The street showed the usual election night scene: the crowds lining the sidewalks in front of the bulletin boards, and overflowing into the street itself; two rival bra.s.s bands engaging in a duel of sound; and ever, high above the waiting crowds, the huge lantern throwing the messages upon the glaring white of the screen.

Gordon drew a long breath. "Doyle," he said, "this is like the moment in a race, just after the starter has sent you to your marks, and just before he fires the pistol. Before the start you're all right, and the second you're off you're all right, but the intervening instant is h.e.l.l."

Even as he spoke, the first returns were flashed upon the screen.

The little town of Freeport was the first to register its vote.

"Endicott--234; Gordon--139."

Gordon nodded approvingly, for Freeport had been stanch Republican since the memory of man. "What was it last year, Doyle?" he asked.

Doyle ran his eye down the table of last year's vote. "Two hundred ten Republican, eighty-four Democrat," he said quickly, "a good omen."

Quicker and quicker the returns came pouring in, almost faster than they could be flashed across on to the screen. Doyle and Field bent to their work, adding, comparing, calculating; Gordon stood silently watching the bulletins, each bearing its message of good or evil fortune. At length a little frown gathered upon his forehead; things in the western part of the state were not going to suit him. Gains, to be sure, he was making; in many instances, substantial gains; but as a whole he did not seem to be repaid for the efforts he had made. Once he turned disgustedly to Doyle. "The farmer," he observed, "is a pretty conservative animal. A little of the pig about him, and a good deal more of the cow."

Doyle grinned encouragingly. He had never deluded himself as to the leanings of the west and northwest. "Wait for the cities," he said.

"They'll make up in five minutes for all you're losing in an hour now."

A half hour more and his words were verified. First, River Falls, with its huge mill population, went in a perfect landslide for Gordon; Linton and Kingmouth followed suit, and by nine o'clock Gordon was able to make the rough calculation that he had come into the capital itself only some fifteen thousand votes behind. On the capital, then, with its twenty-six wards and its vote of ninety thousand odd, depended the result.

From the crowd below Audible comment came floating up to the little group. "Win!" they heard one man shouting at the top of his voice, "of course he'll win! He'll take the city by thirty thousand!" Then a howl of protest, offers of huge sums of money, for the most part put forward by men without a dollar to their names, on the result of the city vote; finally a strident voice, repeating over and over again, "He can't beat the Combine!" "He can't beat 'em." "He ain't got nothing on Endicott through the city--not a vote!" Just for a second Gordon's eye met Doyle's, and simultaneously they smiled.

Ten minutes pa.s.sed, and then the first ward made return--ward ten, the respectable. It went for Endicott, and by a fairly good margin, so good, indeed, that the Republican sympathizers in the crowd raised a little cheer. Fortunate, indeed, for them, that they did so while they had a chance, for with the next bulletin the rout of the Republicans and the signal defeat of the Combine began. Twenty-six came strong--overwhelmingly strong--for Gordon; twenty-four hundred and fifty-one to five hundred and twelve were the figures; then twenty, the ever-faithful Republican stronghold, actually, for the first time in its history, swung into the Democratic column by the narrowest of margins, then thirteen, fourteen, six and eight went by large majorities for Gordon, and, to complete the ruin already begun, the famous Combine wards, eleven, two and twenty-five, made the weakest showing to be imagined, somehow not even getting out their full vote, and giving Endicott, just where he might well have expected to make one last stand for victory, at the best nothing more than lukewarm, half-hearted support. "Overconfidence," the spokesman of the Combine said to the Press next day when interviewed; they had rated Gordon altogether too lightly, and had paid the penalty. That was all. And Gordon, carrying the city by rising twenty-five thousand votes, left the little room for his home, governor-elect of the state by a plurality of nearly ten thousand.

Doyle, with a hearty hand-shake, left him at his door. "'What we want,'" he quoted, without the shadow of a smile, "'is an honest man in the governor's chair.'"

Gordon, gazing with equal solemnity at his friend, for answer bared his head. "It has been," he said simply, "the people's fight," and then, for the greatest and most successful of us, after all, are only human, the governor-to-be and his right-hand man burst forth simultaneously into sudden, unlooked-for and most unseemly laughter.

And they laughed until they could laugh no more.

PART III

THE RECKONING

CHAPTER I

THE HAZARD OF THE DIE

Mrs. Holton doubtfully shook her head. "But he won't come," she said; "you can't fool him that way, Tom. He's too clever a man."

Lynch's eyes narrowed a trifle. "Oh, don't think I'm forgetting that,"

he answered; "on the contrary, that's the very thing I'm taking most pains to remember. It's the very fact that he is a clever man that's going to bring him here, where a stupid man, for love or money, wouldn't dare come on his life."

Mrs. Holton looked puzzled. "But I don't see--" she began.

Lynch leaned forward in his chair. "Look," he said abruptly. "Things can't go on the way they're going now. Either we've got to do something pretty quick, or else he will. That's the point. It's simple enough, and yet, when you begin to follow things out, right away you run into all sorts of complications. First of all, of course, he'd like nothing better than to have us out of the way. There's no doubt about that, is there?"

Mrs. Holton shivered. "No," she answered, in a low tone, "there isn't.

And yet, knowing him the way we do, isn't it strange he hasn't tried before now?"

Lynch glanced at her keenly. "I've thought of that," he admitted.

"There hasn't been anything of the sort with you, has there? Nothing melodramatic, like an automobile coming on you without warning, or a brick falling off a house, or a thug holding you up in a dark alleyway?"

