All the king's men

Chapter Nine

After a great blow, or crisis, after the first shock and then after the nerves have stopped screaming and twitching, you settle down to the new condition of things and feel that all possibility of change has been used up. You adjust yourself, and are sure that the new equilibrium is for eternity. After the death of Judge Irwin, after I got back to the city, I felt that way. I felt that a story was over, that what had been begun a long time back had been played out, that the lemon had been squeezed dry. But if anything is certain it is that no story is ever over, for the story which we think is over is only a chapter in a story which will not be over, and it isn't the game that is over, it is just an innings, and that game has a lot more than nine innings. When the game stops it will be called on account of darkness. But it is a long day.

The little game the Boss was playing was not over. But I had nearly forgotten all about it. I had forgotten that the story of Judge Irwin, which seemed so complete in itself, was only a chapter in the longer story of the Boss, which was not over and which was itself merely a chapter in another bigger story.

The Boss looked across the desk at me as I walked in, and said, "God damn it, so the bastard crawled out on me."

I didn't say anything

"I didn't tell you to scare him to death, I just told you to scare him."

"He wasn't scared," I said "What the hell did he do it for then?"

"I told you a long time back when the mess started he wouldn't scare."

"Well, why did he do it?"

"I don't want to discuss it."

"Well, why did he do it?"

"God damn it," I said, "didn't I tell you I didn't want to discuss it?"

He looked at me with some surprise, got up from his chair and came around the desk. "I'm sorry," he said, and put his heavy hand on my shoulder.

I moved out under the hand.

"I'm sorry," he repeated. "He had been quite a pal of yours at one time, hadn't he?"

"Yeah," I said He sat back on the desk and raised one big knee to clasp his hands around it.

"There is still MacMurfee," he said reflectively.

"Yes, there is MacMurfee, but if you want any blackmailing done, get somebody else to do it."

"Even on MacMurfee?" he asked, with a hint of jocularity, to which I didn't respond.

"Even on MacMurfee." I said.

"Hey," he demanded, "you aren't quitting me?"

"No, I'm just quitting certain things."

"Well, it was true, wasn't it?"

"What?"

"What the Judge did, whatever the hell it was."

I couldn't deny that. I had to say yes. So I nodded and said, "Yes, he did it."

"Well? he demanded.

"I aid what I said."

He was studying me drowsily from under the shagged-down forelock. "Boy," he said then, soberly, "we been together a long time. I hope we'll be in it together all the way. We been in it up to the ears, both of us, you and me, boy."

I didn't answer.

He continued to study me. Then he said, "Don't you worry. It'll all come out all right."

"Yeah," I said sourly, "you'll be Senator."

"I didn't mean that. I could be Senator right now if that was all."

"What did you mean?"

He didn't answer for a moment, not even looking at me but down at the hands clasped around the crooked knee. "Hell," he said suddenly, "forget it." Suddenly, he released the knee, the leg dropped, the foot struck the floor heavily, and he lunged off the desk. "But nobody had better forget–MacMurfee and nobody else–that I'll do what I've got to do. By God, I'll do it if I've got to break their bones with my bare hands." And he held the hands before him with spread fingers, crooked and tense as though to seize.

He sank back against the support of the desk then, and said, half as though to himself, "That Frey, now. That Frey."

Then he fell into a brooding silence, which, had Frey been able to see it, would have made him very happy to be way off there on the Arkansas farm with no forwarding address left behind.

So the story of the Boss and MacMurfee, of which the story of Judge Irwin had been a part, went on, but I had no hand in it. I went back to my own innocent little chores and sat in my office as the fall drew imperceptibly on and the earth leaned on its axis and shouldered the spot I occupied a little out of the direct, billowing, crystalline, consuming blaze of the enormous sun. The leaves rattled dryly on the live oaks when a breeze sprang up in the evenings, the matted jungles of sugar cane in the country beyond the concrete walks and trolley lines were felled now by the heavy knife and in the evenings the great high-wheeled carts groaned along the rutted tracks, piled high with the fetid-sweet burden, and far off across the flat black fields laid bare by the knife, under the saffron sky, some nigger sang sadly about the transaction between him and Jesus. Out at the University, on the practice field, the toe of some long-legged, slug-footed, box-shouldered lad kept smacking the leather, over and over, and farther away the scrimmage surged and heaved to the sound of shouts and peremptory whistles. On Saturday nights under the glare of the battery of lights, the stadium echoed to the roar of "Tom!–Tom!–Tom!–yea, Tom!" For Tom Stark carried the ball, Tom Stark wheeled the end, Tom Stark knifed the line, and it was Tom, Tom, Tom.

The sport writers said he was better than ever. Meanwhile he was making his old man sweat. The Boss was dour as a teetotaling Scot, and the office force walked on tiptoe and girls suddenly burst out crying over their typewriters after they had been in to take dictation and state officials coming out of the inner room laid a handkerchief to the pallid brow with one hand and with the other groped across the long room under the painted eyes of all the other groped across the long room under the painted eyes of all the gilt-framed dead governors. Only Sadie suffered no change. She bit her syllables off the way a seamstress snaps off the thread, and looked at the Boss with her dark, unquenched glance, like the spirit of the future meditating on your hopeful plans. The only times the Boss got the black dog off his shoulder those days were at the games. I went with him a couple of times, and when Tom uncorked his stuff the Boss was a changed man. His eyes would bug and gleam, and he would slap me on the back and grab me like a bear. There might be a flicker of that left the next morning when he opened the Sunday sporting page, but it certainly didn't last out the week. And Tom was not doing a thing to make up to the old man for the trouble he had caused. They had high words once or twice because Tom would slack off on his training and had had a row with Billie Martin, the coach. "What the hell's it to you?" Tom demanded, standing there in the middle of the hotel room, his feet apart as though he were on a swaying deck and his head wreathed in the cigar smoke of the place. "What the hell's it to you, or Martin either, so long as I can put 'em across, and what the hell else do you want? I can put 'em across and you can big-shot around about it. That's what you want, isn't it?"

And with those remarks, Ton Stark went out and slammed the door, probably leaving the Boss paralyzed with the rush of blood to his head.

"That's what he said to me," the Boss told me, "by God, that's what he said, and I ought to slapped him down." But he was shaken. You could see that, all right.

Meanwhile the Boss had handled the Sibyl Frey business. I had, as I said, no part in it. What happened was, however, simple and predictable. There had been two ways to get at MacMurfee: Judge Irwin and Gummy Larson. The Boss had tried to scare the Judge, and that have failed. So now he had to buy Gummy. He could buy Gummy because Gummy was a businessman. Strictly business. He would sell anything for the proper figure, immortal soul or mother's sainted bones, and his old friend MacMurfee was neither. If Gummy told MacMurfee to lay off, that he wasn't going to be Senator, MacMurfee would lay off, because without Gummy, MacMurfee was nothing.

The Boss had no choice. He had to buy. He might have dealt directly with MacMurfee, and have let MacMurfee to go the Senate, with the intention of following up himself when the next senatorial election rolled around. But there two arguments against that. First, the timing would have been bad. Now was the time for the Boss to step out. Later on he would be just another senator getting on toward fifty. Now he would be a boy wonder breathing brimstone. He would have a future. Second, if he let MacMurfee climb back on the gravy train, a lot of people on whose brows the cold sweat would break now if even in the privacy of the boudoir the mere thought of crossing the Boss should dawn on them would figure that you could buck the Boss and get away with it. They would begin to make friends and swap cigars with friends of MacMurfee. They would even begin to get ideas of their own. But there was a third argument, too, against doing business with MacMurfee. It was, rather, not an argument; it was simply a fact. The fact was that the Boss was the way he was. If MacMurfee had forced him into a compromise, at least MacMurfee shouldn't be the one to profit by it. So he did business with Gummy Larson.

The figure was not cheap. It was not peanuts. It was the medical-center contract, the general contract. It would be arranged that Larson would get the contract.

But I had nothing to do with the arranging. Duffy did that, for he had been pulling all along for such an arrangement, and I suppose that he must have got some sort of private kickback or sweetening from Larson. Well, I don't begrudge him that. He had worked for it. He had cringed and sweated and felt the baleful speculative stare of the Boss on him in the long silence after he had tried to sell the idea of Gummy Larson. It wasn't his fault that an accident now made the deal possible and not his own conscientious efforts. So I don't begrudge him his sweetening.

All of this went on behind my back, or perhaps even under my eyes, for in those days as fall came on I felt as though I were gradually withdrawing from the world around me. It could go its way and I would go mine. Or I would have gone my way if I had known what it was. I toyed with the thought of going away, of saying to the Boss, "Boss, I'm getting the hell away from here and never coming back." I could afford to do it, I thought. I didn't have to lift a finger for my morning sinker and Java. Maybe I wouldn't be rich-rich, but I figured I was going to be rich in a nice, genteel, Southern way. Nobody down here ever wants to be rich-rich, for that, of course, would be crass and vulgar. So I was going to be just genteel rich. As soon as they wound up the Judge's estate. (If they ever did, for his affairs were complicated and it was going to take some time.)

I was going to be genteel rich, for I had inherited the fruits of the Judge's crime, just as some day I would inherit from my mother the fruit of the Scholarly Attorney's weakness, the money he had left with her when he learned the truth and just walked away. On the proceeds of the Judge's old crime I would be able to go away and lead a nice, clean, blameless life in some place where you sit under a striped awning beside a marble-topped table and drink vermouth, cassis and soda and look out over the wimpling, dimpling, famous sunlit blue of the sea. But I didn't go. True, since I had lost my fathers, I felt as though I could float effortless away like a balloon when the last cord is cut. But I would have to go on the money from Judge Irwin. And that particular money, which would have made the trip possible, was at the same time, paradoxically enough a bond that held me there. To change the image, it was a long cable to an anchor, and the anchor flukes clung and bit way down there in the seaweed and ooze of a long time past. Perhaps I was a fool to feel that way about my little inheritance. Perhaps it was no different from any other inheritance anybody had. Perhaps the Emperor Vespasian was right when, jingling in his jeans the money which had been derived from a tax on urinals, he wittily remarked: _"Pecunia non olet."__

I didn't go away, but I was out of the swim of things, and sat in my office or out at the University library and read books and monographs on taxation, for I now had a nice clean assignment to work on: a tax bill. I knew so little of what was going on that it wasn't until the arrangement was an accomplished fact that I knew anything about it.

I went up to the Mansion one night with my brief case full of notes and charts to have a session with the Boss. The Boss was not alone. Back there in the library with him were Tiny Duffy, Sugar-Boy, and, to my surprise, Gummy Larson. Sugar-Boy sat over in a corner, hunched in a chair and holding a glass between both hands, the way a child holds a glass. Out of the glass he would take little finicking sips, after each sip lifting his head up the way a chicken does when it drinks. Sugar-Boy wasn't a drinker. He was afraid, he said, it might make him "n-n-n-n-ner-ner-vous." It would have been awful if Sugar-Boy got so nervous he couldn't bust jelly glasses every shot when you threw them up in the air for him or couldn't wipe a mule's nose with the rear fender of the black Cadillac. Duffy, of course, was a drinker, but he wasn't drinking that night. He obviously was not in any mood for drinking, even if in fleeting glimpses one caught a glimmer of triumph mixed with the acute discomfort he was experiencing as he stood in the open space in front of the big leather couch. The discomfort was due, in part at least, to the fact that the Boss was, very definitely, drinking. For when the Boss really drank, what tender inhibitions ordinarily shackled up his tongue were absolutely removed. And now he was drinking all right. It looked like the first fine flush of a three-day blow and the barometer falling. He was cocked back on the leather couch with a pitcher of water, a bottle, and a bowl of ice on the floor beside his crumpled coat and empty shoes. When the Boss really got the works, he usually took off his shoes. He was sock-feet drunk now. The bottle was a long way down.

