recognized. Just after dinner, on Sunday, Judge Halliday, who had
disclaimed all interest in the campaign, beckoned his son into the
parlor, darkened for secrets, and said to him in a whisper that Mrs.
Halliday plainly heard over the banister of the staircase in the hall:
“Did you know that Hank Defrees and that Sullivan boy and Gordon and
old man Garwood, and even Rice Murrell, are around working against you?”
George gasped with surprise.
“And did you know,” the father whispered on, “that the Republicans have
raised a corruption fund--five hundred dollars, I understand?”
“Yes, I heard that,” said George, “must be getting desperate, you
fellows, eh?”
“Now, my son,” said the judge, with brows lowered, “you know I would
have absolutely nothing to do with such a business as that. You know my
opinions on such things too well.”
“Oh, of course, father,” said the boy, “that’s all right. I know you
wouldn’t countenance it--”
“And I was just going to say,” the elder man continued, “that while I
do not agree with you, and while I would not vote for you--at least,
I do not think I would--I was just going to say that if you need any
money yourself, to meet any of the--ah--legitimate expenses of your
campaign, why, just call on me.”
The boy grasped his father’s hand, and when he could speak, he said:
“Thank you, father, thank you, but not now--it isn’t worth it--but I’ll
see what’s the matter with these Indians, anyway.”
George went to his offices, over the People’s National Bank and
waited an hour in the rear room, a dark and dingy room, with the dust
of a country law office deep on everything, and one ray of sunlight
scrambling in through the heavy shutters from the alley. Then one after
another, up the worn and splintered stairs with tin signs of insurance
agents and notaries public on every step, five men clambered. They
were grinning when they entered the room, grinning and standing about
awkwardly, all save Hank Defrees, who was solemn and imponderable,
chewing his tobacco as gravely as if he were making an appearance in
court.
“Well,” said George, standing in the middle of the floor, “anything
happened?”
The men all looked at one another, hesitating to speak, but finally
Scotty Gordon said:
“Happened! Well, I guess yes.”
“What?” queried George.
“Well,” he began, “now I done it, and last night old Bill Williams
hunted me up in Jake Fogarty’s saloon, and, well, he offered me fifty
dollars to use if I wanted it.”
“Say,” Jerry Sullivan broke in--“Captain Bishop offered me
seventy-five.”
“And didn’t you take it?”
“Why, no,” said Jerry.
“What did you tell him?”
The lad’s eyes twinkled.
“I told him,” he answered slowly, “that it wouldn’t be a drop in the
bucket.”
“Good for you,” said George. “And now, Mr. Garwood?”
“Well,” said the old man, “don’t know as I got much to say. Major
Turner, though, ’as ’round to my house this morning, an’--Well, he
offered me fifty dollars if I felt the way I had been reported, and
thought I could use it.”
“Judge,” said George, turning to Defrees, “it’s up to you.”
The old lawyer took his tobacco in his fist and chucked it away. “Joe
Bogle,” he said, “told me he knew where there’s a hundred for me if I
could do any good with it.”
“And, doctor,” said Halliday, facing around to the Reverend Mr.
Murrell, who stood solemn in his black garments and white tie, “what
happened to you?”
The old negro glanced all around him cautiously and even craned his
neck to peer into the room beyond.
“Well, suh,” he began, “Judge Ernest ’as out this mornin’ to hyah me
preach, an’ aftah service was ovah, he drawed me to one side, and
’gin to talk politics. He ast me how I felt towa’ds you all, Mistuh
Halliday, an’--Ah didn’ like to say it--but you done tol’ me, ’membah.”
“That’s right,” said George, urging the parson out of his hesitation,
“you made it strong, I hope.”
“Wellum, Ah tol’ the judge that Ah wasn’ pow’ful strong on you any
moah, sense, Ah said, you all hadn’t felt ’sposed to help us ’ith the
subscription fo’ the new roof on ouah chu’ch.”
“That was clever,” said George, “damned clever--I beg your pardon.”
The old negro’s eyes had widened till their whites showed, and he had
raised his hands, holding up his yellow palms before George. “But go
on.”
“Well, suh, the jedge ’as al’ays had an interest in ouah spiritual
welfare, an’ so he ’lowed we’d ought to be holpen out some.” The old
man paused and swallowed ceremoniously. “An’ so, gen’lemen, he offered
me a hundred an’ fifty dollahs.”
The dark eyes of the old man shone with a strange new luster.
“What did you say?”
“Well, suh,” the preacher hesitated, “Ah took it.”
