The Sturdy Oak Part 35

"So am I!" exclaimed George.

"Not till we've had a little understanding," sharply put in Doolittle, blocking his way.

"Stay here, George," his partner snapped out--"she's perfectly safe--just a little out of breath--telephoned from a drug store over in the Red-field district. I'll have her back here in fifteen minutes." And out Penny dashed, slamming the door.

But perhaps it was the straw-haired successor of Betty Sheridan who really prevented George from plunging after his partner.

"You ordered the _Sentinel_ sent up as soon as it was out," she said.

"Here are six copies."

George seized the ink-damp papers, and as the straw-haired one walked out in rubber-heeled silence he turned savagely upon his campaign manager.

"Well, Doolittle?" he demanded.

"I just want to ask you, George----"

George exploded. "Oh, you just want to ask me! Well, everything you want to ask me is answered in that paper. Read it!"

Doolittle took the copy of the _Sentinel_ which was thrust into his hands. George watched him with triumphant grimness, awaiting the effect of the bomb about to explode in the other's face. Mr. Doolittle unfolded the _Sentinel_--looked it slowly through--then raised his eyes to George. His face seemed somewhat puzzled, but otherwise it was overspread with that sympathetic concern which, as much as his hea.r.s.e and his folding-chairs, was a part of his professional equipment.

"Why, George. I don't just get what you're driving at."

Forgetting that he was holding several copies of the Sentinel, George dropped them all upon the floor and seized the paper from Mr. Doolittle.

He glanced swiftly over the first page--and experienced the highest voltage shock of his young public career. Feverishly he skimmed the remaining pages. But of all that he had poured out in the office of the _Sentinel_, not one word was in print.

Automatically clutching the paper in a hand that fell to his side, he stared blankly at his campaign manager. Mr. Doolittle gazed back with his air of sympathetic concern, bewildered questioning in his eyes. And for a s.p.a.ce, despite the increasing uproar down in the street, there was a most perfect silence in the inner office of Remington and Evans.

Before either of the two men could speak, the door was violently flung open and Martin Jaffry appeared. His clothing was disarranged, his manner agitated--in striking contrast to the dapper and composed appearance usual to that middle-aged little gentleman.

"George," he panted, "heard anything about Genevieve?"

"She's safe. Penny's got charge of her by this time."

His answer was almost mechanical.

"Thank G.o.d!" Uncle Martin collapsed in one of the office chairs.

"Mind--if sit here minute--get my breath."

George did not reply, for he had not heard. He was gazing steadily at Mr. Doolittle; some great, but as yet shapeless, force was surging up dazingly within him. But he somehow held himself in control.

"Well, Doolittle," he demanded, "you said you came to ask something."

Mr. Doolittle's manner was still propitiatingly bland. "I'll mention something else first, George, if you don't mind. You just remarked I'd find your answer in the _Sentinel_. There must 'a' been some little slip-up somewhere. So I guess I better mention first that the _Sentinel_ has arranged to stand ready to get out an extra."

"An extra! What for?"

"Princ.i.p.ally, George, I reckon to print those answers you just spoke of."

George still kept that mounting something under his control. "Answers to what?"

"Why, George," the other replied softly, persuasively. "I guess we'd better have a little chat--as man to man--about politics. Meaning no offense, George, stalling is all right in politics--but this time you've carried this stalling act a little too far. As the result of your tactics, George, why here's all this disorder in our streets--and the afternoon before election. If you'd only really tried to stop these messing women----"

"I didn't try to stop them by kidnapping them!" burst from George--and Uncle Martin, his breath recovered, now sat up, clutching his homespun cap.

"Kidnapping women?" queried the bland, bewildered voice of the party boss. "I say, George, I don't know what you're talking about." "Why, you--" But George caught himself. "Speak it out, Doolittle--what do you want?"

"Since you ask it so frankly, George, I'll try to put it plain: You been going along handing out high-sounding generalities. There's nothing better and safer than generalities--usually. But this ain't no usual case, George. These women, stirring everything up, have got the solid interests so unsettled that they don't know where they're at--or where you're at. And a lot of boys in the organization feel the same way. What the crisis needs, George, is a plain statement of your intentions as district attorney, which we can get into that _Sentinel_ extra and which will rea.s.sure the public--and the organization."

"A plain statement?" There was a grim set to George's jaw.

"Oh, it needn't go into too many details. Just what you might call a ringing declaration about this being the greatest era of prosperity Whitewater has ever known, and that you conceive it to be the duty of your administration to protect and stimulate this prosperity. The people will understand, and the organization will understand. I guess you get what I mean, George."

