Page:Scribners Magazine volume 27.djvu/264

 whom half a pint in an hour was an adult's dose. All the morning he had dreaded to enter the Senate Chamber as a condemned man dreads to look at his gallows. But Wharton was shrewd enough to know that he must not skulk. The liquor made him reckless even as he hoped it would. He stalked into the Senate Chamber with his mind made up that it would take a bigger man than Senator Felt, backed by cartloads of affidavits, to make Tom Wharton flinch. His large frame suggested the unwieldy bulk and power of a marine creature as he flung himself into his seat.

Ordinarily pages buzzed around Wharton like flies, during the first few minutes of his presence at his desk. But that day none came. No brother senator leaned over Wharton to confer with him, as was the custom. Wharton rose and joined a group of his associates in the back part of the room. The group melted in a few moments. He repeated his experiment twice with similar results. Scandal hissed through the place, and everyone feared to help Wharton lest he should spread his infection. At four o'clock Wharton's head was a pandemonium of furies, and his face was livid with rage. The swollen arteries in his wrinkled neck pumped the fires of the seventh pit into his brain. He tried to quench them with more whiskey. The only thought that helped him was the belief that he had the bonds and could secure the notes, and thereby stop Felt's investigation. He hugged that comfort with drunken affection, and reminded his more bibulous associates of the poker party that had been arranged for the approaching night at the house where he had left the valise with the bonds. Because a subconscious fear was upon Wharton he telephoned to Williams many times that afternoon between four and six to assure him that the bonds would be delivered that evening. But the house on the green-car line did not answer the telephone, and at dusk Wharton took Dunning to get the valise and deliver the bonds to Williams.

While Dunning waited in the hall of the Thompson woman's house he heard this dialogue upstairs: what the preliminaries were he did not know, but when the voice of the woman rose he heard her say:

"Well, if I needed the money I needed it. The bonds were here, so I soaked 'em."

Then the man's voice—Wharton's voice—spoke unpleasant things. Dunning could not see Wharton's face, nor could he tell what Wharton did. But the woman's strident voice broke in:

"You drunken old coward! Don't you raise your hand again. It will be better for you to lose twice the $50,000 that I got on 'em than to try that trick on me."

Other things passed which need not be set down here, and when Tom Wharton descended to the hall he was dizzy and felt for his steps cautiously. But he said to Dunning:

"You needn't wait, Bob, I'll fix it up in the morning."

He knew that with the bonds he had stolen from his State treasury, pawned by a woman like the Thompson woman and unredeemed by him, whatever Senator Felt might say about the electric company's bribery case could not matter much. So Wharton gripped his consciousness by the roots of it and averted a panic. But over and over rang Felt's parting words: "with the doors of the penitentiary banging at your heels." In Wharton's ears they clanged like the din of some monster gong, as he played the cards that night. Fear twisted his nerves tighter and tighter. When a telephone-bell tinkled he was abject with terror until it had rung off. When he caught other players peering into his face, as is the habit of poker players, Wharton winced and the gong in his head clamored louder than ever.

It was long after midnight, and the champagne-bucket had come and gone many times. But the cut-glass decanter with the brown liquor did not leave Wharton's elbow, and by three o'clock his face was a sickly white, and his eyes were sparkling. Wharton was dealing the cards. He had passed around once, when suddenly he tossed a card into the air, then threw his face upward, with an indescribable look of resentful anger upon his features. But his eyes were wild and staring, and his head dropped to the table with a thump. When they wiped the froth from his mouth Tom Wharton was dead.