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 office soon after Wickson arrived there for his morning's work. "Just a moment, Arthur," he apologized for taking Wickson's time, and Wickson shook hands with him without replying.

McPhee Harris has a smile that at its most perfunctory moments is something more than polite. It is the smile of austerity made benevolent by the conscientious sympathy of a professing Christian. His chin, clean-shaven between gray side-whiskers, repeats the bony conformation of his narrow skull, which is bald between two bushes of gray hair. He is one of the few men left in America who still wear on all occasions the tall silk hat.

He said to Wickson, "I had a visit last night from friend Toole." And Toole being a corrupt machine politician, the "friend" was said sarcastically, of course.

Wickson leaned forward on his table-desk intently.

"We have put the fear of God into them," Harris assured him. "They are prepared to nominate a ticket of good men."

Wickson waited, watching him, silent. (Harris remembers that silence well—as a justification.)

"We are to name them," he went on, "practically all. They reserve a few of the minor offices—as, for instance, the sheriff and the county clerk and recorder."

"If they nominate those three officers," Wickson