George brought his hand down on the parson’s shoulder with a heavy
slap and he laughed. “Good, Bishop, good.”
They counted the money out on the table--exactly four hundred and
ninety dollars, the first campaign fund Macochee had ever known. Then
they laughed and laughed and laughed.
When Halliday had laid his plans for the morrow’s battle before his
companions, he leaned back in his chair and said, turning to the
Reverend Rice Murrell:
“I don’t suppose, Bishop, that you approve of the use of money in
politics, do you?”
“No, _suh_,” the old preacher replied, with a smart gravity, “an’
somepin’ done tol’ me, yist’day, when the jedge come to see me, that it
’as jus’ providential that this much o’ that filthy lucah ’as removed
from corruptin’ ouah ’lections by bein’ placed in mah han’s.” His
rolling eyes bulged and he dribbled at the mouth as he fingered the
pile of bills.
“Well,” said George, “don’t put too big a roof on the church, and
remember--Gooseville’s going to vote to-morrow.”
“Oh, nevah you feah ’bout Gooseville, mah brothah--she’ll be votin’
early an’ of’en to-morrah, an’ she’ll vote right.”
George Halliday was mayor of Macochee but one term. That is a trick
that has been played once in every town in this free republic--but it
can never be played twice.
A SECRET OF STATE
Over at the executive mansion, Governor Chatham and his private
secretary were at dinner when the telegram came. The governor took
the yellow envelope from the butler’s tray and tore it open. When he
had read the message he passed it over without a word to Gilman. The
private secretary’s eyes widened as he read it, and he exclaimed:
“Jim Lockhart dead!”
William, the black butler, stirred uneasily. The governor bent forward,
and lifted his coffee to his lips. Gilman laid the despatch beside
his plate, and, still looking at it, began to pinch the golden tip of
a cigarette. William slid noiselessly to his side with a match. When
Gilman had lighted his cigarette he said:
“Poor Jim!”
The governor responded:
“Yes, poor Jim.”
A strange quality in the governor’s tone gave expression to something
more than sadness. His face was somber, immobile, inscrutable. He
dropped his napkin, and, without lighting his cigar, though William
stood by, shading the little flame of the ready match with his pale
palm, he rose and went slowly into the library. About the walls were
his beloved books. On the broad, heavy table of Flemish oak a shaded
lamp rose over the magazines, the pamphlets, the scattered books and
the Chicago newspapers, which reach Springfield at noon. In the wide
chimney--over which is carved those words from the _Benedicte_, “Oh, ye
Fire and Heat, Bless ye the Lord”--a brazier of Sangamon County coal
was blazing. Outside a cold November rain was driving against the tall
windows of the mansion. The governor sank into a deep leather chair. He
supported his head in his hand and gazed into the fire.
Gilman followed, and seating himself, likewise fell into a melancholy
reverie. The silence within, and the wind sweeping the rain back and
forth like a broom without, oppressed him. He was a young man. Once or
twice he looked at the governor, and then the silence, the wind and the
rain forced him to speak.
“He seemed to be in perfect health when he went away Wednesday,” he
said.
The silence deepened. The wind threshed the trees and the rain drenched
the windows anew. Gilman spoke again. He said:
“The party’s lost a good man.”
“And I have lost another friend,” said the governor. He was growing old.
Without moving, still gazing deeply into the coals, after a little
minute, he added:
“He was the most generous man I ever knew.”
“Yes; and I believe, after all, when the time came, he would have been
with you for the renomination.” The governor stretched out his hand to
stay Gilman’s speech.
“I was not thinking of that, Leonard.”
The governor did this gently, as he did all things. Gilman’s face
reddened--for the fire was growing hot--and silence fell again between
them. Gilman felt the silence. He flung his cigarette into the fire.
Then he rose.
“Guess I’ll go over to the Leland,” he said. “Some of the boys may have
particulars.”
The governor nodded acquiescence, but as Gilman reached the door that
leads into the northwest drawing-room, he spoke:
“Before you go hand me the statutes, if you please. I suppose I have
some duty to perform in an event like this.”
Gilman who longed only for action, bore with alacrity the three big
calf-skin volumes to the library table, and turned to the index.
“I’ll find the section for you.” Gilman examined the second volume for
an instant, and then said: “Here it is.”
“Read it, please,” said the governor.