"Yes, I get what you mean!" exploded George, his fist cras.h.i.+ng upon the table. "You mean you want me to be a complacent accessory to all the legal evasions that you and your political gang and the rich bunch behind you may want to get away with! You want me to be a crook in office! By G.o.d, Doolittle----"

"Shut up, Remington," snapped the political boss, his soft manner now vanished, his whole aspect now grimly menacing. "I know the rest of what you're going to say. I was pretty certain what it 'ud be before I came here, but I had to know for sure. Well, I know now, all right!"

His lank jaws snapped again.

"Since you are not going to represent the people that put you up, I demand your written withdrawal as candidate for the district attorney's office."

"And I refuse to give it!" cried George. "I was nominated by a convention, not by you. And I don't believe the party is as crooked as you--anyhow I'm going to give the decent members of the party a chance to vote decently! And you can't remove me from the ballot, either, for the ballot is already printed and----"

"That'll do you no----"

"I thought some time ago I was through with this political mess," George drove on. "But, Doolittle, d.a.m.n you, I've just begun to get in it! And I'm going to see it through to the finis.h.!.+"

Suddenly a thin little figure thrust itself between the bellicose pair and began shaking George's hand. It was Martin Jaffry.

"George--I guess I'm my share of an old scoundrel--and a trimmer--but hearing some one stand up and talk man's talk--" He broke off to shake George's hand again. "I thought you were the king of b.o.o.bs--but, boy, I'm with you to wherever you want to go--if my money will last that far!"

"Keep out of this, Jaffry," roughly growled Doolittle. "It's too late for your dough to help this young pup. Remington, we may not take you off the ballot, but the organization kin send out word to the boys----"

"To knife me! Of course, I expect that! All right--go to it! But I'm on the ballot--you can't deprive people of the chance of voting for me. And I shall announce myself an independent and shall run as one!"

"We may not be able to elect our own nominee," harshly continued Doolittle, "but we kin send out word to back the Democratic candidate.

Miller ain't much, but, at least, he's a soft man. And that _Sentinel_ extra is going to say that a feeling has spread among the respectable element that it has lost confidence in you, and is going to say that prominent party members feel the party has made a mistake in ever putting you up. So run, d.a.m.n you--run as a Democrat, a Republican, an Independent--but how are you going to git it across to the public in a way to do yourself any good--without backing? How are you going to git it across to the public?"

His last words, flung out with overmastering fury, brought George up short, and he saw this. Doolittle's wrath had mounted to that pitch which should never be reached by the resentment of a practical politician; it had attained such force that it drove him on to taunt his man. "How are you going to git it before the public?" he again demanded, eyes agleam with triumphant rancor--"with us shutting you off and hammering you on one side?--and them d.a.m.ned messy women across the street hammering you from the other side? Oh, it's a grand chance you have--one little old grand chance! Especially with those dear d.a.m.ned females loving you like they do! Jest take a look at what the bunch over there are doing to you!"

Doolittle followed his own taunting suggestion; and George, too, glanced through his window across the crowded street into the shattered window whence issued the Voiceless Speech. In that jagged frame in the raw November air still stood Mrs. Harvey Herrington, turning the giant leaves of her soundless oratory. The heckling request which then struck George's eyes began: "_Will Candidate Remington answer_----"

George Remington read no more. His already tense figure suddenly stiffened; he caught a sharp breath. Then, without a word to the two men with him, he seized his hat and dashed from his office. The street was even more a turbulent human sea, with violently twisting eddies, than had appeared from George's windows. It seemed that every member of the organizations whom Mrs. Herrington (and also Betty Sheridan, and later E. Eliot, and, at the last, Genevieve) had brought into this fight, were now downtown for the supreme effort. And it seemed that there were now more of the so-called "better citizens." Certainly there were more of Noonan's men, and these were still elbowing and jostling, and making little ma.s.s rushes--yet otherwise holding themselves ominously in control.

Into this milling a.s.semblage George flung himself, so dominated by the fiery urge within him that he did not hear Genevieve call to him from Penny's car, which just then swung around the corner and came to a sharp stop on the skirts of the crowd. George shouldered his way irresistibly through this ma.s.s; the methods of his football days when he had been famed as a line-plunging back instinctively returned--and, all the fine chivalry forgotten which had given to his initial statement to the voters of Whitewater so n.o.ble a sound, he battered aside many of those "fairest flowers of our civilization, to protect whom it is man's duty and inspiration."

His lunging progress followed by curses and startled cries of feminine indignation, he at length emerged upon the opposite sidewalk, and, breathless and disheveled, he burst into the headquarters of the Voiceless Speech.

Some half-dozen of Mrs. Herrington's a.s.sistants cried out at his abrupt entrance. Mrs. Herrington, forward beside the speech, turned quickly about.