possible bad eggs there tonight, Hammond among ’em.
Hammond was the only one that hatched, and we squashed him before he got
out of the shell, laughed him to death.”
“Barney’s right,” Quaid agreed.
But for once Barney was wrong. How amazingly, mysteriously wrong, he
learned two and a half hours later, when the party stopped at an
all-night news-stand on the way home and bought copies of the _Press_
and the _Sentinel_, the capital city’s two morning papers.
MARTIN W. HAMMOND
THROWS HAT IN RING
This was the flaring headline that smote his eyes from one front page,
at the top of the dinner story.
HAMMOND FLOUTS FORSYTHE,
DECLARES HIMSELF CANDIDATE
This blazed at him from the other newspaper.
“What!” the boss exploded. “The damned traitor! Sent ’em a statement!
Hell’s bells!”
“Statement nothing!” Barney ejaculated. “These papers are full of
prunes, both of ’em! Why, they say he made this speech as the dinner
feature of the occasion, the _Sentinel_ calls it.”
For several minutes, under the glare of the dome light in Quaid’s
limousine, the four men read, pop-eyed with amazement, the silence
broken only by occasional crackling profanity. There was no doubt but
that both papers had seemingly gone mad.
According to their accounts, Hammond had actually completed a ringing
speech of some twenty minutes’ duration at the dinner, and at its
conclusion had received tumultuous applause. He had scathingly picked
Forsythe’s empty mouthings to pieces, keenly analyzed the State power
proposition, declaring it must be put in the hands of experts to
determine the right policy as between State and local control. He was
personally engaged in such a study now, he declared, and the State could
have his services as Governor to direct such a study and carry out its
results.
There was added a brief account of Hammond’s career as a successful
engineer who had served the State for one term as engineer ten years
before.
Quaid finished reading and dashed the paper to the floor in a purple
rage.
“_Sentinel_ office, George,” he ordered the chauffeur.
The _Sentinel_ was controlled by Quaid. Boon, its managing editor, and
handy man to the boss, was just about to go home when the enraged and
mystified quartet stormed in.
“What the hell?” Quaid demanded, slapping the paper down on the desk and
pointing one pudgy finger at the offensive and mystic headline. “Are you
fellows crazy or drunk?”
“That’s what I wonder!” Boon returned with unwonted spirit. “We’ve been
hunting you boys for two hours, almost lost the trains on the first two
editions, waiting for you to give orders on the handling of this yarn.
Why didn’t you tell us you were going to flop to Hammond? All we could
do was to print the news.”
“News, hell!” Quaid snorted. “Damned lies! Hammond never made a speech.
Tried to; got hooted out.”
Boon leaned close and got a good sample of the breath the quartet had
acquired at the roadhouse, drawing erroneous but not unnatural
conclusions as to their sobriety.
“Say that again slow,” he requested. “I don’t get you.”
Barney said it for him, making from two to four words grow where one
grew before.
“Now I say you ought to get out an extra denying this rot,” Barney wound
up, looking about for confirmation.
“Barney’s right,” declared the boss.
“Now, listen,” Boon exclaimed. “I was glued to that radio horn from the
time your dinner opened until the orchestra stopped playing ‘Home, Sweet
Home.’ Don’t try to tell me I don’t know what I heard. Half the rest of
the office heard it too. About twenty other people who listened in on
the radio in Gobel’s drug store drilled in here to get the inside dope.
The men over in the Press heard it too. They had me on the wire, asking
for a statement from you.”
“Now we all heard Hammond called on at the end of the evening. We heard
him get a whale of a demonstration and some kidding. Then we heard his
speech to the finish and the cheering he got afterward. We got his
speech right from the radio by shorthand. They heard it all over the
State too. We’ve had wires from papers from one end of the State to the
other asking for dope.
“Now, in the face of that, do you want to make an ass of the whole party
by a statement that your keynote dinner was so wet that you were all too
drunk to hear the key speech?”
“Did your reporter hear that speech?” Quaid demanded in bewilderment.
“No. The boys all left when Forsythe got through. The A. P. man stayed,
but he must have been drunk and gone to sleep. We couldn’t get anything
out of him.”
“Listen, boss,” Barney broke in. “Somebody double crossed us, unless the
spooks have been at work. I bet Hammond played in with the broadcasting
station some way and got ’em to let him break in. The whole mischief’s
been done for tonight. We better lie low till we find out how it was
done.”