Mr. Larson stood back from the foot of the couch, a middle-sized, middle-aged, compact, gray-faced, gray-suited, unimaginative-looking man. He did not drink. He had once been a gambling-house operator and had found that it did not pay to drink. Gummy was strictly business and he didn't do anything unless it paid.

As I entered and took in the layout, the Boss put his already red-rimmed gaze on me, but didn't say a word until I approached the open space in front of the couch. Then he flung out an arm to indicate Tiny, who stood in the middle of that unprotected open space, with a wan smile on his tallow. "Look!" the Boss said to me, pointing. "He was the one going to fix it up with Larson, and what did I tell him? I told him, hell, no. Hell, no, I told him, I'd be damned first. And what happened?"

I took that as rhetorical question and said nothing. I could see that the tax bill was out for the evening, and started sidling back the way I had come.

"And what happened?" the Boss bellowed at me.

"How do I know?" I asked, but with that cast present I had begun to have a fair notion of the nature of the drama.

The Boss swung his head toward Tiny. "Tell him," he commanded, "tell him, and tell him how puking smart you feel!"

Tiny didn't manage it. All he managed was the wan smile like a winter dawn above the expanse of expensive black tailoring and the white-pipe waistcoat and diamond pin.

"Tell him!"

Tiny licked his lips and glanced shyly as a bride at the impassive, gray-faced Gummy, but he didn't manage it.

"Well, I'll tell you," the Boss said, "Gummy Larson is going to build my hospital and Tiny fixed it up like he has been trying to do and everything is happy."

"That's fine," I said.

"Yeah, everybody is happy," the Boss said. "Except me. Except me," he repeated, and struck himself heavily on the chest. "For I'm the one said to Tiny, Hell, no, I won't deal with Larson. For I'm the one wouldn't let Larson come in this room when Tiny got him here. For I'm the one ought to driven him out of this state long ago. And where is he now? Where is he now?"

I looked over at Gummy Larson, whose gray face didn't show a thing. Way back in the old days, when I had first known Gummy and he had been a gambling-house operator, the police had beat him up one time. Probably because he got behind in his protection money. They had worked over his face until it looked like uncooked hamburger. But that had healed up now. He had known it would heal up and had taken the beating without opening his trap because it always paid to keep your trap shut. It had paid him in the end. Eventually he was a rich contractor and not a gambling-house operator. He was a rich contractor because he had finally made the right connections in the City Hall and because he knew how to keep his mouth shut. Now he stood there on the floor and took everything the Boss was throwing at him. Because it paid. Gummy had the instincts of a businessman, all right.

"I'll tell you where he is," the Boss said. "Look, there he is. Right in this room. Standing right there, and look at him. He is a beauty, ain't he? Know what he has just done? He has just sold out his best pal. He has just sold out MacMurfee."

Larson might have been standing in church, waiting for the benediction, for all his face showed.

"Oh, but that isn't anything. Not a thing. Not for Gummy."

Who didn't twitch a muscle.

"Oh, not for Gummy. The only difference between him and Judas Iscariot is that Gummy would have got some boot with that thirty pieces of silver. Oh, Gummy would sell out anything. He sold out his best pal, and I–and I–" he struck himself savagely on the chest with a hollow sound like a thump on a barrel–"and I–I had to buy, the sons-of-bitches made me buy!"

He relapsed into silence, glowered across at Gummy, then reached down for the bottle. He poured a lot into the glass, and sloshed in some water. He wasn't bothering with ice now. He was nearly down to essentials. Before long the water would go.

Gummy, from the vast distance of sobriety and victory and the moral certainty which comes from an accurate knowledge of exactly to the penny what everything in the whole world is worth, surveyed the figure on the couch, and when the pitcher had been set back down, said, "If we've got our business arranged, Governor, I think I'll be on my way."

"Yeah," the Boss said, "yeah," and swung his sock-feet to the floor, "yeah, it's arranged, by God. But–" he stood up, clutching the glass in one hand, and shook himself like a big dog, so that some of the liquor sloshed from the glass–"listen here!" He started across to Larson, sock-feet heavy on the rug, head trust out.

Tiny Duffy wasn't exactly in the way, but he didn't give back fully enough or perhaps with enough alacrity. Anyway, the Boss nearly brushed him in passing, or perhaps did brush him. At that instant, without even looking at his target, the Boss flung the liquid in his glass full into Duffy's face. And in one motion simply let the glass fall to the floor. It bounced on the rug, not breaking.

I could see Duffy's face at the moment of contact, the big pie face of surprise which reminded me of the time years before when the Boss had scared Duffy off the platform at Upton at the barbecue, and Duffy had fallen over the edge. Now, after the surprise, there was the flash of fury, then the merely humble and aggrieved expression and the placating whine, "What made you go and do that now, Boss, what made you go and do that?"

And the Boss, who had passed him, turned at that, looked at Duffy, and said, "I ought to done it long ago. I ought to done it long ago."

Then he moved to Larson, who, unperturbed by the goings-on, had picked up his coat and hat and stood waiting for the dust to settle. The Boss stood directly in front of him, the bodies almost touching. Then he seized Larson by the lapels and thrust his own flushed face down to the gray one. "Arranged," he said, "yeah, it's arranged, but you–you leave one window latch off, you leave one piece of iron out of the concrete, you put in one extra teaspoon of sand, you chip one piece of marble, and by God–by God–I'll rip you open, I'll–" And still clutching the lapels, he jerked his hands apart sideways. A button from Larson's coat, which had been buttoned up, spun across the room and bounced on the hearth with a little click.

"For it's mine," the Boss said, "you hear–that's my hospital–it's mine!"

Then there wasn't any other sound, but the Boss breathing.

Duffy, the damp handkerchief with which he had sponged himself still clutched in his hand, regarded the scene, with awe and horror on his face. Sugar-Boy wasn't paying the slightest attention Meanwhile, Larson stood there, the Boss's hands still gripping the lapels, and didn't blink an eye. I had to hand it to Gummy. He didn't quiver. He had ice water in his veins. Nothing fazed him, not insult or anger or violence or getting his face beat into a hamburger. He was a true businessman. He knew the value of everything.

He stood there under the heavy, flushed face, no doubt feeling the hot, alcoholic breath rasp on his own face, and waited. Then the Boss released his hold. He simply opened his hands in mid-air, fingers spread, and stepped back. He turned his back and walked away from the spot as though it were vacant. His sock-feet made no sound, and his head swayed ever so little as he moved.

He sat on the couch and leaned forward with his elbows on his spread knees, the forearms hanging forward, and stared into the embers on the hearth as though he were absolutely alone.

Larson, without a word, walked to the door, opened it, and went out, leaving it ajar. Tiny Duffy, with the peculiar impression of lightness, the lightness of a drowned bloated body swaying slowly upward on the ninth day, which a fat man can give when he tiptoes, moved toward the door, too. Once there, with his hand on the knob, he looked back. As his eyes rested on the unregarding Boss, the fury flashed again into the face, and just for that instant I thought, _By God, he's human__. Then he caught my gaze on him, and looked back at me with a kind of suffering, mute appeal which asked to be forgiven for everything, asked for my understanding and sympathy, asked for everybody to think well of poor old Tiny Duffy, who had done what he could according to his lights and then they threw stuff in his face. Didn't he have his rights? Didn't poor old Tiny have his feelings?

The he followed Larson off into the night. He managed to close the door without a sound.

I looked at the Boss, who hadn't stirred. "Glad I got here for the last act," I said, "but I got to toddle now." There certainly wouldn't be any talk about the tax bill.

"Wait," he said.

He reached down for the bottle and took a drag out of it. He was down to essentials now.

"I told him," he said, glaring up at me, "I told him, I said, if you leave off a window latch, I said if you leave one iron out of the concrete, I said if you–"

"Yeah," I said, "I heard you."

"–if you put one extra teaspoon of sand, you do a thing, a single thing, and I'll rip you wide open, I'll rip you!" He got up and came toward me. He stood very close to me. "I'll rip him," he said, and breathed heavily.

"So you said," I agreed.

"I told him I would, and I will. Let him do one thing wrong."

"All right."

"I'll rip him anyway. By God–" he flung his arms out wide–"I'll rip him anyway. I'll rip all of 'em who put their dirty hands on it. They do the job and when it's over I'll rip 'em. Every one. I'll rip 'em and ruin 'em. By God, I will! Putting their dirty hands on it. For they made me, they made me do it."

"Tom Stark had something to do with it," I said.

That stopped him, as far gone as he was. He stared at me with a look that made me think he was about to lay hands on me. Then he turned from me, and moved back toward the couch. But he didn't sit down. He leaned over for the bottle, did it some direct damage, stared at me again, and said, indistinctly, "He's just a boy."

I didn't say anything to that. He took another try at the bottle.

"He's just a boy," he repeated, dully.

"All right," I said.

"But the others," he burst out, swinging his arms wide again, "the others–they made me do it–I'll rip 'em–I'll ruin 'em!"

He had quite a lot to say along that line before he took his dive into the sofa. After he got there he made a few more muffled remarks along the same line and about how Tom Stark was just a boy. Then the one-side conversation died away, and there wasn't anything but the heavy draw and puff of his breathing. I stood there and looked down at him and thought about the first time, God knows how many years before, when he got drunk in my hotel room at Upton and passed out. He had come a long way. And it wasn't the chubby boy face of Cousin Willie I looked down into now. Everything was changed now. It sure-God was.

Sugar-Boy, who had sat quiet all that time over in the shadow with his short legs barely reaching the floor, got off his chair and came over to the couch. He looked down at the Boss.

"He is out deader than a mackerel," I said.

He nodded, still looking down at the burly form. The Boss was lying on his back. One leg was off the couch, dragging on the floor. Sugar-Boy leaned to pick it up and adjust it on the couch. Then he saw the discarded coat on the floor. He picked that up and spread it over the Boss's sock-feet. He looked at me, and explained, almost apologetically, "He mi-mi-mi-might catch c-c-c-cold."

I gathered up my brief case and topcoat, and moved toward the door. I looked back at the scene of carnage. Sugar-Boy had gone back to his chair in the shadow. I must have had some trace of question in my look, for he said, "I'll s-s-s-s-set up and s-s-s-see no-no-no-body bothers him."

So I left them together.

As I drove down the night street on my way home, I wondered what Adam Stanton would have to say if he ever learned about how the hospital was going to be built. I knew what the Boss would say, however, if the question about Adam were put up to him. He would say, "Hell, I said I would build it, and I'm building it. That's the main thing, I'm building it. Let him stay in it and keep his own little patties sterile as hell." Which was exactly what he did say when I asked him the question.

As I drove down the night street, I wondered what Anne Stanton would have to say if she had been there in that room and had seen the Boss piled up there, out blind on the couch. I took some sardonic pleasure in that speculation. If she had taken up with him because he was so big and tough and knew his own mind and was willing to pay the price for anything, well, she ought to see him piled up there like a bull that's got tangled up in the lead rope and is down on its knees and can't budge and can't even lift its head any more on account of the ring in the nose. She ought to see that.

