Page:Scribners Magazine volume 27.djvu/262



"I came here," said Felt, "to give you full and fair notice that day after to-morrow in the Senate I shall ask for an investigation of this electric wire deal of yours, and offer in evidence the affidavits of a number of citizens, and such other exhibits and documents as may be needed to prove the justice of my request."

"You think I won't pay the note?" inquired Wharton, whose hand shook and whose facial muscles quivered above his mouth and about his nose. "Well, sir, I'm going to secure it with collateral."

"That,"' returned Felt, contemptuously, "is immaterial and irrelevant. I know nothing of the arrangement you may have made with Williams. Neither do I care. But I do know that you're a bribe-taker and a corrupt scoundrel, and I am going to do my duty by the American people and prove it to them." Felt paused an instant and looked at Wharton absently, then finished,—"Submitting some outward and visible signs of my inward and spiritual faith."

Wharton stared at Williams and asked: "My collateral is good, A No. 1 school- bonds—why do you hold this club over me? Call off your dog! How much does he want?" A silence fell. Then Wharton turned to Felt and spoke in a calmer voice, but with his face still twitching: "Lookee here, Felt, let's you and me fix this thing up. If you want anything, ask for it like a man." Felt did not answer, and Wharton walked around the room with his hands behind him for nearly a minute. He took a cigar from the desk in front of Williams and lighted it mechanically, striking the match on the side of his leg. Felt and Williams watched him in silence as he paced the longitude of the room three times. He stopped and cast his blood-shot eyes on Felt and said: "Of course I hain't got no blue stripe down my belly, and a lot of you fellows back here who have think I'm a social leper." Wharton shook his head majestically at Felt as he continued: "But out West, sir—out in God's country—there are several million people who believe in Tom Wharton. They give me reason to hope for something bigger than the United States Senate. The time may come before long when I can help you a good deal. But that's neither here nor there now. Come right down to first principles—what you got agin me? Say what you want right out and you can have it. If there's anything you don't like in any of my bills on the calendar, say so." The sound of his voice assured him; he had faith in his persuasive power.

"You might as well try to teach a rattlesnake the Beatitudes as to show you your shortcomings, sir," answered Felt. "Everything you've got on the calendar, from your demagogic pension bill to your electric wire steal, is dead wrong."

"All right then, Senator, let's agree to drop the pension bill—does that suit you?" Wharton knew that his words put the bars across his political career, but he was fighting for life then and re-election seemed a little matter, comparatively.

"My God! what a treacherous cur you are," exclaimed Felt. "I had hoped you believed at least in that!"

Wharton sat down facing Felt, who was leaning against the door-jamb. Wharton drew in deep breaths at long intervals apart, and because the alcohol was leaving his head he was having trouble to keep a coherent train of thought. After he had gazed at Felt for a long time rather stupidly he said:

"Damn it Felt—what you want to go and persecute me for? You've got me, maybe—but if I'd got you, do you think I'd grind you to death. Don't be a Shylock—be a man. I'll pay this outfit their notes all right, and I'll give 'em good collateral. What's more, I'll let you in with me in a little Western Pacific deal I've got, that there's a hundred thousand in—if you'll let up."

There was a whine in Wharton's voice that maddened Felt. He walked up to Wharton and bent over him. "Tom Wharton, I wasn't in the civil war because I was not old enough," began Felt in his musketry voice, which filled the room, but was so well controlled that it did not slip through the door-cracks. "But I believe I have a duty to my country now, as sacred as that which called my grandfather to Lexington, and my father to Bull's Run. That duty is to crush the political life out of one of the most powerful and dangerous influences menacing this nation to-day—the incarnation of political cowardice, corruption, and demagoguery. My