For the first time in his life Governor North had his breakfast served to
him in his room at his hotel; he ate alone, chewing savagely and studying
newspapers. He did not welcome this method of breakfasting as a pleasing
indulgence. Rugged Lawrence North was no sybarite; he hated all
assumptions of exclusiveness; he loved to mingle and mix, and his morning
levees in the hotel breakfast-room catered to all his vanity as a public
functionary. He did not own up squarely to himself that he was afraid to
go down and face men and answer questions. He had ordered the hotel
telephone exchange to give him no calls; he had told the desk clerk to
state to all inquirers that the Governor was too busy to be seen; he paid
no attention to raps on his door. His self-exculpation in this unwonted
privacy was that he could not afford to allow himself to be bothered by
questioners until he and Senator Corson could arrange for effectual
team-work by another conference. When he and the Senator parted they
agreed to get together at the Corson mansion the first thing after
breakfast.
While the Governor ground his food between his teeth he also chewed on the
savage realization that he had nothing sensible to say in public on the
situation, considering his uncompromising declarations of the day before;
there were those declarations thrusting up at him from the newspaper page
like derisive fingers; by the reports in parallel columns he was
represented as saying one thing and doing another! And a bumptious,
blundering, bull-headed Scotchman had put the Governor of a state in that
tongue-tied, skulking position on the proud day of inauguration!
His Excellency slashed his ham, and stabbed his eggs, making his food
atone vicariously.
He did not order his car over the hotel telephone. The hotel _attachés_
were obsequious and would be waiting to escort him in state across the
main office. The politicians would surround the car. And he was perfectly
sure that some of the big men of an amazed State House lobby might step
into that car along with him and seek to know what in the name o' mischief
had happened overnight to change all the sane and conservative plans in
the way of making a legislature safe!
He bundled himself and his raw pride into his overcoat, turned the fur
collar up around his head, and went down a staircase. He was sneaking and
he knew it and no paltering self-assurance that he was handling a touchy
situation with necessary tact helped his feelings in the least. He stepped
into a taxicab and was glad because the breath of previous passengers that
morning had frosted the windows. That consolation was merely a back-fire
in the rest of the conflagration that raged in him.
It was a dull morning, somber and cold.
When he stamped up the broad walk from the gate of the Corson mansion he
beheld the boarded windows of the ballroom, and the spectacle added to his
sense of chill. But his anger was not cooled.
Senator Corson's secretary was waiting in the hall; he showed the Governor
up to the Senator's study.
Either because the outdoors was not cheerful that morning or because the
Senator had been too much engrossed in meditation to remember that
daylight would serve him, the curtains of the study were drawn and the
electric lamps were on.
Corson was walking up and down the room, chewing on one end of a cigar and
making a soggy torch of the other end. He continued to pace while North
pulled off his coat.
"I have sent word to Morrison to come here," reported the host.
The mantel clock reported the hour as nine; His Excellency scowled at the
clock's face. "And you got word back, I suppose, that after he has come
out of his mill at ten o'clock and has washed his hands and--"
"He's at City Hall," snapped Corson, with an acerbity that matched the
Governor's. "I called the mill and was referred to Morrison at City Hall.
He's on his way up here! At any rate, he said he'd start at once."
"Did he condescend to intimate in what capacity he proposes to land on us
this time?"
"I'm going to allow you to draw your own conclusions. I've been trying to
draw some of my own from what he said."
"What did he say?"
"Apologized because I was put to any trouble in locating him. Said he was
expecting to be called by me and thought he would go to City Hall and
await my summons in order to put himself and the whole situation on a
strictly official basis." The Senator delivered that information sullenly.
"What kind of a devilish basis does he think he's been operating on?"
"Look here, North! If you have come up here to fight with me after the row
you have been having down-town this morning I warn you--"
"I have had no row down-town. I wouldn't see anybody. I wouldn't talk with
anybody. Blast it! Corson, I don't know what to say to anybody!"
"Well, that's one point, at least, on which you and I can get together
even if we can't agree on anything else. If you have been so cursedly
exclusive as all that, North, perhaps you haven't been in touch with any
of the justices of the supreme court, as I have."
"You have, eh?"
"I called Davenport and Madigan on the telephone."
"What excuse could they give for sending their snap opinions over the wire
on the inquiry of a fool?"
"They offered no excuse. They couldn't. They knew nothing about any
telegrams till I informed 'em. They received no inquiry. They sent no
replies, naturally."
"That--that--Did that--" The Governor pawed at his scraggly neck. "He
faked all that stuff?"
"Absolutely!"
Comment which could not have been expressed in long speeches and violent
denunciation was put into the pregnant stare exchanged by the two men.
Then the Senator took another grip on his cigar with bared teeth and began
to march again.
"Corson, what's going to be done with that blue-blazed understudy of
Ananias?"
"Depend on the wrath of Heaven, perhaps," said the Senator, sarcastically.
"I haven't had time to look in Holy Writ this morning and ascertain just
what kind of a lie Ananias told. But whatever it was, it was tame beside
what Morrison told that mob about me last night."
"You've had your fling at me about my exclusiveness! What are you putting
out yourself this morning in the way of statements?" The Governor banged
his fist down on the newspapers which littered the study table.
"Nothing! Not yet!"
"I've got to have my self-respect with me when I deliver my inaugural
address this forenoon. The only way I can possess it is by ramming
Morrison into jail."
"On what ground, may I ask?"
"Interference with the Chief Executive of this state! Inciting the mob
against the militia! Putting state property in danger. Forgery--contempt
of court! I'll appeal to the judges to act. I'll call in the
attorney-general. You and I were forcibly detained!"
"Yes, we might allege abduction," was Corson's dry rejoinder. "Our
helplessness in the hands of a usurper would win a lot of public
sympathy."
"I tell you, we would have the sympathy of the people," asserted the
Governor, too angry to be anything else than literal.
"And they'd express it by giving us the biggest laugh ever tendered to two
public men in this state, North. We've got to look this thing straight in
the eye. I told Morrison last night that no such preposterous thing was
ever put over in American politics, and he agreed with me. You must agree,
too! That makes us unanimous on one point, and that's something gained,
because it's an essential point. We can't afford to let the public know
just how preposterous the situation was. A man in American public life can
get away with almost any kind of a fix, if it's taken seriously. But the
right sort of a general laugh will snuff him like that!" He snapped his
finger. "We're not dealing with politics and procedure in the case of
Morrison."
"We're dealing with a fool and his folly!" the Governor shouted.
It was another of those cases where the expected guest under discussion
becomes an eavesdropper at just the wrong moment; Morrison was not
deliberately an eavesdropper. He had followed the instructed secretary to
the study door, and the Governor had declared himself with a violence that
was heard outside the room.