Then I thought that maybe that was what she was waiting for. There is nothing women love so much as the drunkard, the hellion, the roarer, the reprobate. They love him because they–women, I mean–are like the bees in Samson's parable in the Bible: they like to build their honeycomb in the carcass of a dead lion.

Out of the strong shall come forth sweetness.

Tom Stark may have been just a boy, as the Boss said, but he had had a good deal to do with the ways things were going. But, then, the Boss had had a good deal to do, I suppose, with making Tom what Tom was. So there was a circle in the proof, and the son was merely an extension of the father, and when they glared at each other it was like a mirror looking into a mirror. As a matter of fact they did look alike, the same cock to the head on the shoulders, the same forward thrusts of the head, the same sudden gestures. Tom was a trained-down, slick-faced, confident, barbered version of what the Boss had been a long time back when I first knew him. The big difference was this: Back in those days the Boss had been blundering and groping his unwitting way toward the discovery of himself, of his great gift, wearing his overalls that bagged down about the seat, or the blue serge suit with the tight, shiny pants, nursing some blind and undefined compulsion within him like fate or a disease. Now Tom wasn't blundering and groping toward anything, and certainly not toward discovery of himself. For he knew that he was the damnedest, hottest thing there was. Tom Stark, All American, and there were no flies on him. And no overalls bagged down about his snake hips and pile-driver knees. No, he would stand in his rubber-soled saddle shoes in the middle of the floor with a boxer stance, the gray-stripped sport coat draped over his shoulders, the top button of his heavy-weave white shirt unbuttoned, the red wool tie tied in a loose hanging knot as big as your fist under his bronze-looking throat, jerked over to one side though, and his confident eyes would rove slowly over the joint and his slick, strong, brown jaw would move idly over the athlete's chewing gum. You know how athletes chew gum. Oh, he was the hero, all right, and he wasn't blundering or groping. He knew what he was.

He knew he was good. So he didn't have to bother to keep all the rules. Not even the training rules. He could deliver anyway, he told his father, so what the hell? But he did it once too often. He and Thad Mellon, who was a substitute tackle, and Gup Lawson, who was a regular guard, did themselves proud one Saturday night after the game out at a roadhouse. They might have managed very well, if they hadn't got into a fight with some yokels who didn't know or care much about football and who resented having their girls fooled with. Gup Lawson took quite a beating from the yokels and went to the hospital and was out of football for several weeks. Tom and Thad didn't get more than a few punches before the crowd broke up the fight. But the breach of rules was dumped rather dramatically into the lap of Coach Billie Martin. It got into one of the papers. He suspended Tom Stark and Thad Mellon. That definitely changed the betting odds for the Georgia game for the following Saturday, for Georgia was good that year, and Tom Stark was the local edge.

The Boss took it like a man. No kicking and screaming even when Georgia wound up the half with the score seven to nothing. As soon as the whistle blew he was on his feet. "Come on," he said to me, and I knew he was on his way to the field house. I trailed him down there, and leaned against the doorjamb and watched it. Back off on the field there was the band music now. The band would be parading around with the sunshine (for this was the first of the afternoon games, now that the season was cooling off) glittering on the brass and on the whirling gold baton of the leader. Then the band, way off there, began to tell Dear Old State how we lover her, how we'd fight, fight, fight for her, how we'd die for her, how she was the mother of heroes. Meanwhile the heroes, pretty grimy and winded, lay around and got worked over.

The Boss didn't say a word at first. He just walked into the place, and looked slowly around the relaxed forms. The atmosphere would have reminded you of a morgue. You could have heard a pin drop. There wasn't a sound except once the scrape of a cleat on the concrete when somebody surreptitiously moved his foot, once or twice the creak of harness when somebody shifted his position . Coach Billie Martin, standing over across the room with his hat jammed down to his eyes, looked glum and chewed an unlit cigar. The Boss worked his eyes over them all, one by one, while the band made its promises and the old grads in the stands stood up in the beautiful autumn light with their hats over their hearts and felt high and pure.

The Boss's eyes came to rest on Jimmy Hardwich, who was sitting on a bench. Jimmy was a second-string end. He had been put in at the second quarter because the regular at left end had been performing like a constipated dowager. It was going to be Jimmy's big chance. The chance came. It was a pass. And he dropped it. So now when the Boss's eyes fixed on Jimmy, Jimmy stared sullenly back. Then, when the Boss's eyes lingered a moment, Jimmy burst our, "God damn it–God damn it–go on and say it!"

But the Boss didn't say it. He didn't say anything. He just moved slowly over to stand in front of Jimmy. Then, very deliberately, he reached out and laid his right hand on Jimmy's shoulder. He didn't pat the shoulder. He jus laid it there, the way some men can do to gentle a nervous horse.

He wasn't looking at Jimmy now, but swept his glance around over all the others. "Boys," he said, "I just came down to tell you I know you did your best."

He stood there, with his hand still lying on Jimmy's shoulder, and let that sink in. Jimmy began to cry.

Then he said, "And I know you will do your best. For I know the stuff you got in you."

He waited again. Then he took his hand off Jimmy's shoulder, and turned slowly and moved toward the door. There he paused, and again swept his glance over the room. "I want to tell you I won't forget you," he said, and walked out of the door.

Jimmy was really crying now.

I followed the Boss back outside, where the band was now playing some brassy march.

When the second half opened up, the boys came out for blood. They made a touchdown early in the third quarter, and kick the point. The Boss felt pretty good, in a grim way, about that. In the fourth quarter Georgia drove down to the danger zone, was held, then kicked a field goal. That was the way it ended, ten to seven.

But we still had a shot at the Conference. If we took everything else in the season. The next Saturday Tom Stark was back out. He was out because the Boss had put the heat on Billie Martin. That was why, all right, for the Boss told me so himself.

"How did Martin take it?" I asked.

"He didn't, the Boss said. "I crammed it down his throat."

I didn't say anything to that, and didn't even know I was looking anything. But the Boss thrust his head at me and said, "Now look here, I wasn't going to let him throw it away. We got a chance for the Conference, and the bastard would throw it away."

I still didn't say anything.

"It's not Tom, it's the championship, by God," he said. "It's not Tom. If it weren't anything but Tom, I wouldn't say a word. And if he breaks training again, I'll pound his head on the floor. I'll beat him with my own hands. I swear it."

"He's a pretty good-sized boy," I remarked.

He swore again he would do it.

So the next Saturday Tom Stark was back out, and he carried the ball, and he was a cross between a ballerina and a locomotive, and the stands cheered, Yea, Tom, Tom, Tom, for he was their darling, and the score was twenty to nothing, and State had the sights back on the championship. There were two more games. There was an easy one with Tech, and then the Thanksgiving pay-off.

Tech was easy. In the third quarter, when State already had a lead, the coach sent Tom in just to give him a canter. Tom put on a little show for the stands. It was casual and beautiful and insolent. There was nothing to it, the way he did his stuff, it looked so easy. But once after he had knifed through for seven yards and had been nailed by the secondary, he didn't get up right away.

"Just got the breath knocked out," the Boss said.

And Tiny Duffy, who was with us in the Governor's box, said, "Sure, but it won't faze Tom."

"Hell, no," the Boss agreed.

But Tom didn't get up at all. They picked him up and carried him to the field house.

"They sure knocked it out of him," the Boss said, as though he were commenting on the weather. Then, "Look, they're putting in Axton. Axton's pretty good. Give him another season."

"He's good, but he ain't Tom Stark. That Tom Stark is my boy," Duffy proclaimed.

"They'll pass now, I bet," the Boss said judicially, but all the time he was sneaking a look at the procession making for the field house.

"Axton for Stark," the loud-speaker up above the stands bellowed, and the cheerleader called for the stuff for Stark. They gave Tom his cheer, and the leader and the assistant leaders cart-wheeled and cavorted and flung up their megaphones.

The ball went back into play. It was a pass, just as the Boss had predicted. Nine yards, and first down. "First Down on Tech's twenty-four-yard line," the loud-speaker announced. Then added, "Tom Stark, who was stunned on the previous play, shows signs of regaining consciousness."

"Stunned, huh?" Tiny Duffy echoed. Then he slapped the Boss on the shoulder (he loved to slap the Boss on the shoulder in public to show what buddies they were), and said, "They can't stun our old Tom, huh?"

The Boss's face darkened for a moment, but he said nothing.

"Not for long," Tiny asseverated. "That boy, he is too tough for 'em."

"He's tough," the Boss agreed. Then he gave his attention with the greatest devotion to the game.

The game was dull, but the duller it got, the more devoutly the Boss followed every play, and the more anxious he was to cheer. State ground out the touchdowns like a butcher's machine making hamburger. There was about as much sporting chance in the process as in betting n whether or not water runs downhill. But the Boss cheered every time we made three yards. He had just cheered a pas which had put State on the six-yard line, when a fellow appeared in front of out box and took of his hat, and said, "Governor Stark–Governor Stark."

"Yeah? the Boss asked.

"The doc–over at the field house–he says can you come over a minute?" the man said.

"Thanks," the Boss said, "you tell him I'll be over in a minute. Soon as I see the boys run this one over." And he put his attention on the game.

"Hell," Tiny began, "I know it ain't nothing. Not old Tom, he–"

"Shut up," the Boss commanded, "can't you see I'm watching the game!"

And when the touchdown had been driven over and the point had been kicked, the Boss turned and said to me, "It's getting on to quitting time here. You let Sugar-Boy drive you to the office and wait for me there. I want to see you and Swinton, if you can get him. I'll take a cab down. Probably beat you there." And he vaulted over the railing to the green, and went toward the field house. But he stopped by the bench for a moment to kid the boys. Then with his hat jammed down over the heavy, outthrust head, he went on toward the field house.

The rest of us in the box didn't wait for the last whistle. We worked out before the rush started, and headed for town. Duffy got off at the Athletic Club, where he kept his wind condition by blowing the froth off beer and bending over pool tables, and I went on to the Capitol.

I could tell even before I put my key to the lock that there wasn't any light in the big reception room. The girls had shut up shop and gone home for Saturday afternoon, off to their movies and bridge games and dates and steaks on sizzling platters at Ye Olde Wagon Wheel roadhouse or dancing at the Dream of Paris where the lights were blue and the saxophone made a sound like the slow, sweet regurgitation of sorghum molasses, off to all the chatter and jabber and giggles and whispers and gasps, off to all the things called having a good time.

For a moment, as I stood there in the big darkened room in the unaccustomed stillness of the place, a kind of sneer flickered along the edge of my mind as I though of all the particular good times they would be having in (Ye Olde Wagon Wheel, Dream of Paris, Capitol City Movie Palace, parked cars, darkened vestibules), the people the would be having the good time with (the college boys with his cocksureness and scarcely concealed air of being on a slumming expedition, the drug clerk with nine hundred dollars saved up in the bank and his hope of buying into the business next year and his notion of getting him a little woman and settling down, the middle-aged sport with hair plastered thinly over the big skull veined like agate and big, damp, brutally manicured hands the color of uncooked pork fat and an odor of bay rum and peppermint chewing gum).

