"Let's see the extra!"
McGrath tossed it over to him. Across its face, in huge letters,
appeared the single significant word:
"DEADLOCK"
"Oh, but it's Murgatroyd that gives them the fight!" exclaimed Mixley,
with enthusiasm.
McGrath smiled.
"Sure," he answered. "He's holdin' 'em, but that's all he's doin'. But
what of that? He's got nothin' to hold 'em on. Why, everybody knows that
he hasn't any money. It's my opinion," declared McGrath, "that the job
goes to Thorne!"
Mixley read the first page of the _Morning Mail_ with care. After a
while he read:--
"I guess you're right. Thorne will be the next Senator, all right. Hang
the luck!"
"How can it be helped?" reasoned McGrath. "Look at them brewers putting
up maybe a quarter of a million to help Thorne out! I say, what do you
think the votes of the 'wise' assemblymen were quoted at--on the market
last night?"
"I don't know. I wish I was an assemblyman at that," sighed Mixley.
"Twenty-five thousand dollars apiece, and a rising market growing
stronger every minute," answered McGrath. "And them brewers'll pay it,
too. One fellow wanted fifty thousand--an' he'll get it--see if he
don't."
"I wish I was an assemblyman," repeated Mixley wistfully.
"If you were, and there was Thorne and twenty-five thousand on one side
for you, and Murgatroyd without a dollar on the other, who would you
vote for? Come, now, answer!"
Mixley waved his hand.
"You'd vote for Murgatroyd," yelled McGrath, "you know you would--you
couldn't help yourself."
Mixley sighed again.
"But I ain't an assemblyman," he answered; and in the next breath he
added: "There's somebody at that there door."
McGrath crossed to the door and opened it; and Challoner, Mrs. Challoner
and Shirley Bloodgood entered.
McGrath, who remembered them well, and who knew Challoner especially
well since the hospital investigation, bowed low, and announced that the
prosecutor was out.