“Barney’s right,” Quaid decided, and stalked out.
Barney was right when he said the mischief had been done. But the
following day only increased the mystery of how.
First thing in the morning, the fatal morning of the county conventions,
Quaid began getting wires from leaders all over the State, asking
instructions, and confirming the fact that every radio user outside of
the dinner hall had heard the speech.
Also he had innumerable phone calls from people who had been at the
dinner, asking what it was all about and confirming the fact that no one
at the dinner had heard Hammond’s speech.
Following Barney’s hint, the staff at the radio broadcasting station
were given the third degree. They swore that Hammond’s speech had come
over the regular wire along with the rest of the dinner program.
Their announcer on duty at the hall that night could shed no further
light, as he had gone home after the Forsythe speech, arranging with the
toastmaster to give the radio “good night.”
Hammond himself, who had a reputation for truth telling, issued a
statement to the afternoon papers exonerating the broadcasting staff.
“I was invited to speak at the dinner, and I did,” he told the
reporters. “That’s all. I’ll swear to you I made the whole speech right
there. I’m sorry if the gentlemen at the dinner couldn’t hear it, but I
have the statement of my radio audience about a thousand to one against
theirs.”
That’s all they got out of him, and the twinkle in his eye indicated
that he was enjoying himself immensely.
But the speech was on record. That was the important and practical fact.
Events pressed too fast to waste further time over a puzzle as to how it
got there. Early reports from the counties decided Quaid to hold off his
own statement for another day till he could count noses of instructed
delegates.
It was a worried group who met with him in his office the day after the
county conventions. Forsythe, under his air of debonair indifference,
was decidedly anxious for fear his sponsor might decide to drop him for
the new entrant.
“Give ’em the dope, Barney,” the boss ordered.
“Well, we figure just about forty per cent of the delegates pledged or
sure for Forsythe, and just about the same number for Hammond. That
leaves about twenty per cent waiting to be shown.”
“And that kind hates a dude,” Quaid remarked, looking hard at Forsythe.
“Meaning that’s what I am?” he asked.
“No! No!” Barney assured him. “He means that’s what they might figure if
you go to talk to ’em personally. They’re shy of city men. You’re a
polished gentleman. Hammond’s sort of rough and ready. Other things
equal, they’d be for him if they got a look at you both. And it’s a
cinch Hammond’ll go around and talk to ’em. I expect Mr. Quaid would
like to keep you both out of sight of those birds. For once he’d like a
straight radio campaign.”
“Barney’s right!” rumbled the boss.
“Perhaps I’d better begin wearing soft shirts and a slouch hat,”
Forsythe suggested wryly.
“Be yourself,” grunted the boss. “I’m for you.”
Forsythe departed, content with this assurance of the boss’s support,
but not altogether optimistic as to the final outcome. Barney Fogarty
retired thoughtfully to his own private office and went into the
silences.
After a little of this, some cryptic phoning resulted in a luncheon
appointment in a discreet back room of one of the city’s quietest
speakeasies.
Late that afternoon Jim Neenan, the handy impersonator and general
utility man, presented himself on private business at the offices of
Thomas Forsythe, who rather distastefully granted the caller’s request
for a confidential conference.
“Look here,” Neenan opened, “I hear you and the boss are honin’ for a
pre-convention campaign that’ll limit you an’ Hammond to radio speeches,
figgerin’ it would give you a better break.”
“That seems to be Mr. Quaid’s idea,” Forsythe admitted dryly.
“I suppose you know Hammond has a different idea?”
“I have heard as much.”
“How much would it be worth to you to have it arranged so that Hammond
would be glad of a chance to make it a radio campaign?”
“It might be worth quite a little, but I fail to see what is the
practical use of discussing it.”
“Just this. For a price I might be able to bring it about.”
Forsythe laughed.
“Judging from such of your methods as I have seen I feel safe in saying
I’d pay as high as a thousand dollars if my opponent is persuaded to
such a course and you can convince me that you were instrumental in
bringing it about.”
“Is that a promise?” Neenan demanded.
“It is,” Forsythe agreed again with another cynical laugh. “And if your
machinations result in my nomination I’ll make it another thousand. And
that’s a promise. Now I’ll bid you good day, as I have another
appointment.”
Neenan departed, a crafty smile on his narrow features.