Then as I stood there, the thought changed. But the sneer remained flickering along the edge of the mind, like a little flame nibbling at the edge of a piece of damp paper. Only now it was for myself. What right had I to sneer at them, I demanded. I had had all those good times too. If I wasn't having one tonight it wasn't because I had passed beyond it into a stage of beatitude. Perhaps it was something had passed out of me. Virtue by defect. Abstinence by nausea. When they give you the cure, they put something in your likker to make you puke, and after they have puked you enough you begin to take a distaste to your likker. You are like Pavlov's dog whose saliva starts every time he hears the bell. Only with you the reflex works so that every time you catch a whiff of likker or even think of it, you stomach turns upside down. Somebody must have slipped the stuff into my good times, for now I just didn't want any more good time. Not now, anyway. But I could pinch out the sneer that flickered along the edge of my mind. I didn't have to be proud because a good time wouldn't stay on my stomach.

So I would go into my office and, after sitting there a couple of minutes in the dusk, would flick on the light and get out the tax figures and work on them. I though of the figures with a sense of cleansing and relief.

But as I thought of the figures and resumed my passage across the big room to the door of my office, I heard, or thought I heard, a noise from one of the offices on the other side. I looked over there. There wasn't any light showing under either of the doors. Then I heard the noise again. It was a perfectly real noise. Nobody–certainly nobody without a light–was supposed to be in there. So I went across the room, my feet noiseless on the thick carpet, and pushed open the door.

It was Sadie Burke. She sat in the chair before her desk (it must have been t creaknof t chair I had heard), her arms were laid on the desk, the forearms bent together, and I knew that she had, just that instant, raised her head from them. Not that Sadie had been crying. But she had been sitting in the dusk, in the abandoned office, on Saturday evening when everybody else was out having a hell of a good time, with her head laid on her arms on the desk.

"Hello, Sadie," I said.

She eyed me for a moment. Her back was toward what little light seeped in from the window, on which the Venetian blind was closed, and so I could not make out the expression of her face, just the gleam of the eyes. Then she demanded, "What do you want?"

"Nothing," I said.

"Well, you needn't wait."

I went across to a chair and sat down and looked at her.

"You heard what I said," she commented.

"I heard it."

"Well, you'll hear it again: you needn't wait."

"I find it quite restful here," I replied, making no motion to rise. "Because, Sadie, we've got so much in common. You and me."

"I hope you don't mean that as a compliment," she said.

"No, just a scientific observation."

"Well, it don't make you any Einstein."

"You mean because it is not true that we have a lot in common or because it is so obviously true that doesn't take Einstein's brain to figure it out?"

"I mean I don't give a damn," she said sourly. And added, "And I don't give a damn about having you in here either."

I stayed in the chair and studied her. "It's Saturday night," I said. "Why aren't you out painting the town?"

"To hell with this town." She fished a cigarette out of the desk and lighted it. The flare of the match jerked the face out of the shadow. She whipped the match flame out with a snapping motion of her arm, then spewed the first gulp of smoke out over the full, curled-down lower lip. That done, she looked at me, and said, "And to hell with you." She swept her damning gaze around the office as though it were full of forms and faces, and spewed the gray smoke out of her lungs and said, "And to hell with all of them. To hell with this place."

Her eyes came back to rest on me, and she said, "I'm going to get out of here."

"Here?" I questioned "This whole place," she affirmed, and swung her arm wide with the cigarette tip glowing with the swiftness of the motion, "this place, this town."

"Stick around and you'll get rich," I said.

"I could have been rich a long time back," she said, "paddling in this muck. If I had wanted to."

She could have, all right. But she hadn't. At least as far as I knew.

"Yeah–" she jabbed out the cigarette in the tray on the desk–"I'm getting out of here." She lifted her eyes to mine, as though daring me to say something.

I didn't say anything, but I shook my head.

"You think I won't?" she demanded.

"I think you won't."

"I'll show you, damn you."

"No," I said, and shook my head again, "you won't. You've got a talent for this, just like a fish for swimming. And you can't expect a fish not to swim."

She started to say something, but didn't. We sat there in the dimness for a couple of minutes. "Stop staring at me," he ordered. Then, "Didn't I tell you to get out of here? Why don't you get out and go home?"

"I'm waiting for the Boss," I said matter-of-factly, "he's–" Then I remembered. "Didn't you hear what happened?"

"What?"

"Tom Stark."

"Somebody ought to kick his teeth down his throat."

"Somebody did," I said.

"They ought to done it long back."

"Well, they did a pretty good job this afternoon. The last I heard he was unconscious. They called the Boss to the field house."

"How bad was it?" she asked. "Was it bad?" She leaned forward at me.

"He was unconscious. That's all I know. I reckon they took him to the hospital."

"Didn't they say how bad? Didn't they tell the Boss?" she demanded, leaning forward.

"What the hell's it to you? You said somebody ought to kick his teeth down his throat, and now they did it you act like you loved him."

"Hah," she said, "that's a laugh."

I looked at my watch. "The Boss is late. I reckon he must be at the hospital with the triple threat."

She was silent for a moment, looking down at the desk top again and gnawing the lip. Then, all at once, she got up, went across to the rack, put her coat on and jerked on her hat, and went out to the door. I swung my head around to watch her. At the door she hesitated, throwing the latch, and said, "I'm leaving, and I want to lock up. I don't see why you can't sit in your own office, anyway."

I got up and went out into the reception room. She slammed her door, and without a word to me moved, pretty fast, across the place and out into the corridor. I stood there and listened to the rapid, diminishing staccato of her heels on the marble of the corridor..

When it had died away, I went into my own office and sat down by the window and looked down at the river mist which was fingering in over the roofs.

I wasn't, however, looking out over the mist-veiled, romantic, crepuscular city, but was bent over my nice, tidy, comforting tax figures, under a green-shaded light, when the telephone rang. It was Sadie. She said that she was at the University hospital, and that Tom Stark was still unconscious. The Boss was there but she hadn't seen him. But she understood he had asked for me.

So Sadie had gone over there. To lurk in the antiseptic shadows.

I left the tidy, comforting tax figures and went out. I had a sandwich at a hamburger stand and a cup of coffee and drove to the hospital. I found the Boss alone in a waiting room. He was looking a little grim. I asked how tom was, and learned that he was then in the X-ray room and that they didn't know much. Dr. Stanton was on the case, and some other specialist was flying in by special plane from Baltimore for a consultation.

Then he said, "I want you to go out and get Lucy. She ought to be here. Out there in the country I guess she hasn't seen the paper yet."

I said I would go, and started out the door.

"Jack," he called, and I turned. "Sort of break it to her easy," he said. "you know–sort of build her up for it."

I said I would, and left. It sounded pretty bad if Lucy had to have all that build-up. And as I drove along the highway, against the lights of the Saturday-night incoming traffic, I thought how much fun it was going to be to build Lucy up for the news. And I thought the same thing as I walked up the anachronistic patch of concrete walk toward the dimly lighted white house. Then as I stood in the parlor surrounded by the walnut and red plush and the cards for the stereoscope and the malarial crayon portrait on the easel, and built Lucy up for the news, it was definitely not fun.

But she took it. It hit her where she lived, but she took it. "Oh, God," she said, not loud, "oh, God," but the remark was not addressed to me. I presumed that she was praying, for she had gone to the little Baptist college way back in the red clay where they had been long on praying, and maybe the habit had stuck.

And it wasn't fun, either, when I led her into the waiting room where the Boss was. He turned his face heavily to her from the midst of the floral design on the chintz-covered, overstuffed, high-backed chair in which he sat, and looked at her as a stranger. She stood in the middle of the floor, not going toward him, and asked, "How is he?"

At her question the light flared up in the Boss's eyes, and he rose violently from the chair. "Look here," he said, "he's all right–he's going to be all right. You understand that!"

"How is he? She repeated.

"I told you–I told you he's going to be all right," he said with a grating voice.

"You say it," she said, "but what do the doctors say?"

The blood apoplectically flushed his face and I heard the snatch of his breathing before he said, "You wanted it this way. You said you did. You said you had rather see him dead at your feet. You wanted it this way. But–" and he stepped toward her–"he'll fool you. He's all right. Do you hear? He will be all right."

"God grant it," she said quietly.

"Grant it, grant it!" he burst out. "He's all right, right now. That boy is tough, he can take it."

She made no answer to that, but stood and looked at him while the blood subsided in his face and his frame seemed to sag with the weight of the flesh on it. The she asked, "Can I see him?"

Before answering, the Boss stepped back to the chair and sank into it. Then he looked at me. "Take her down to Room 305," he directed. He spoke dully, and apparently without interest now, as though in a railway waiting room answering foolish questions about the schedule for some traveler.

So I took her down to Room 305, where the body lay like a log under the white sheet and the breath labored through the gaping mouth. At first, she did not approach the bed. She stood just inside the door, looking across at it. I thought she was going to keel over, and put my arm out to prop her, but she stayed on her legs. Then she moved to the bed and reached down with a timid motion to touch the body there. She laid her hand on the right leg, just above the ankle, and let it test there as though she could draw, or communicate, some force by the contact. Meanwhile, the nurse, who stood on the other side of the bed, leaned down to wipe from the brow of the patient the drops of moisture which gathered there. Lucy Stark took a step or two up the bed, and, looking at the nurse, reached out her hand. The nurse put the cloth into it, and Lucy finished the job of wiping the brow and temples. Then she handed the cloth back to the nurse. "Thank you," she whispered. The nurse gave a sort smile of professional understanding out of her plain, good, anonymous, middle-aged face, like a light flicked on momentarily in a comfortable, shabby living room.

But Lucy wasn't looking at that face, but at the sag-jawed face below her where the breath labored in and out. There wasn't any light on there. So after a while–the nurse said D. Stanton wouldn't be back for some little time and she would notify us when he did come–we went back to the room where the Boss sat with his heavy head in the middle of th floral design.

Lucy sat in another chintz-covered chair (the waiting room was very cozy and cheerful with potted plants on the window ledge and chintz on the chairs and water colors on the walls in natural-wood frames and a fireplace with artificial logs in it) and looked at her lap or, now and then, across at the Boss, and I sat on the couch over by the wall and thumbed through the picture magazines, from which I gathered that the world outside our cozy little nook was still the world.

About eleven-thirty Adam came in to say that the doctor from Baltimore who was coming for the consultation had been forced down by fog and would fly in as soon as the ceiling lifted.

"Fog!" the Boss exclaimed, and came up out of the chair. "Fog! Telephone him–you telephone him–tell him to come on, fog or no fog."

"A plane can't fly in fog," Adam said.

"Telephone him–that boy in there–that boy in there–my boy–" The voice didn't trail off. It simply stopped with a sound like something of great weight grinding to a stop, and the Boss stared at Adam Stanton with resentment and a profound accusation.

"Dr. Burnham will come when it is possible," Adam said coldly. Then after a moment in which he met the resentment and accusation, he said, "Governor, I think that it would be a good thing for you to lie down. To get some rest."

"No," the Boss said hoarsely, "no."

"You can do no good by not lying down. You will only waste your strength. You can do no good."

"Good," the Boss said, "good," and clenched his hands as though he had tried to grasp some substance which had faded at his touch and dissolved to air.

"I would advise it," Adam said quietly, almost softly. Then he turned and inquiring glance upon Lucy.

She shook her head. "No, doctor," she almost whispered. "I'll wait. Too."

Adam inclined his head in acceptance, and went out. I got up and followed him.

I caught up with Adam down the hall. "What is it like?" I asked.

"Bad." he said.

"How bad?"

"He is unconscious and paralyzed," Adam said. "His extremities are quite limp. The reflexes are quite gone. If you pick up his hand it is like jelly. The X-ray–we took a skull plate–shows a fracture and dislocation of the fifth and sixth cervical vertebrae."

