The Fighting Edge (Smith's Magazine 1907)/Chapter 8

The lobbies of both the Senate and the House were buzzing with excitement, for hints had been on the wind for hours that this morning a United States senator would be elected. The leaders of both parties were moving quietly about, strengthening doubtful adherents and consulting prominent members. To the veriest novice it was plain that the fight had reached a climax, and would be decided before the day was over. Both sides were claiming the victory, and apparently with confidence. Yet in their secret hearts all those most vitally interested breathed haggard suspense.

By the time the presiding officer had called the joint assembly to order, the tension had reached a point where every minute’s delay had its effect on the feverish members. The strain had communicated itself, likewise, to the gallery, which was filled with interested spectators. Among these was a slight, trim young woman in a gray street suit, who manifested a frank interest she did not attempt to conceal. She came in with an older lady, and found a seat quietly in an unobtrusive corner that, nevertheless, commanded a view of the floor. Many curious glances were cast her way, for Miss Marriott paid the usual penalty of a celebrity that met the public eye from billboards, magazine pages, and across the footlights.

She picked out Blake in a few moments, took rapid stock of the other members and the lobbyists, and by the time the clerk began calling the roll was settled into an attentive study of the proceedings. Three men voted before Devereux, two of them for Stoneman, the third for his opponent. At the announcement of each vote a little ripple of subdued applause ran over the hall, which the perfunctory fall of the presiding officer’s gavel could not wholly still.

When the clerk read “Blake,” all eyes swung as on a pivot to the man named, for many knew and others felt subtly that the person for whom he was about to vote would be the next senator. He was seated close to the wall, at a desk well forward and to the right of the lieutenant-governor. Very pale, but quite resolute, he swept the room with his eyes, and gathered to a stillness the very breathing of his fellow members during that interminable moment before he began. He spoke in a low voice so clearly pitched that no syllable was lost in the remotest corner of the hall, and before he had finished his first sentence, men’s eyes sought each other furtively in a terror of guilt that was excruciating.

“We have been living, gentlemen, for many weeks in a carnival of bribery, in a debauched hysteria of money madness. Worse than a disease, worse than a fever, the lust of gold has searched this body and stolen its health. This sixteenth general assembly is sick unto death with a moral cancer that demands the knife.”

He stopped in a dead hush, fastened the lower button of his sack coat, and again quietly went forward to his task. There were men there who had known him only as an easy, debonair club-man, but they recognized him now with sinking hearts hard as tempered steel and as unpliable. None could look into those steady gray eyes and miss the fighting edge.

“One word of myself and of my friends. We have seen the honor of this body dragged in the dust. Day by day certain men have moved among us buying and selling votes like merchandise. Members of this body, with long and honorable public careers behind them, have become infected by the poison which these go-betweens have whispered. We have seen old friends fall by the wayside, and we have known with sadness that in the long years to come the finger of shame will be forever pointed at them. We have known that the name of our fair State would be a by-word in the sisterhood of States. And, knowing all this, we resolved—with what reluctance only God knows—to save our commonwealth from the false servants who would betray her; to save these poor weaklings from themselves if it might be. To remain silent would have been to condone the crime, to have handed over our State to the corruptionists, that they might work their will. From such tame surrender God save the honest men of this assembly!”

A low groan seemed to shiver through the hall. In the gallery above a woman’s sob broke. For the rest, a fascinated silence eloquent of pent fear and rage and sick alarm.

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“And to the honest men of this assembly I make my appeal, in the full knowledge that there are many of them. Let us band together and forget politics. Let us rise in our might and stamp down this outrage of bribery that stalks rampant and unashamed in our midst. Let us”

“Prove it!” cried a voice in the back of the hall, and others, some quavering with fear, some hoarse with rage, echoed the cry.

He had compelled the demand for proof, and instantly he walked forward to the clerk of the House and handed him a package. Kreagh, McCune, and Kirby each in turn rose from his seat and stepped forward with a neatly tied roll of bills. While the clerk untied them and members craned forward, Blake went on to tell the story of how the seventy thousand dollars, in bills of large denomination, now in the hands of the clerk of the House, had been given him and his friends by representatives of Simon Schaffner and the Three C system to vote for the candidates for whom they were working. In each package, he explained, were two smaller ones, in exactly the condition they had been received from Higgins and Bulger by the person whose initials were on the back. In substantiation, he urged that a responsible committee be appointed to see that bills to the amount he claimed were in each parcel.

Over his devoted head the storm broke with a fury inconceivable when Blake charged directly that before him sat fifty members of the Senate and the House, a prey to dreadful foreboding because they knew they had sold themselves for gold. Such an unrestrained welter of humanity, such a blind rage of hatred, Miss Marriott had never before seen. Men rose in their seats and shook their fists at Blake, screaming epithets and curses. For an instant it looked as if the accused men would fling themselves upon him and tear him to pieces. Charges and counter-charges swept back and forth, while pallid, white-lipped men screamed defiance at Blake and at each: other. Through it all Devereux faced the hurricane of mad humanity without wincing. The waves of their passion beat upon him, and left him unmoved. He stood with his back to the wall, his hands resting on the desk in front of him, a curious little smile on his face.

When the storm quieted, the lieutenant-governor appointed a committee to open the packages, and their investigation showed that each contained the sum named by Devereux. After the assembly was satisfied of this, the clerk proceeded again with the roll-call.

“Blake.”

Again the young man rose, and in a storm of hoots and hisses voted for Miller. There was a general defection in the Stoneman and the Schaffner ranks. Each man felt that it was a case of saving himself, and even those who had been the readiest to accept a bribe deserted at this juncture. The result of the count showed no election, but Governor Miller was so greatly in the lead that his followers forced a second vote, and elected him by a majority of seventeen before adjournment. So unprepared were caught the leaders of the Stoneman and the Schaffner factions that they could not rally a sufficient following to prevent this. Republicans and Democrats alike had voted for the governor, and a jubilant triumphant reception was held on the spot. The band that had been ordered by Bulger to sound the victory of his leader, instead played “Hail to the Chief” when Miller was escorted down the aisle to the platform. It was a tremendous victory for Blake, but he knew he might pay for it with his life.

It was long before he could get away from the congratulations of his friends and the bitter denunciations of the men whose schemes he had confounded. When at last he was leaving the House with Kreagh, a page slipped a penciled note into his hand.

There was no signature, but it needed none. He wondered how she had learned so soon of what had occurred.

“You'll come to lunch with me, Devvie,” he heard Kreagh say.

“Sorry, Jim, but I have an engagement.”

“That’s all right, but don’t make any evening engagements for a few days. You’re not the most universally popular man in town just now, you know. My opinion is that you had better hunt in couples for a time. The feeling is very bitter.”

“Oh, they’ll take it out in cursing me,” returned. Blake jubilantly.

“That’s one of those things you never can tell,” answered Kreagh, and he added, as he shook hands: “It’s been a bully fight, Devvie. I want to take off my hat to you, my boy. We never could have made it without Devereux Blake. You’re the biggest man in the State to-day, even if Miller was elected to the Senate.”

“Oh, that’s nonsense,” flushed the other, with a boyish laugh. “You did as much as I did, Jim.”

“You can’t make me believe that. Well, so-long. I’m off to the chuck-wagon.”