And Gilman read: “‘Section sixteen. In case of the death of the
treasurer, it shall be the duty of the governor to take possession of
the office of such treasurer, and cause the vaults thereof to be closed
and securely locked, and so remain until a successor is appointed and
qualified; and at the time such successor takes possession of the
office, he, together with the auditor of public accounts and any of
the bondmen of the deceased treasurer who shall be present, shall
proceed to take an account of all moneys, papers, books, records and
other property coming into his possession; and the auditor shall take
of such succeeding treasurer his receipt therefor and keep the same on
file in his office.’ There,” concluded Gilman, closing the book, and
then immediately reopening it, “that’s it--it’s chapter one hundred
and thirty, section sixteen of the act of eighteen seventy-three, page
twenty-three twenty-seven.”
“Now turn,” said the governor, “to the chapter on elections, chapter
forty-six, I think it is, and see what it says about the appointment of
a successor.”
Gilman tilted up the first volume, and inspected the red and black
labels on its back; then he turned to chapter forty-six, and, running
his finger down the pages until he found the section, read hurriedly,
mumbling his words until he came to the vital sentence:
“‘When a vacancy shall occur in the office of secretary of state,
auditor of public accounts,’ yes, here it is” (he accentuated the word)
“‘_treasurer_, attorney-general, superintendent of public instruction’”
(he was reading rapidly now and running words together) “‘or member
of the state board of equalization, the governor’” (and now he raised
his voice and read more slowly and distinctly) “‘the governor shall
fill the same by appointment, and the appointee shall hold his office
during the remainder of the term, and until his successor is elected
and qualified.’ That’s section hundred and twenty-eight.”
“Well,” said the governor, “I’ll name Hillman to fill the vacancy.”
Hillman was the treasurer-elect, chosen by the people in November
to succeed Lockhart. He was not of the party, however, to which the
governor belonged. In Illinois, it will be remembered, treasurers
are elected not quadrennially, as are the other state officials,
but biennially, and a treasurer can not succeed himself. So that in
the middle of an administration there is always an off year, and a
reaction, and as the papers say, a stinging rebuke at the polls.
“M-m-yes,” said Gilman, “the boys won’t like it--but it’s only for a
couple of months.”
“And as to sealing the treasury,” continued the governor, “I presume
that the morning will be time enough for that.”
“Yes, it’s a bad night outside, anyway,” responded Gilman. The
governor was lost again in thought. Gilman went on and out.
The governor, alone in the library, continued to gaze into the fire.
Once he took from the table at his elbow a worn book, which he handled
tenderly. He read in it for a while. It was _The Thoughts of Marcus
Aurelius_. But he did not read long. Presently he was sitting with the
forefinger of one hand between the leaves of the book, which lay in
his lap, musing on the fire again. Outside the rain drenched the tall
windows of the mansion.
The clock in the hall tolled eleven. The governor rose, and went slowly
up the staircase that winds gracefully from the great hall to the floor
above, and thence to his chamber and his bed.
* * * * *
In a room on the parlor floor of the Leland, the windows of which
looked down on Sixth street, a short, fat man was pacing the floor.
His unbuttoned waistcoat showed a white shirt stretched over a large
paunch. His hair was greased with perspiration, big drops of which
stood out on his forehead, and slid down his pendulous, dewlapt cheeks.
He had a bristling mustache, at which he gnawed when he removed his
cigar from his lips, and a short goatee at which he plucked incessantly
with his fingers. When his cigar was in his mouth, he rolled it about
and ground it between his teeth. At times he spat pieces of the tobacco
leaves fiercely into the grate. The cigar was burning unevenly, and
fuming so that the little man winked his little eyes. On a table in
the room, littered with the inevitable Chicago papers, and strewn with
poker chips, stood an empty whisky glass. The rumpled counterpane of
the bed showed that the little man had been tossing upon it. As he
paced up and down he talked to himself, and at times swore.
“Hell,” he would say, “why the devil doesn’t he come!”
Occasionally he would draw out his watch, and scowl at its face. Then
he would look at the old-fashioned brass crank on the wall, beside
the door, which sometimes pulled a call-bell in the office below, and
sometimes did not, but he did not ring it. He ran his fingers through
his tumbled hair, and paced up and down.
The little man was William Grigsby, and he was the attorney-general
of the state of Illinois. He had come down from the Jo Daviess
hills, to serve a term in the house, and been nominated for the
office he now held by the governor, John Chatham. John Chatham was
his political creator, and the two men had once been friends. The
administration had begun harmoniously enough, but before two of the
four years of its political life had expired there was a split, and
factions had formed. There had been a fierce fight for the control
of the state central committee that year, and the struggle had been
carried into the state convention, which nominated a state treasurer,
a superintendent of public instruction, and trustees of the university
of Illinois. In one faction were the governor, the auditor of public
accounts, and, of course, his appointees, the adjutant-general, the
railroad and warehouse commissioners and the trustees of the state
institutions. In the other were the attorney-general and the secretary
of state, Jennings. Lockhart, the state treasurer, had been neutral.