"Where the hell is t?"

Adam reached out and laid a couple of fingers on the back of my neck. "There," he said.

"You mean he's got a broken neck?"

"Yes."

"I thought that killed them."

"It usually does," he said. "Always if the fracture is a little higher."

"Has he got a chance?"

"Yes."

"To just live or to be all right?"

"To be all right. Or almost all right. Just a chance."

"What are you going to do?"

He looked at me directly, and I saw that his own face didn't look much different from the way it would have looked if somebody had kicked him in the head, too. It was white and drawn.

"It is a difficult decision," he said. "I must think. I don't want to talk about it now."

So he turned from me, and squared his shoulders, and went off down the hall, over the polished composition floor, which glittered in the soft light like brown ice.

I went back to the room where Lucy Stark sat across from the Boss, in the midst of the chintz and potted plants and water colors. Now and then she would lift her gaze from her lap, where the hands were clasped together with the veins showing blue, and would look across the intervening distance into her husband's face. He did not meet her gaze, but stared into the heatless illumination of the artificial logs on the hearth.

After one o'clock a nurse came down to the room with the message that the fog had cleared and that Dr. Burnham's plane was on the way again. They would let us know as soon as it came in. Then she went away.

The Boss sat silent for a minute or two, then said to me, "Go down and call up the airport. Ask what the weather is like here. Tell 'em to tell Sugar-Boy I said for him to get here quick. Tell Murphy I said I meant quick. By God! By God–" And the oath was left suspended, directed at nothing.

I went down the corridor and down to the telephone booths on the first floor, to give that crazy message to Sugar-Boy and Murphy. Sugar-Boy would drive like hell anyway, and Murphy–he was the lieutenant in charge of the motorcycle escort–knew he wasn't out there for fun. But I called the port, was told that the weather was lifting–a wind had sprung up–and left the message for Murphy.

When I stepped out of the booth, there was Sadie. She must have been hanging around in the lobby, probably sitting on one of the benches back in the shadow, for I hadn't seen har when I entered.

"Why didn't you say boo and give me real heart failure and finish the job?" I asked.

"How is it?" she demanded, seizing my coat sleeve.

"Bad. He broke his neck."

Has he got any chance?"

"Dr. Stanton said he did, but he wasn't wreathed in smiles."

"What are they going to do? Operate?"

"There is another big-shot doctor coming in from Johns Hopkins for a consultation. After he gets here they will flip a nickel and find out what to do."

"Did he sound like there was a real chance?" Her hand was still clutching my sleeve.

"How do I know?" I was suddenly irritated. I jerked my sleeve out of her grasp.

"If you find out anything–you know, when the doctor comes–will you let me know?" she asked humbly, letting her hand fall.

"Why the hell don't you go home and quit spooking around here in the dark? Why don't you go home?"

She shook her head, still humbly.

"You wanted to kick his teeth down his throat, and now you hang around and loose sleep. Why don't you go home?"

She shook her head slowly. "I'll wait," she said.

"You're a sap," I affirmed.

"Let me know," she said, "when you find out anything."

I didn't even say anything to that, but walk on away, back upstairs, where I rejoined the party. Things hadn't changed in the atmosphere of the room.

After a spell, a nurse came back to say that the plane was expected at the port in about thirty or forty minutes. Then a little later she came back to say that there was a telephone call for me.

"Who is it?" I asked the nurse.

"It's a lady," she said, "but she wouldn't give her name."

I figured that one out, and when I got to the phone at the floor desk I found I was right. It was Anne Stanton. She had stood it as long as she could. She didn't seize me by the sleeve, for she was a few miles away in her apartment, but her voice did pretty near the same thing. I told her what I knew, and answered her repetitious questions. She thanked me and apologized or bothering me. She had had to know, she said. She had been calling at my hotel all evening, thinking I would come in, then she had called me at the hospital. There wasn't anybody else she could ask. When she had just called the hospital and had asked for news, they had been noncommittal. "So you see," she said "so you see I had to call you."

I said I saw, all right, and hung up the phone and went back down the hall. In the room nothing had changed. And nothing did change till toward four o'clock, when the Boss, who had been sunk in the chintz chair with his gaze on the artificial logs, suddenly lifted up his head, the way a drowsing dog does on the hearth to a sound you can't even hear. But the Boss hadn't been drowsing. He had been listening for that sound. One instant he held his head up intently, then swung up to his feet. "There!" he exclaimed raspingly. "There!"

Then I heard it, for the first time, the far-off wail of the siren of the motorcycle escort. The plane had got in.

In a minute a nurse came in and announced that Dr. Burnham was with Dr. Stanton. She would not say how long before they would give an opinion.

The Boss had not sat back down, after the first sound of the siren. He had stood in the middle of the floor, with his head up, hearing the siren wail and fade and wail again and die off, then waiting for the steps in the hall. He did not sit back down now. He began to pace up and down. Over to the window, where he snatched back the chintz curtains to look out on the blackness of the lawn and off across the lawn, where no doubt, a solitary street light glowed in the mist. Then back to the fireplace, where he would turn with a grinding motion that twisted the rug under his heel. His hands were clasped behind him, and his head, with the forelock down, hung forward sullenly and seemed to sway a little from side to side.

I kept on looking at my picture magazines, but the solid tread, nervous and yet deliberate, stirred something back in my mind. I was irritated, as you are when the memory will no rise and be recognize. Then I knew what it was. It was the sound of a tread, back and forth, back and forth, caged in a room in a country hotel beyond the jerry-built wall. That was it.

He was still pacing when a hand outside was laid on the knob of the door. But at that sound, the first sound of the hand on the knob, he swung his head toward the door and froze in his tracks like a pointer. Adam walked into the room into the clutch of that gaze.

The Boss liked his lower lip, but he controlled the question.

Adam shut the door behind him, and took a few steps forward. "Dr. Burnham has examined the patient," he said, "and studied the X-ray plated. His diagnosis and my own check absolutely. You know what that is." He paused as though expecting some reply.

But there was no reply, not even a sign, and the gaze on him did not relinquish its clutch.

"There are two lines of action possible." he resumed. "One is conservative, the other radical. The conservative line would be to put the patient in traction, in a heavy cast, and wait for some resolution of the situation. The radical line would be to resort to surgical procedure immediately. I want to emphasize that this is a difficult decision, a very technical decision. Therefore I want you to understand the situation as fully as possible." He paused again, but there was no sign, and the gaze did not relax.

"As you know," he began again, and now his tone carried a hint of the lecture room, of academic precision, "the plate showed in lateral view a fracture and dislocation of the fifth and six cervical vertebrae. But the X-ray cannot show the condition of the soft tissue. Therefore we cannot know at this moment the condition of the spinal cord itself. We can learn that only by surgical action. If upon operating we discover that the cord is crushed, the patient will remain paralyzed for the rest of his life, for the cord has nor regenerative power. But it is possible that a displaced segment of bone is merely pressing upon the cord. In that case we can, by performing a laminectomy, relieve the pressure. We cannot predict the degree of benefit from such procedure. We might restore some or we might restore almost all function. Of course, we should not expect too much. Some muscle groups might remain paralyzed. You understand?"

This time, Adam scarcely seemed to expect any response, and this pause was only momentary. "I must emphasize one consideration. This operation is very near the brain. It may be fatal. And the chances of infection are greater with the operation. Dr. Burnham and I have discussed the matter at length and are in agreement. I myself take full responsibility for advising the operation. But I want you to know that it is radical. That it is the outside chance. It is the gambler's chance."

He stopped, and in the silence, the Boss's breath rasped two or three times, in and out. Then he said, gratingly, "Do it."

He had taken the outside chance, the gambler's chance. But that was no surprise to me.

Adam was looking inquiringly at Lucy Stark, as though he wished corroboration from her. She turned her eyes from him and looked at her husband, who had walked over to the window to look out over the black lawn. For a moment, she studied the hunched shoulders, then returned to Adam Stanton. She nodded her head slowly, while her hands worked together on her lap. Then she whispered, "Yes–yes."

"We shall operate immediately," Adam said. "I had ordered arrangements made. It does not have to be done immediately, but in my judgment it is better so."

"Do it," the grating voice over the window said. But the Boss did not turn around, not even when the door closed behind Adam Stanton.

I went back to my picture magazines, but I turned the pages over with the greatest care as though I couldn't afford to make a sound in the special kind of devouring stillness there was in the room. The stillness lasted a long time, while I kept on looking at the pictures of girls in bathing suits and race horses and scenes of natural beauty and long files of erect, clean-faced youths in some kind of shirt or other lifting their arms in a salute and detective stories acted out in six photographs with the answer on the next page. But I wasn't paying much attention to the pictures, and they were always alike anyway.

Then Lucy Stark got up from her chair. She walked over to the window, where the Boss stood and stared out. She laid her hand on his right arm. He drew away, without even looking at her. But she took him by the forearm and drew him, and after a momentary resistance he followed her. She led him back to the big chintz-covered chair. "Sit down, Willie," she said, very quietly, "sit down and rest."

He sank down into the chair. She turned away and went back to her own chair.

He was looking at her, not at the artificial logs now. Finally, he said, "He'll be all right."

"God grant it," she replied.

He was silent for two or three minutes, still looking at her. Then he said, violently, "He will, he's got to."

"God grant it," she said, and met his gaze until his eyes fell away from hers.

By that time I had had enough of sitting there. I got up and went out and down the hall to the nurse who was on the floor desk. "Any chance of getting some sandwiches and coffee brought up here for the Governor and his wife?" I asked.

She said she would get some brought up, and I told her just to have them brought to her desk, that I would take them in. Then I wandered down to the lobby again. Sadie was still there, spooking in the shadows. I told her about the operation and left her there. I hung around at the floor desk upstairs until the sandwiches arrived, then took the tray down to the waiting room.

The grub and coffee, however, didn't do much to change the atmosphere there. I put a little table by Lucy with a sandwich on a plate and a cup of coffee. She thanked me, and broke a piece of the sandwich and put it to her mouth two or three times, but I could not see that she was doing it much damage. But she took some coffee. I put some food and coffee handy to the Boss. He looked up out of himself and said, "Thanks, Jack." He did not even make a pretense, however, of eating. He held the cup in his hand for a few minutes, but I didn't notice that he even took a sip. He just held it.

I ate a sandwich and had a cup of coffee. I was pouring myself a second cup, when the Boss reached to set his cup down, sloshingly, on the little table beside him.

"Lucy," he said, "Lucy!"

"Yes," she answered.

"You know–you know what I'm going to do?" He leaned forward, not waiting for an answer. "I'm going to name the new hospital for him. For Tom. I'm going to call it the Tom Stark Hospital and Medical Center. It'll be named for Tom, it'll–"

She was slowly shaking her head, and his words stopped "Thos things don't matter," she said. "Oh, Willie, don't you see? Those things don't matter. Having somebody's name cut on a piece of stone. Getting it in the paper. All those things. Oh, Willie, he was my baby boy, he was our baby boy, and those things don't matter, they don't ever matter, don't you see?"

He sank back into his chair, and the silence picked up where it had left off. The silence was still going full blast when I got back from taking the dishes and uneaten food down to the desk. It gave me an excuse for getting out. It was twenty minutes to six when I got back At six o'clock Adam came in. He was pretty gray and stony in the face. The Boss got to his feet and stood there looking at Adam, but neither he not Lucy uttered a sound.

Then Adam said, "He will live."