The woman shook her head. "No," she said again, "and yet I've suffered as much the last few weeks, just from the dread of what he might do, almost as if he'd really tried. My nerve is pretty near gone, Tom."

Lynch nodded. "I know," he said briefly. "It isn't pleasant to feel there's some one gunning for you. At first I thought myself he'd try something of the kind, and of course he may yet, but I hardly think so. That's one of the complications I spoke about, for him. It's a good deal like one of these endless chains. It would probably be easy enough for him to get us put out of the way, but, even at that, he'd be no better off than before. There'd always be some one else to look out for, and they might not be as reasonable as we've been, either.

No, I guess, on the whole, on that lay we're safe enough. If he ever makes a try, it's going to be a different one from that."

Mrs. Holton turned a shade paler. "You mean--" she faltered.

Lynch gave an impatient little laugh. "Exactly," he answered. "If he wants the job done, he'll do it himself. Try to do it himself, I should say. That's a pleasanter way of putting it."

A sudden gleam of comprehension darted across the woman's face, followed on the instant by an expression of abject fear. "G.o.d! Tom!"

she cried sharply. "That's why you think he'll come!"

Lynch nodded. "That's it," he agreed. "He knows what he wants; we know what we want; it comes down to a question of who strikes first. With this difference--" he paused purposely for a moment, then added, with grim significance, "if we pull it off, it's successful blackmail; if he pulls it off, it's successful--murder."

Mrs. Holton's face showed gray in the lamplight. "G.o.d!" she muttered again.

There was a long pause. Then Lynch spoke again, half to his companion, half to himself. "No," he said meditatively, "there's no getting around it. In one way he's certainly got the best end of it. The thing he wants most is to see us out of the way; the thing we want least is to see anything happen to harm him. As I say, if we strike first, it merely costs him money; but, if he strikes first, that's all there is to it; we're done."

The woman, with an evident effort to pull herself together, drew a long breath. "And so," she said, with sarcasm, "knowing all this, you're going to try to get him down here, and give him the very chance he wants."

Lynch smiled patiently. "Well," he admitted coolly, "that's one way of putting it. But, on the other hand, you'll never catch a big fish with a bare hook, and I'm putting on the bait that I think's most likely to work. There are only three moves, really. First, the message that I'm going to send him; second, the way he's going to figure out what it means, and last, what's going to happen if we do get him down here."

Mrs. Holton nodded. "Well?" she said inquiringly.

"Well," repeated Lynch, "as far as the message goes, I simply send him word that I'm sick; confined to my bed, and very weak; that I've got no one here to look after me but you, and that I've got some political news of the very greatest importance that I've got to let him know about at once. Further, that if he can possibly arrange things to come down here and see me, he'll be well repaid. 'Well repaid,' is good, I think. And that's all there is to that."

The woman shook her head. "It's no use, Tom," she said, with conviction. "Either he won't come, or he'll bring some one with him, or he'll leave word where he's going in some such way that, if anything should happen to him, we'd be sure to be found out. No, it's no use."

Lynch smiled. "Those are the obvious things he would do, I'll admit,"

he answered. "But then he doesn't do the things that are obvious, as a general rule. I've studied the man pretty close since I've been in touch with him--a good deal closer than he thinks--and I've about made up my mind that I've got to the secret of how he's got along so fast.

Most of us can't get rid of the habit of looking at everything from our own point of view; you know how you hear a hundred times a day, 'If I were in his place, I'd do so and so,' and all that sort of fool talk. Some of us, who think we're clever, get far enough to be willing to imagine how, under given conditions, the average man would think or act, not just how the particular kink in our own special little brain would work; but the governor's got further than that. He gets away from himself altogether--he even gets away from the average man altogether--and instead, if a man's worth being studied at all, he puts himself, as far as he's able, inside that man's skin; he eats, thinks, sleeps as that man, and when he's ready to make a move, he figures his own play by his own standards of thought and action, then plays the other man's game as the other man would play it, and so he's really on both sides of the table at the same time. G.o.d knows I hate Gordon, but G.o.d knows the man's smart as chain lightning, and anybody who undervalues him is a fool."

The woman frowned. "I don't understand what you're talking about," she said fretfully.

Lynch looked at her with ironical contempt. "My fault, I'm sure," he said gravely. "This was all I was trying to say; that I'm figuring now just how he'll look at this message he gets; not what you or I would think about it, or what anybody else in the world would think about it except the Honorable Richard Gordon himself. Is that any plainer?"

Mrs. Holton nodded. "What you think," she retorted, with unexpected spirit, "is plain enough, but what he's going to think isn't plain, and never will be."

"There," replied Lynch, "is exactly where we differ. I'll tell you just what he's going to think. In the first place, for any one who's been spending as much thought on us lately as I flatter myself he has, the first thing that will strike him is the fact that by coming down to this forsaken spot he could find us together, and in all probability would find no one else excepting ourselves. That's clear enough; and from that it's only a step to thinking how easy it would be to put us both away at the same time, and n.o.body the wiser. He'll have thought that far in about a tenth part of the time it's taken me to say it. Then he'll pull up short with the idea that the whole thing's a trap, and decide not to come; then he'll go into it deeper, and suddenly it's going to strike him what a big advantage he's really got over us; he knows we can't see him hurt; he's got the chance that the message is genuine, which is perfectly possible, and if it isn't, if things don't break right for him, he'll figure that he's sure to get away with a whole skin; and, if they do break right, he's got the chance of his life to get us off his mind for good and all. See?"

Grudgingly enough the woman nodded. "Yes," she said slowly. "But how about his bringing people with him; and how about his leaving word with the police where he's gone?"