He was everybody’s friend. The lieutenant-governor did not count. The
superintendent of public instruction was not a politician, save in
teachers’ institutes, where he was cheered and indorsed in classic
resolutions.
And now Grigsby was an avowed candidate for governor, in opposition
to his old friend, John Chatham, the man who had made him. Two years
bring about great changes in politics. Grigsby, in that time, had grown
corpulent, had hardened his liver and his heart, and was threatened
with Bright’s disease.
The attorney-general continued to smoke and pace the floor, and
swear. After a while he consulted his watch again, and then gave the
old-fashioned brass bell-pull a vigorous jerk. Presently a negro boy
came bearing a presumptive pitcher of water, the tinkling of the ice
heralding his approach. The attorney-general would have welcomed iced
water in the morning, but now he seized it from the black boy’s hand,
set it down with a splash on his wash-stand, and shouted:
“Go and tell Jim to mix me a commodore.”
Just as the boy reached the door, it opened, and a tall man entered.
The tall man seeing the boy, looked at Grigsby.
“What’ll you have, Hank?” said the attorney-general.
“A little whisky.”
“Bring Mr. Jennings some whisky,” ordered the attorney-general.
“Bourbon, boy,” added Mr. Jennings.
The boy withdrew.
The attorney-general paused before the fire, and looked up into the
face of the secretary of state.
“Well, Hank,” he said, “I began to fear you hadn’t got my message.
Heard the news?”
The secretary of state lazily pulled off his wet overcoat and flung
it across the bed, and then, shaking the water from his broad-brimmed
black slouch hat in the careless way they have down in southern
Illinois, he tossed it after the coat, on which it fell with a damp
slap. He stood six feet in height, and would have been taller had he
not stooped. His face was long, his skin dingy and sallow, and his
thin nose, beginning between deep-set eyes of steely blue, stretched
down the middle of his visage, and precipitated itself over the black
mustache that drooped thin and moist about his mouth. His hair, glossy
black, though he was fifty, was flung straight across his brow and
over his left ear, giving the effect of a mane. Behind, it greased the
collar of a long black frock coat that wrapped him lankly. A narrow
black tie hung unknotted at his throat. When he moved it was in that
loose and lazy way that told, as his hat and his habit did, that he
came from the country south of the old O. and M., which divides Egypt
from the corn lands of central Illinois. He drew a rocking-chair to the
grate, and stretching himself comfortably in it, with his feet upon
the ash-strewn fender, drew from his hip pocket a plug of tobacco and
gnawed on it. Then he drawled, in a voice haunted by musical echoes of
southern ancestry:
“What news?”
“Why,” replied the attorney-general, “haven’t you heard? Jim Lockhart’s
dead.”
“The hell he is!” responded Jennings. “I hadn’t heerd ary word. When’d
he die?”
“This afternoon.”
“Sudden?”
“Rather.”
“What was ailin’ of him?”
The attorney-general smiled, a peculiar, mirthless smile.
The secretary of state ceased to rock.
“You don’t reckon now--”
“That’s it exactly.”
“I didn’t know it’d got that bad. What’d they give out fer the cause?”
“Oh, heart failure, I suppose.”
“Beats hell, don’t it?”
The secretary of state was silent. Presently he spoke again in an
abstracted way:
“Well, Jim ’as a devil of a good feller, as good as you’d meet up ’ith
in a coon’s age. An’ I reckon when it come to a show-down, he ’as our
friend. If the boys ’p’ints an investigatin’ committee--Jim ’as al’ays
a leetle too free ’ith the stuff.”
Grigsby said “Yes,” in a detached tone. Then there was silence for a
space. The bell-boy knocked, bore in his tray and departed. The men
nodded over the edges of their little glasses each to the other, and
drank. Then Grigsby, wiping his lips, said:
“Hank, I didn’t send for you to-night to hold memorial services over
Jim Lockhart. There’s something more important than that--there’s
something damned important, and it concerns me.”
“You?”
“Yes, me. I’m in this thing just twenty thousand dollars.”
“The hell you are!”
“Just--twenty--thousand--dollars.”
Grigsby sank into a chair.
“Borrowed?” asked Jennings.
“Yes.”
“Public funds?”