"Thank God," Lucy breathed, but the Boss still stared into Adam's face.

Adam stared back. Then he said, "The cord was crushed."

I heard a gasp from Lucy, and looked over to see her with her head bowed on her breast.

The Boss didn't show a sign for a moment. Then he lifted his hands, chest-high, with the fingers spread as though to seize on something. "No!" he declared. "No!"

"It was crushed," Adam said. And added, "I am sorry, Governor."

Then he left the room.

The Boss stared at the closed door, then slowly sank back into the chair. He kept on staring at the door, his eyes bulging and the moisture gathering in drops on his forehead. The he jerked upright and the sound wrenched out of him. It was a formless, agonized sound torn raw right out of the black animal depths inside of the bulk there in the chair. "Oh!" he said. Then, "Oh!"

Lucy Stark was looking across at him. He was still staring at the door.

Then the sound came again: "Oh!"

She rose from her chair and went across to him. She didn't say anything. She simply stood by his chair and laid a hand on his shoulder.

The sound came again, but it was the last time. He sank back, still staring at the door, and breathed heavily. It must have been like that for three or four minutes. Then Lucy said, "Willie."

He looked up at her for the first time.

"Willie," she said, "it's time to go."

He stood up from the chair, and I got their coats off the couch by the wall. I helped Lucy on with hers, and then she picked up the other and helped him. I didn't interfere.

They started for the door. He had drawn himself erect now and looked straight ahead, but her hand was still on his arm, and if you had seen them you would have got the impression that she was expertly and tactfully guiding a blind man. I opened the door for them, and then went on ahead to tell Sugar-Boy to get the car ready.

I was there when the Boss got into the car and she got in after him. That surprised me a little, but it didn't hurt my feelings if Sugar-Boy drove her home. Despite the coffee, I was ready to drop.

I went back inside and up to Adam's office. He was just about ready to pull out. "What is the story?" I asked.

"What I said," he said. "The cord is crushed. That means paralysis. The prognosis is that for a time the limbs will be absolutely limp. Then the muscle tone will come back. But he will never use arms or legs. The bodily function will continue but without control. He'll be like a baby. And the skin will be inclined to break down. He will get infections easily. The respiratory control will be impaired, too. Pneumonia will be likely. That's what usually knock off cases like this sooner or later."

"It sounds to me the sooner the better," I said, and thought of Lucy Stark.

"Maybe so," he said, tiredly. He was sagging now, all right. He slipped on his coat and picked up his bag. "Can I drop you somewhere?" he asked.

"Thanks, I'm in my car," I said. Then my eyes fell on the telephone on his desk. "But I'll make a call, if I may," I said. "I'll pull the door to."

"All right," he said, and went to the door. "Good night," he added, and went out.

I dialed outside, and got Anne's number, and told her the news. She said it was horrible. She kept saying that into the telephone–"It is horrible"–in a low bemused voice, three or four times. Then she thanked me and hung up.

I left the office. I had one more errand to do. I went down to the lobby. Sadie was still there. So I told her. She said it was pretty tough. I agreed.

"It will be tough on the Boss," she said.

"It will be tough as hell on Lucy," I said, "for she is the one who will have to fix the baby. Don't forget that while you're giving out the free samples of sympathy."

She must have been pretty tired or something for that didn't make her mad. So I asked her if I could take her into town. She had her car, too, she said.

"Well, I am going home and sleep forever," I said, and left her in the lobby.

By the time I got out to my car, the sky was curdling blue with dawn.

The accident occurred on Saturday afternoon. The operation was performed just before dawn on Sunday. The big pay-off was on Monday. It was the Monday before Thanksgiving.

That day, there was a gradual piling up of events, then the rush to the conclusion, as when a great weight that has been grinding and slipping suddenly breaks the last mooring and takes the plunge. As I experienced that day, there was at first an impression of the logic of the events, caught flickeringly at moments, but as they massed to the conclusion I was able to grasp, at the time, only the slightest hints as to the pattern that was taking shape. This lack of logic, the sense of people and events driven by impulses which I was no able to define, gave the whole occasion the sense of a dreamlike unreality. It was only after the conclusion, after everything was over, that the sense of reality returned, long after, in fact, when I had been able to gather the pieces of the puzzle up and put them together to see the pattern. This is not remarkable, for, as we know, reality is not a function of the event as event, but of the relationship of that event to past, and future, events. We seem here to have a paradox: that the reality of an event, which is not real in itself, arises from other events which, likewise, in themselves are not real. But this only affirms what we must affirm: that direction is all. And only as we realize this do we live, for our own identity is dependent upon this principle.

Monday morning I got to the office early. I had slept all day Sunday, getting up only in time for a bite of dinner and then some silly movie, and being back in bed by ten-thirty. I came into the office with that sense you get after a lot of sleep of being spiritually pure.

I went back to the Boss's office. He hadn't come in. But while I was there one of the girls came in carrying a big tray piled up with telegrams. "They are all about his boy getting hurt," she said, "and they keep coming in."

"They'll be coming in all day," I said.

That would be true, all right. Every pinfeather politician, county-courthouse janitor, and ambitious lickspittle in the state who hadn't seen the story in the Sunday paper would see it in this morning's paper and get off his telegram. Getting that telegram off would be like praying. You couldn't tell that praying would do any good, but it certainly never did anybody any harm. Those telegrams were part of the system. Like presents for the wedding of a politician's daughter or flowers for a cop's funeral. And it was part of the system, too, for the flowers, now that we are on the subject, to come from Antonio Giusto's flower store. A girl in the flower store kept a record in a special file of all the orders that came in for a cop's funeral, and then Tony just ran through the file after the funeral and checked the names by his master list of perennially bereaved friends and if your name was on the master list it had sure-God better be in the file for Murphy's funeral, and I don't mean any bunch of sweet peas, either. Tony was a good friend of Tiny Duffy.

It was Tiny Duffy who came into the office just as the girl flounced out with a cute little twitch of her skirt. He mooned in with a face full of professional sympathy and mortician's gloom, but as soon as he took in the fact that the Boss was not present he relaxed a little, showed his teeth, and said, "How's tricks?"

I said tricks was O. K.

"You seen the Boss?" he asked.

I shook my head.

"Gee," he said, and the sympathy and gloom appeared magically on his face, "it is sure tough. It is what I always calls tragic. A kid like that. A good clean square-shooting kid like that. It is tragic, and no mistake."

"You needn't practice on me," I said.

"It will be tough on the Boss," he said, and shook his head.

"Just save your fire till he gets here."

"Where is he?"

"I don't know."

I tried to get hold of him yesterday," Tiny said, "but he wasn't at the Mansion. They said they didn't know where he was, he hadn't been home. He was out to the hospital a while, but I missed him there. He wasn't in a hotel, either."

"You seem to have been thorough," I said.

"Yeah," Tiny said, "I wanted to tell him how us boys all felt."

Just then Calvin Sperling, who was Commissioner of Agriculture, came in with a couple of other fellows. They were wearing crepe on their faces, too, till they saw the Boss was not in. Then they eased off and began to snap their bubble gum. "Maybe he won't be coming." Sperling suggested.

"He'll come," Tiny pronounced. "It won't faze him. The Boss is tough."

A couple more of the fellows came by, and then Morrisey, who had followed Hugh Miller a long time back as Attorney General, after Miller's resignation. The cigar smoke began to get thick.

Once Sadie stopped at the door, laid one hand on the jamb, and surveyed the scene.

"Hi, Sadie," one of the boys said.

She did not respond. She continued her survey for a moment longer, then said, "Jesus Christ," and moved on. I heard the door of her own office shut.

I drifted over to the window back of the Boss's desk and looked out over the grounds. It had rained during the night and now in the weak sunlight the grass and the leaves of the live oaks, even the trailing moss, had a faint sheen, and the damp concrete of the curving drives and walks gave off an almost imperceptible, glimmering reflection. The whole world, the bare boles of the other trees, which had lost their leaves now, the roofs of the houses, even the sky itself, had a pale, washed, relieved look, like the look on the face of a person who has been sick a long time and now feels better and thinks maybe he is going to get well.

That wasn't exactly the look on the Boss's face when he came in, but it gives some idea of what that look was. He wasn't really pale, but he was paler than usual, and the flesh seemed to hang a little loose at the jawbone. There were a couple of razor nicks along the bone. Under his eyes were grey circles, as though the flesh had been bruised but was just about well now. But the eyes were clear.

He had come across the reception room without making any noise on the thick carpet, and for an instant he stood in the doorway of the office before anybody noticed his arrival. The chatter didn't die; it was frozen in mid-syllable. Then there was a kind of noiseless scurry and fumble to adjust the funeral faces which had been laid aside. Then, with the faces in place and only a little askew, they crowded around the Boss and shook his hand. They told him they wanted to tell him how they felt. "You know how us boys all feel, Boss," they said. He said, yes, he knew, very quietly. He said, yes, yes, and thank you.

Then he moved toward the desk, the boys falling away from him like water from the prow of a ship when it is first warped out from the pier and the screw makes the first revolutions. He stood before the desk, handling the telegrams, looking at them, letting them drop.

"Boss," somebody said, "Boss–those telegrams–that shows you now–that shows you how folks feel about you."

He said nothing.

Just then the girl came in with another batch of telegrams. She set the tray on the desk in front of him. He fixed her with his glance. Then he laid his hand on the pile of yellow paper and gave it a slight shove and said, in a quiet, matter-of-fact voice, "Get this muck out of here."

The girl got that muck out of there.

The bloom had gone from the occasion. The boys began to drift out of the office and off to the swivel chairs which had not been warmed that morning. As Tiny was leaving, the Boss said, "Tiny, wait a minute. I want to talk to you."

Tiny came back. I was heading out, too, but the Boss called me. "I want you to be in on this," he said. So I sank into one of the chairs over by the wall. Tiny disposed himself in a big green leather chair to one side of the desk, crossed his knees, to the great strain of his hams and of the fabric which covered them, inserted a cigarette in his long holder, lighted it, and waited.

The Boss was in no hurry. He brooded a full minute before he lifted his eyes to Tiny Duffy. But then he came in fast. "There won't be any contract with Larson," he said.

When breath came back, Tiny managed, "Boss–Boss–you can't, Boss."

"Yes, I can," the Boss said, without raising his voice.

"You can't, Boss. It's all fixed up, Boss."

"It isn't too late to unfix it," the Boss said. "It isn't too late."

"Boss–Boss–" the word was almost a wail, and the cigarette ash was falling down the starched white front of the Duffy shirt, "you can't break your word to old Larson. He's a good guy and you can't. You're a square-shooter, Boss."

"I can break my word to Larson," the Boss said.

"You can't–you can't change your mind, Boss. Not now. You can't change it now."

The Boss rose very abruptly from his chair at the desk. He fixed his eyes on Tiny and said, "I can change a hell of a lot of things."

In the ensuing silence, the Boss came round the desk. "That's all," he said, in a voice not much more than a husky whisper. "And you can tell Larson to do his damnedest."

Tiny got to his feet. He opened his mouth several times, wet his lips, and seemed about to speak, but each time the now gray face closed back up over the expensive bridgework.

The Boss went up to him. "You tell Larson." he said. "Larson is your pal, and you tell him." He punched Tiny's front with a stiff forefinger. "Yeah," he said, "he is your pal, and when you tell him you can put your hand on his shoulder." Then the Boss grinned. I had not expected a grin. But it was a wintry and uncomforting grin. It put the seal on everything that had been said.

