Part 24 (1/2)
The street showed the usual election night scene: the crowds lining the sidewalks in front of the bulletin boards, and overflowing into the street itself; two rival bra.s.s bands engaging in a duel of sound; and ever, high above the waiting crowds, the huge lantern throwing the messages upon the glaring white of the screen.
Gordon drew a long breath. ”Doyle,” he said, ”this is like the moment in a race, just after the starter has sent you to your marks, and just before he fires the pistol. Before the start you're all right, and the second you're off you're all right, but the intervening instant is h.e.l.l.”
Even as he spoke, the first returns were flashed upon the screen.
The little town of Freeport was the first to register its vote.
”Endicott--234; Gordon--139.”
Gordon nodded approvingly, for Freeport had been stanch Republican since the memory of man. ”What was it last year, Doyle?” he asked.
Doyle ran his eye down the table of last year's vote. ”Two hundred ten Republican, eighty-four Democrat,” he said quickly, ”a good omen.”
Quicker and quicker the returns came pouring in, almost faster than they could be flashed across on to the screen. Doyle and Field bent to their work, adding, comparing, calculating; Gordon stood silently watching the bulletins, each bearing its message of good or evil fortune. At length a little frown gathered upon his forehead; things in the western part of the state were not going to suit him. Gains, to be sure, he was making; in many instances, substantial gains; but as a whole he did not seem to be repaid for the efforts he had made. Once he turned disgustedly to Doyle. ”The farmer,” he observed, ”is a pretty conservative animal. A little of the pig about him, and a good deal more of the cow.”
Doyle grinned encouragingly. He had never deluded himself as to the leanings of the west and northwest. ”Wait for the cities,” he said.
”They'll make up in five minutes for all you're losing in an hour now.”
A half hour more and his words were verified. First, River Falls, with its huge mill population, went in a perfect landslide for Gordon; Linton and Kingmouth followed suit, and by nine o'clock Gordon was able to make the rough calculation that he had come into the capital itself only some fifteen thousand votes behind. On the capital, then, with its twenty-six wards and its vote of ninety thousand odd, depended the result.
From the crowd below Audible comment came floating up to the little group. ”Win!” they heard one man shouting at the top of his voice, ”of course he'll win! He'll take the city by thirty thousand!” Then a howl of protest, offers of huge sums of money, for the most part put forward by men without a dollar to their names, on the result of the city vote; finally a strident voice, repeating over and over again, ”He can't beat the Combine!” ”He can't beat 'em.” ”He ain't got nothing on Endicott through the city--not a vote!” Just for a second Gordon's eye met Doyle's, and simultaneously they smiled.
Ten minutes pa.s.sed, and then the first ward made return--ward ten, the respectable. It went for Endicott, and by a fairly good margin, so good, indeed, that the Republican sympathizers in the crowd raised a little cheer. Fortunate, indeed, for them, that they did so while they had a chance, for with the next bulletin the rout of the Republicans and the signal defeat of the Combine began. Twenty-six came strong--overwhelmingly strong--for Gordon; twenty-four hundred and fifty-one to five hundred and twelve were the figures; then twenty, the ever-faithful Republican stronghold, actually, for the first time in its history, swung into the Democratic column by the narrowest of margins, then thirteen, fourteen, six and eight went by large majorities for Gordon, and, to complete the ruin already begun, the famous Combine wards, eleven, two and twenty-five, made the weakest showing to be imagined, somehow not even getting out their full vote, and giving Endicott, just where he might well have expected to make one last stand for victory, at the best nothing more than lukewarm, half-hearted support. ”Overconfidence,” the spokesman of the Combine said to the Press next day when interviewed; they had rated Gordon altogether too lightly, and had paid the penalty. That was all. And Gordon, carrying the city by rising twenty-five thousand votes, left the little room for his home, governor-elect of the state by a plurality of nearly ten thousand.
Doyle, with a hearty hand-shake, left him at his door. ”'What we want,'” he quoted, without the shadow of a smile, ”'is an honest man in the governor's chair.'”
Gordon, gazing with equal solemnity at his friend, for answer bared his head. ”It has been,” he said simply, ”the people's fight,” and then, for the greatest and most successful of us, after all, are only human, the governor-to-be and his right-hand man burst forth simultaneously into sudden, unlooked-for and most unseemly laughter.
And they laughed until they could laugh no more.
PART III
THE RECKONING
CHAPTER I
THE HAZARD OF THE DIE
Mrs. Holton doubtfully shook her head. ”But he won't come,” she said; ”you can't fool him that way, Tom. He's too clever a man.”
Lynch's eyes narrowed a trifle. ”Oh, don't think I'm forgetting that,”
he answered; ”on the contrary, that's the very thing I'm taking most pains to remember. It's the very fact that he is a clever man that's going to bring him here, where a stupid man, for love or money, wouldn't dare come on his life.”
Mrs. Holton looked puzzled. ”But I don't see--” she began.
Lynch leaned forward in his chair. ”Look,” he said abruptly. ”Things can't go on the way they're going now. Either we've got to do something pretty quick, or else he will. That's the point. It's simple enough, and yet, when you begin to follow things out, right away you run into all sorts of complications. First of all, of course, he'd like nothing better than to have us out of the way. There's no doubt about that, is there?”
Mrs. Holton s.h.i.+vered. ”No,” she answered, in a low tone, ”there isn't.
And yet, knowing him the way we do, isn't it strange he hasn't tried before now?”