“Well--I don’t know. Course--”
“Jim Lockhart didn’t have no private fortune--’ithout it ’as the
int’rust.”
“Well, suppose it was.”
“An’thin’ to show fer it?”
“I gave him three notes--one for ten, two for five thousand each.”
“Well, you’re a bigger damn fool than I gave you credit fer bein’.”
The attorney-general, clutching his fingers into his hair, rested
his elbows on his short knees, and bowed his head. “And with the
governorship just in plain sight, too,” he groaned.
“Well, it wasn’t so damn plain,” said Jennings.
Then as his eye rested on the man bowed beside him, the sweat trickling
down his tallow face, something in the droop of the figure touched
a chord of pity in his heart, and the tall Egyptian laid a hand on
Grigsby’s shoulder, saying in another tone:
“Don’t take on that way. Let’s see what can be done.”
“Yes, let’s,” assented Grigsby.
The Egyptian knitted the brows over his long, narrow nose.
“Hev you got any money?” he asked.
“I!” exclaimed Grigsby, with a sardonic grunt.
“Any property?”
“Only my house up home.”
“Hain’t you any friends up there, any bankers that’ll take care o’ this
thing fer you?”
Grigsby laughed ironically.
“Cain’t you lay down on somebody fer it?”
Grigsby shook his head.
“How’s your quo ’arranto proceedin’s ’gainst the Chicago Consolidated?”
“It isn’t ripe yet,” said Grigsby, “and, anyhow, there isn’t time.
Damn it, man,” he said, raising his voice, and striking his knee
with his fist, “it’s got to be done now, to-night, or I’m lost. The
governor, under the law, must seal the treasury at once, and you know
just how long John Chatham’ll wait. We’ve got to take care of this
thing to-night, to-night, I tell you. That’s why I sent for you.” The
attorney-general spoke angrily, and with a puffed face that flushed an
unhealthy red, and then added, stretching forth his hand and laying it
on Jennings’ knee, “You’re my friend, ain’t you?”
“Sure,” said the secretary of state carelessly, and then knitted his
brows again. After a few minutes he said:
“Say, Bill, you and the governor used to be friends, and he hain’t a
bad feller, no-way. He got you your nomination, you know--why don’t you
go to him--”
“Go to the governor?” cried Grigsby; “and tell him--tell _him_!”
“Bill,” said the secretary of state, “you don’t know the governor. He
hain’t my kind, ner I his’n, but I’ll tell you one thing--he hain’t the
man to take advantage of a feller. You’d be as safe in his hands as you
would in mine--safer, maybe,” Jennings concluded, with a good-humored
chuckle.
Grigsby emphatically, doggedly, shook his head.
“It never would do in this world,” he said, “never.”
“Why, you could get him to hold off till you could take care of it. You
and him used to be such friends--tell him you’ll lay down fer the sake
of old times--that’s the thing--tell him an’thin’ to get him to hold
off fer a few days. Then you’ll have time to turn ’round.”
“Look here, Jennings,” said Grigsby, straightening up and glaring at
the secretary of state, “Chatham’s got all you fellows hypnotized. You
think he’s a little tin god, that he’s incapable of doing a mean act,
of throwing a friend down, or anything of that sort. I tell you I know
him better than all of you do. He and I used to be close, thicker’n--”
“You wasn’t borrowin’ money out o’ the state treasury them days,
though, was you, Bill?” interrupted Jennings.
Grigsby colored.
“No, you was somethin’ of a reformer yourself.”
Grigsby colored more deeply.
“An’ as fer the throwin’ down--we know who done the heft o’ that.
Course I don’t care--it suits me--but give a houn’ his dues.”
Grigsby’s color had changed by swift gradations of tone to splenetic
blackness. He broke in upon Jennings’ indictment of him, and his
defense of the governor:
“Oh, drop that--let’s talk business. I tell you I know Chatham, and I
ain’t goin’ to put myself in his hands.”
He drew out his watch and opened it.
“It’s half-past eight now, and he doubtless knows Lockhart’s
dead--probably he’s got the treasury sealed.”
Jennings’ brow was gathered once more in wrinkles that indicated
thought. His face rapidly assumed an expression of determination.
Presently he rose.
“Bill,” he said, “I’m goin’ to do somethin’ fer you I wouldn’t do fer
any other livin’ man.”
Grigsby raised an appealing, yearning face.
“Yest’day I deposited in Gregory’s bank over at Decatur twenty-four
thousand dollars. It’s the fees received in my office durin’ the last
quarter. It’s lucky fer you they was unusually large--”