Tiny made the door, and was gone. He didn't bother to close it, but kept on going through without a pause, dwindling away over the long green carpet. The he had disappeared.

But the Boss was not watching his departure. He was staring moodily down at the bare top of his desk. After a moment he said, "Shut the door." I got up and shut it.

I did not sit back down, but stood in the open space between the desk and the door, waiting for him to say whatever it was he was going to say. Whatever it was, he didn't say it. He merely looked up at me with a look that was innocent and questioning, and asked, "Well?"

I do not know what it was he wanted me to say or what he expected me to say. Since that time I have thought a good deal about that. That was the time for me to say whatever it was I was ever going to have to say to Willie Stark, who had been Cousin Willie from the country and who was now the Boss. But I did not say it. I shrugged my shoulders, and said, "Well, it doesn't matter if you kick Tiny around some more. He is built for it. But Larson is a different kind of cooky."

He continued to look at me and seemed about to say something, but the question faded off his face. Then he said, "You got to start somewhere."

"Start what?"

He studied me a moment before he said, "Skip it."

I went on back to my own office. That was how that day started. I got to work on a last review of the subsidiary figures for the tax bill. Swinton, who was handling the thing through the Senate, had wanted them Saturday, but I had been running behind on my homework. I had had that date to meet Swinton and the Boss Saturday evening, but things had not fallen out that way. Later in the morning I ran into a kink. I went out into the big room and started for the Boss's door. The girl out there said that he had gone across to Sadie Burke's office. The door there was closed. I hung around a few minutes in the big room, waiting for the Boss to come out, but the door stayed closed. Once I could hear a voice raised beyond the door, but then it dropped.

The ringing of my own telephone bell took me back into my office. It was Swinton saying what the hell, why didn't I get the figures down to him. So I got my papers together and went down to see Swinton and give him the stuff. I was with him about forty minutes. When I came back up to the office, the Boss was gone. "He's gone to the hospital," the girl said. "He'll be back this afternoon."

I looked over toward Sadie's door, thinking maybe she could help me and Swinton. The girl caught my glance. "Miss Burke," she said, "she's gone too."

"Where did she go?"

"I don't know," the girl replied, "but I can tell you this, Mr. Burden, wherever it is she sure must already be there the way she tore out of here." Then she smiled with that knowing snotty little secret way the hired help always uses to make you think they know more than they are telling, and reached up a nice rounded little red-nailed white hand to tuck in a stray back lock of really beautiful corn-colored hair. Having tucked in the lock, with a motion which raised her breast for Mr. Burden's inspection, she added "And wherever it is she's gone they probably won't like her getting there, to judge from the look on her face when she left." The she smiled sweetly to show how happy any place would be to have her arrive there.

I went back into my office and gave some letters until lunch. I had a sandwich down in the basement cafeteria of the Capitol, where eating was like eating in a jolly, sanitary, well-run, marble-glistening morgue. I ran into Swinton, jawed some with him, and went, at his suggestion, up to the Senate when it reconvened after lunch. About four o'clock a page came up to me and handed me a slip of paper. It was a message from upstairs. It read: "Miss Stanton telephones to ask you to come right away to her apartment. It is urgent."

I crumpled up the slip, threw it down, and headed up tom my office for my coat and hat. I told them in the office to notify Miss Stanton I was on my way. When I got outdoors I discovered that it had begun to rain. The clean, pale sunlight of the morning was gone now.

Anne answered my knock so quickly that I figured she must have been standing by the door. But when the door flung open, I might not have recognized, at the first glance, the face I saw there unless I had known it to be Anne Stanton's. It was white and desperate and ravaged, and past the tears which you could know had been shed. And somehow you could know what kind of tears they had been: tardy, sparse and painful, quickly suppressed.

She clutched my arm with both hands, as though to support herself. "Jack," she exclaimed, "Jack!"

"What the hell?" I asked, and shoved the door shut behind me.

"You've got to find him–you've got to find him–find him and tell him–" She was shaking as if with a chill.

"Find who?"

"–tell him how it was–oh, it wasn't that way–not what they said–"

"For Christ's sake, what who said?"

"–they said it was because of me–because of what I did–because–"

"Who said?"

"–oh, you've got to find him, Jack–you've got to find him and tell him and bring him to me and–"

I grabbed her, hard, with a hand on each shoulder, and shook her. "Look here!" I said. "You come out of this. Just stop jabbering a minute and come out of this."

She stopped talking and stood between my hands, in my clutch, and looked up at me with her white face and shivered. Her breathing was shallow, quick, and dry.

After a minute, I said, "Now tell me who you want me to find."

"Adam," she said. "It's Adam."

"Now why do I find him? What's happened?"

"He came here and said it was all because of me. Of what I had done."

"What was because of what you had done?"

"He was made Director because of me. That's what he said. Because of what I had done. That's what he said. And he said–oh, Jack, he said it–"

"Said what?"

"He said he wouldn't be paid pimp to his sister's whore–he said that–he said that, Jack–to me, Jack–and I tried to tell him–tell him how it was–and he pushed me and I fell down on the floor and he ran out–he ran out and you've got to find him, Jack–you've got to and–"

And she was off again on the jabber. I gave her a good shaking. "Stop it," I commanded. "Stop it or I'll shake your teeth out."

When she had quieted down again and was hanging there between my hands, I said, "Now start slowly from the start and tell me what happened." I led her over to a chair and pushed her down into it. "Now tell me," I said, "but take it easy."

She looked up at me for a moment as though she were afraid to begin.

"Tell me," I said.

"He came up here," she began. "It was about three o'clock. As soon as he came in the door I knew something terrible had happened–something terrible had already happened to me today but I knew this was another terrible thing–and he grabbed me by the arm and stared in my face and didn't say a word. I guess I kept asking him what was the matter, and he held my arm tighter and tighter."

She pushed the sleeve up and showed the bruise marks halfway down the left forearm.

"I kept asking him what was the matter, and all at once he said, 'Matter, matter, you know what's the matter.' Then he said how there had been a telephone call to him, how somebody–a man–that was all he said–had called and told him–told him about me–about me and–"

She didn't seem to be able to go on.

"About you and Governor Stark," I completed it for her.

She nodded.

"It was awful," she whispered, not at me, but raptly, to herself. And repeated, "It was awful."

"Stop that and go ahead," I ordered, and shook her.

She came up out of it, looked at me, and said, "He told him about me and then how that was the only reason he was ever made Director and how now the Governor was going to dismiss him as Director–because he had paralyzed his son with a bad operation–and how he was going to get rid of me–throw me out–that was what the man said on the telephone, throw me out–because of what Adam did to his son–and Adam heard him and ran right over here because he believed it–he believed it about me–"

"Well," I demanded savagely, "the part about you is true, isn't it?"

"He ought to have asked me," she said, and made a distracted motion with her hands, "he ought to have asked me before he believed it."

"He's not a half-wit," I said, "and it was there ready to be believed. You're damned lucky he didn't guess something long back, for if–"

She seized me by the arm and her fingers dug in "Hush, hush!" she said, "you mustn't say it–for nothing was that way–and not the way Adam said–oh, he said terrible things–oh, he called me terrible things–he said if everything else was filthy a man didn't have to be–oh, I tried to tell him how things were–how they weren't like he said–but he pushed me so hard I fell down and he said how he wouldn't be pimp to his sister's whore and nobody would ever say that about him–and then he ran out the door and you've got to find him. Find him and tell him, Jack. Tell him, Jack."

"Tell him what?"

"Tell him it wasn't like he said. You've got to tell him that. You know why I did everything I did, you know what happened. Oh, Jack–" and she grabbed my sleeve and hung on, "it wasn't like that. It wasn't horrible like that. I tried not to be horrible. Was I, Jack? Was I? Tell me, Jack!"

I look down at her. "No," I said, "you weren't horrible."

"But it has happened to me. It has all happened to me. And he's gone."

"I'll find him," I said, and detached myself from her, ready to go.

"It won't do any good."

"He'll listen to sense," I said.

"Oh, I don't mean Adam. I mean–"

"Stark?"

She nodded. Then said, "Yes. I went to the place–the place out of town we used to meet in. He called me early this afternoon. I went there and he told me. He is going back to his wife."

"Well, I'll be damned," I said.

Then I pulled myself together, and headed for the door. "I'll get Adam," I said.

"Get him," she said, "get him. For he's all I've got now."

As I stepped out the door of the apartment house no the rain, I reflected that she had Jackie Burden, too. At least as an errand boy. But I made the reflection without bitterness and quite impersonally.

Finding somebody in a city in a city if you can't call in the cops is quite an undertaking. I had tried it often enough back when I was a reporter, and it takes luck and time. But one rule is always to try the obvious first. So I went to Adam's apartment. When I saw his car sitting out front I figured I had played into the blue ones. I parked my own car, noticed that the driver's door of his car was open and might get swiped off by a passing truck and was certainly letting the seat get wet, slammed it shut as I passed, and went on into the apartment house.

I knocked vigorously on the door. There was no answer. But that didn't mean anything. Even if Adam was there, he might not be willing, under the circumstances, to answer his door. So I tried the knob. The door was locked. I went down to the basement and dug out the Negro janitor and told him some cock-and-bull story about having left some stuff up there in Adam's place. He had seen me around with Adam a lot, and so he let me in. I prowled through the place, but no Adam. Then I spied his telephone. I called his office, then the hospital, then the medical-school office, then the exchange where the doctors left numbers when they weren't at their usual haunts. It was no go. Nobody knew anything about Adam. Or rather, each one had a pretty good idea where he was, but the idea was never any good. That left all the town wide open.

I went back down into the street. The fact that the car was there was funny. He had abandoned it. Where in the hell did a man go off in the rain, on foot, this time of day? Or night, rather?–for it was dusk now.

I thought of the bars. For it is a tradition that a man, when he has received a great shock, heads for a bar, puts his foot on the rail, orders five straight whiskies in a row, downs then one after another while he stares with uncomprehending eyes at the white, tortured face in the mirror opposite him, and then engages the bartender in a sardonic conversation about Life. But I couldn't see Adam Stanton playing that game. But I went to the bars, anyway.

That is, I went to a lot of them. A lifetime isn't long enough to go to all the bars in our city. I began with Slade's place, had no luck, asked Slade to try to hang on to Dr. Stanton if he came in, and then moved through the other establishments of chromium, glass bricks, morros, colored lights, comfy Old English worm-eaten oak, sporting prints, comic frescoes, or three-piece orchestras. Around seven-thirty I called up Adam's office and then the hospital again. He wasn't at either place. When they told me that at the hospital, I said I was calling for Governor Stark, whose son was there as a patient of Dr. Stanton, and could they please try to dig up something. They came back with the report that Dr. Stanton had been expected well before seven, that he had had an appointment with another doctor to examine some plates, but that he had not come. They had been unable to locate him at his office or at home. Would I like to leave a message for Dr. Stanton when he came in? I said, yes, to have him get in touch with me at the earliest possible moment, it was important. I would leave word at my own hotel as to my whereabouts.

