Page:The gold brick (1910).djvu/214

 Second Street by the way he had come. He kept on with his two companions, and all three were silent. Not a word had any one of them spoken. They were drowned in thought. It matters not of what the assistant state treasurer was thinking. He held only an appointive office. He was a political villain, and had a collar on his neck. The attorney-general was thinking of days that were to come. The governor was thinking of days that were gone. Silent, thoughtful, thus they kept on up Capitol Avenue. When they approached the shades that gathered under the ugly iron bridge which spans the ragged street that leads to the capitol of Illinois, the Alton's St. Louis Limited came plunging through the town, half an hour late. The three men halted. The great mysterious, vestibuled train, with its darkly curtained Pullmans, slid across the bridge. As they stood waiting for it to pass that they might go under, the governor withdrew his hand from his pocket, the paper still folded in it. He held the paper out toward Grigsby.

"William," he said, "I think you dropped something."