In the Arena | Page 7

easy," I told him.
"Yep. Isn't it all in the game? What's the use of getting excited because you've blocked us on one precinct? We'll leave that closet out of our calculations, that's all."
"Almighty Powers, I don't mean _that!_ Didn't Genz tell you--"
"About Mr. Knowles and the _Herald_? Oh, yes," he answered, knocking the ashes off his cigar quietly. "And about the thousand votes he'll gain? Oh, yes. And about incidentally showing you and Crowder up as bribing Genz and promising to protect him--making your methods public? Oh, yes. And about the Grand Jury? Yes, Genz told me. And about me and the penitentiary. Yes, he told me. Mr. Knowles is a rather excitable young man. Don't you think so?"
"Well?"
"Well, what's the trouble?"
"Trouble!" I said. "I'd like to know what you're going to do?"
"What's Knowles going to do?"
"He's sworn to expose the whole deal, as you've just told me you knew; one of the preliminaries to having us all up before the next Grand Jury and sending you and Genz over the road, that's all!"
Gorgett laughed that old, fat laugh of his, tilting farther back, with his hands in his pockets and his eyes twinkling under his last summer's straw hat-brim.
"He can't hardly afford it, can he," he drawled, "he being the representative of the law and order and purity people? They're mighty sensitive, those folks. A little thing turns 'em."
"I don't understand," said I.
"Well, I hardly reckoned you would," he returned. "But I expect if Mr. Knowles wants it warm all round, _I'm_ willing. We may be able to do some of the heating up, ourselves."
This surprised me, coming from him, and I felt pretty sore. "You mean, then," I said, "that you think you've got a line on something our boys have been planning--like the way we got onto the closet trick--and you're going to show us up because we can't control Knowles; that you hold that over me as a threat unless I shut him up? Then I tell you plainly I know I can't shut him up, and you can go ahead and do us the worst you can."
"Whatever little tricks I may or may not have discovered," he answered, "that isn't what I mean, though I don't know as I'd be above making such a threat if I thought it was my only way to keep out of the penitentiary. I know as well as you do that such a threat would only give Knowles pleasure. He'd take the credit for forcing me to expose you, and he's convinced that everything of that kind he does makes him solider with the people and brings him a step nearer this chair I'm sitting in, which he regards as a step itself to the governorship and Heaven knows what not. He thinks he's detached himself from you and your organization till he stands alone. That boy's head was turned even before you fellows nominated him. He's a wonder. I've been noticing him long before he turned up as a candidate, and I believe the great surprise of his life was that John the Baptist didn't precede and herald him. Oh, no, going for you wouldn't stop him--not by a thousand miles. It would only do him good."
"Well, what are you going to do? Are you going to see him?"
"No, sir!" Lafe spoke sharply.
"Well, well! What?"
"I'm not bothering to run around asking audiences of Farwell Knowleses; you ought to know that!"
"Given it up?"
"Not exactly. I've sent a fellow around to talk to him."
"What use will that be?"
Gorgett brought his feet down off the desk with a bang.
"Then he can come to see _me_, if he wants to. D'you think I've been fool enough not to know what sort of man I was going up against? D'you think that, knowing him as I do, I've not been ready for something of this kind? And that's all you'll get out of _me_, this afternoon!"
And it was all I did.
* * * * *
It may have been about one o'clock, that night, or perhaps a little earlier, as I lay tossing about, unable to sleep because I was too much disturbed in my mind--too angry with myself--when there came a loud, startling ring at the front-door bell. I got up at once and threw open a window over the door, calling out to know what was wanted.
"It's I," said a voice I didn't know--a queer, hoarse voice. "Come down."
"Who's 'I'?" I asked.
"Farwell Knowles," said the voice. "Let me in!"
I started, and looked down.
He was standing on the steps where the light of a street-lamp fell on him, and I saw even by the poor glimmer that something was wrong; he was white as a dead man. There was something wild in his attitude; he had no hat, and looked all mixed-up and