Page:Scribners Magazine volume 27.djvu/258

 bold, and cunning, was prowling about the town in a carriage, routing men out of bed at unseemly hours, seeking whom he might devour. When he lay down at three o'clock on his office lounge the war of the two electric lighting companies was waging and he was prepared to loot. With his booty he was going to redeem the stolen school bonds. He was so sure of winning his game that he spent the closing minutes of consciousness before sleep in malevolent anticipation of the hour when he would annihilate Senator Felt by passing the pension bill over his opposition.

He woke from the horror of a nightmare with the horror of reality upon him. And the thought of the reality made his hand tremble as he put the first four glasses of his morning's whiskey to his lips. Until he had consumed nearly a pint of liquor he could not muster courage to review the details of the day's campaign. It was Wharton's intention to galvanize his shares in the new company, so that he could sell his stock immediately, or—but the old company had stuck at $50,000 the night before and the stolen school bonds were in pawn for $75,000, to be redeemed that day. So it was that or nothing. When the steam of the morning's whiskey had sent his drivers to pounding, Wharton took a car for the Capitol. When he left the car his face was haggard and he walked across the asphalt with a physical curse of hatred for mankind in every rap of his heavy foot. He did not veer a fraction of an inch from a straight line as he walked, and he snubbed the man brutally who ran the elevator. In an upper corridor Wharton met Curt, the agent for the old electric company—Curt, whose bed-room Wharton had left at three that morning. Curt had promised to confer with some one whom he called "his people " to see if they would meet Wharton's $75,000 ultimatum.

"Well," asked Curt festively of Wharton as the two men walked down the corridor, "have you concluded to be decent?"

Wharton tried to see into the recesses of the lobbyist's mind as he replied, gruffly: "I'm right where I was. It's that or nothing. I'm going to make a speech to-day that will fix you fellows so you'll wish I'd sunk your wires six miles in instead of twenty inches under the street level. Come up and hear it," he snapped over his shoulder.

"All right, Senator," laughed Curt, "Blaze away. Tell Bob Dunning to come up to the gallery and we'll enjoy it together."

Wharton turned into his committee room. Dunning, the private secretary, was there. He greeted Wharton with a look that matched all of the Senator's anxiety. Wharton nodded and said: "You're to go up in the gallery with Curt. I think he's going to come to time. But I'm going on with my speech unless he does—I'll show 'em. It's the first thing up this morning."

Wharton swung into the senate chamber like a bull into the pit. He feared treachery in his closest allies. He scowled at his fellows from under heavy eyelids and peered furtively around for some knowledge of his financial condition to show upon their faces. Then he brushed away the pages that swarmed around him with other people's business, and his pen scratched incessantly and angrily until he rose to make his speech. Foreboding and a sense of danger mingled in him until he sickened, as the look down the sheer drop of the ladder makes a man's knees tremble before he starts down. Wharton mumbled through his preliminary speech. Then he saw his private secretary sitting by Curt shake a dubious head, and with a rush of courage Wharton fell to his subject. And soon the old electric company was withering in the hot wind of his oratory. He kept his eyes on Curt and Dunning in the gallery. Wharton was about to finish his climax when he saw, as a drowning man sees a rope, Curt lean over to Dunning and Dunning smile and nod an affirmative head to Wharton. His hand fell to his side. His shoulders collapsed and he said, before he dropped to his seat:

"Gentlemen, I see I've trespassed too long upon your time already to-day; but there are a few more remarks I wish to submit on this subject at another time, so I ask that this bill take its former place on the calendar."

He heaved a deep sigh, as one returning to consciousness. He caught Senator Felt's eyes returning from the pair in the gallery, and Wharton's eyes met the twinkle