I went back to my hotel and had a meal in the coffee shop, having left word at the desk to page me if a call came. But none came. So I dawdled in the lobby with the evening papers. The _Chronicle__ had a long editorial lauding the courage and sound sense of the handful of men in the Senate who were making a fight against the administration's tax bill, which would throttle business and enterprise in the state. There was a cartoon opposite the editorial. It showed the Boss, or rather, a figure with the Boss's head but a great swollen belly, dressed in a Buster Brown suit with the little pants tight above great hairy thighs. On one knee the monster balanced a big pudding and from the gaping hole in the top had just plucked a squirming little creature. The pudding bore the label _The State__ and the squirming little creature the label _Hardworking Citizen__. From the mouth of the Boss's head came one of those balloons of words the comic-strip artists use to indicate the speech of their characters. It said: "Oh, what a good boy am I!" Under the cartoon was the caption: _Little Jack Horner__.

I read on down through the editorial. It said that our state was a poor state, and could not bear the burden thus tyrannically imposed upon it. That was an old one. Every time the Boss had cracked down–income tax, mineral-extraction tax, liquor tax, every time–it had been the same thing. The pocketbook is where it hurts. A man may forget the death of the father, but never the loss of the patrimony, the cold-faced Florentine, who is the founding father of our modern world, said, and he said a mouthful.

This is a poor state, the opposition always screamed. But the Boss said: "There is a passel of pore folks living in it and no mistake, but the state isn't poor. It is just a question of who has got his front feet in the trough when slopping time comes. And I aim to do me some shoving and thump me some snouts." And he had leaned forward to the crowd, with the shagged-down forelock and the bulging eyes, and had lifted his right arm to demand of them and of the hot sky, "Are you with me? Are you with me?" And the roar had come.

More money for graft, the opposition always screamed. "Sure," the Boss had said, lounging easy, "sure, there's some graft, but there's just enough to make the wheels turn without squeaking. And remember this. There never was a machine rigged up by man didn't represent some loss of energy. How much energy do you get out of a lump of coal when you run a steam dynamo or a locomotive compared to what there actually is in that lump of coal? Damned little. Well, we do a hell of a lot better than the best dynamo or locomotive ever invented. Sure, I got a bunch of crooks around here, but they're too lily-livered to get very crooked. I got my eye on 'em. And do I deliver the state something? I damned well do."

The theory of historical costs, you might put it. All change costs something. You have to write off the costs against the gain. Maybe in our state change could only come in the terms in which it was taking place, and it was sure due for some change. The theory of the moral neutrality of history, you might call it. Process as process is neither morally good nor morally bad. We may judge results but not process. The morally bad agent may perform the deed which is bad. Maybe a man has to sell his soul to get the power to do good.

The theory of historical costs. The theory of the moral neutrality of history. All that was a high historical view from a chilly pinnacle. Maybe it took a genius to see it. To really see it. Maybe you had to get chained to the high pinnacle with the buzzards pecking at your liver and lights before you could see it. Maybe it took a genius to see it. Maybe it took a hero to act on it.

But sitting there in the lobby, waiting for the call which did not come, I was willing to let those speculations rest. I went back to the editorial. That editorial was shadow-boxing, all right. It was shadow-boxing, for at the very minute it was just as likely true as not that the vote was being called up in the Capitol, and it would take the winged hosts to make the vote different from what it was going to be after the MacMurfee boys had talked themselves out and the count was called.

It was around nine o'clock when I was paged. But it wasn't Adam. It was a message from the Capitol saying the Boss was there and wanted me to come up. I left word at the desk that if Dr. Stanton should call me, he was to be asked to call the Capitol, I would leave instructions with the operator on the switchboard there. Then I ran up Anne to give her the news, or rather, the no-news, about my efforts to date. She sounded calm and tired. I went out to my car. It had been raining again, for the gutter by the curb was running with a black stream which gleamed like oil in the lights of the street. But it had let up now.

When I pulled into the Capitol grounds I saw that the place was pretty well lit up. But that wasn't surprising, even at that hour, when the Legislature was in session. And when I got inside, the place was certainly not uninhabited. The solons had broken up shop for the evening and were milling about in the corridors, especially at those strategic points where the big brass spittoons stood. And there were plenty of other people around, too. There were a lot of reporters, and herds of bystanders, those people who love to have the feeling that they are around when something big is happening.

I worked through the place and up to the Boss's office. They told me there that he had gone down with somebody to the Senate.

"There wasn't any hitch about the tax bill passing, was there? I asked the girl.

"Don't be silly," the girl said.

I started to tell her that I had been around there back when she was lying in the crib sucking her thumb, but didn't do it. Instead, I asked her to take care of the business of Adam's call for me, and went down to the Senate.

At first I didn't spot the Boss. Then I saw him off to one side, with a couple of the Senators and Calvin Sperling and discreetly in the background several other men, just hangers-on who were warming their hands at the blaze of greatness. Over to one side of the Boss, I saw Sugar-Boy lounging against the marble wall, with his cheeks drawn in to suck the sugar cube which, at that moment no doubt, was dissolving its bliss down his gullet. The Boss stood with his hands clasped behind him and his head hanging a little forward. He was listening to something one of the Senators was telling him.

I approach the group and stood back from it, waiting. In a minute I caught the Boss's eye and knew that he had seen me. So I went over to Sugar-Boy and said, "Hello."

He managed to get the word out after several efforts. The he resumed work on the sugar. I leaned against the wall beside him, and waited.

Four or five minutes passed, and the Boss still stood there with his head hanging forward, listening. He could listen a long time and not say a word, just let the fellow our it out. The stuff would pour out and pour out, and the Boss would just be waiting to see what was in the bottom of the bucket. Finally, I knew that he had enough. He knew what was in the bottom of the fellow's bucket or that there wasn't anything there, after all. I knew that he had had enough, for I saw him suddenly lift his head up sharp and look straight at the man. That was the sign. I stopped leaning against the wall. I knew the Boss was ready to go.

He looked at the man and shook his head. "It won't wash," he said in a perfectly amiable fashion. It was loud enough for me to hear. The other fellow had been talking low and fast.

Then the Boss looked over at me and called, "Jack."

I went to him.

"Let's get upstairs," he said to me, "I want to tell you something."

"O. K.," I said, and started toward the door.

He left the men and followed me, catching up with me at the door. Sugar-Boy fell in just on his other side and a little back.

I started to ask the Boss how the boy was, but thought better of it. It was just a question of the kind of badness, and there wasn't any use asking about that. So we moved on through the corridor to the big lobby, where we would take an elevator up to his office. Some of the men lounging along the corridor stepped back a little and said, "Howdy-do, Governor," or "

"Hi, Boss," but the Boss only bowed his response to the greetings. The other men, those who said nothing, turned their heads to watch the Boss as he passed. There wasn't anything out of the ordinary about all that. He must have passed down that corridor a thousand times, or near that many, with men calling out to him, or saying nothing and following with their eyes his progress over the glittering marble.

We came out into the great lobby, under the dome, where there was a blaze of light over the statues which stood with statesmanlike dignity on pedestals to mark the quarters of the place, and over the people who moved about in the area. We walked along the east wall, toward the inset where the elevators were. Just as we approached the statue of General Moffat (a great Indian fighter, a successful land speculator, the first governor of the state), I noticed a figure leaning against the pedestal.

It was Adam Stanton. I saw that his clothes were soaked and that mud and filth were slopped up his trousers half to the knees. I understood the abandoned car. He had walked away from it, in the rain.

Just as I saw him, he looked in our direction. But his eyes were on the Boss, not on me. "Adam," I said, "Adam!"

He took a step toward us, but still did not look at me.

Then the Boss veered toward Adam, and thrust out his hand in preparation for a handshake. "Howdy-do, Doctor," he began, holding out his hand.

For an instant Adam stood there immobile, as though about to refuse to shake the hand of the man approaching him. Them he put out his hand, and as he did so I felt a surge of relief and thought: _He's shaking hands with him, he's all right now, he's all right__.

Then I saw what was in his hand, and even as I recognized the object, but before the significance of the recognition had time to form itself in my mind and nerves, I saw the two little spurts of pale-orange flame from the muzzle of the weapon.

I did not hear the report, for it was lost and merged with the other more positive staccato series of reports, on my left. With his right arm still extended Adam reeled back a step, swung his reproachful and haggard gaze upon me and fixed it, even as a second burst of firing came and he spun to the floor.

In the astonishing silence, I rushed toward Adam as he fell. Then I heard somewhere in the lobby a woman begin screaming, then a great rush of feet and babble of voices. Adam was bleeding heavily. He was stitched across the chest. The chest was all knocked in. He was already dead.

I looked up to see Sugar-Boy standing there with the smoking automatic in his hand, and off to the right, near the elevator, a highway patrolman with a pistol in his hand.

I didn't see the Boss. And thought: _He didn't hit him__.

But I was wrong. Even as I thought that and looked around, Sugar-Boy dropped his automatic clattering to the marble, and uttering some strangled, animal-like sound, rushed back beyond the statue of Governor Moffat.

I laid Adam's head back on the marble and went beyond the statue. I had to shove the people back now, they were crowding so. Somebody was yelling, "Stand back, stand back, give him air!" But they kept crowding up, running to the spot from all over the lobby and from the corridors.

When I broke through, I saw the Boss sitting on the floor, breathing heavily, staring straight ahead. He had both hands pressed to his body, low on the chest and toward the center. I could see no sign that he was hit. Then I saw a very little ooze of blood between two of the fingers, just a little.

Sugar-Boy was leaning above him, weeping and sputtering, trying to speak. He finally managed to get out the words: "D-d-d-d-does it hur-hur-hur-hurt much, Boss–does it hur-hur-hur-hurt?"

The Boss did not die there in the lobby under the dome. In fact, he lived quite a while and died on a clean, white, antiseptic bed, with all the benefits of science. For a couple of days it was given out that he would not die at all. He was seriously wounded–there were two little.25-caliber slugs in his body, slugs from a little toy target pistol Adam had had since he was a kid–but an operation was possible, and he was a very strong man.

So there was all over again the business of the waiting room with the potted plants and water colors and artificial logs on the cozy hearth. A sister of Lucy Stark came with Lucy the morning of the operation. Old Man Stark, the Boss's father, was too feeble to leave Mason City. You could see that Lucy's sister, a woman a good deal older than Lucy, dressed in country black with high-laced black kid shoes, was a strong-minded, sensible woman who had been through a lot and knew how to help somebody else through. You could look at her squarish, slightly reddened, coarse-skinned hands, with their square-cut nails, and know that she knew how to take hold. When she entered the waiting room there at the hospital and cast a practiced and critical, not quite scornful, glance over the potted plants and the artificial logs, it was like a pilot mounting to the pilothouse and taking over.

She sat very stiff and severe in a chair, not one of the chintz-covered soft ones. She was going to permit no spilling over of emotion, not in a strange room and at that time of the day–the time of day when every day there was breakfast to get and the children to fix and the men to clear out of the house. There would be a proper place and time. After it was over, after she got Lucy home, she would put her to bed in a room with the curtains drawn, and would put a cloth dabbled with vinegar on her forehead, and would sit by the bed and hold her hand, and would say, "Now just you cry if you want to, baby, then you'll feel better, then you lie still and I'll sit here, I won't leave you, baby." But that would come later. Meanwhile Lucy now and then stole a look across at her sister's hewn and eroded face. It wasn't exactly a sympathetic face, but it seemed to have what Lucy was looking for.

I sat over on the couch and looked at the same old picture magazines. I felt definitely that I was out of place. But Lucy had asked me to come. "He would want you to be there," she had said.

"I'll wait down in the lobby," I said.

She shook her head. "Come upstairs," she said.

"I don't want to be underfoot. You sister will be there, you said."

"I want you to," she had said, and so there I was. And it was better, I decided, even if I was out of place, than being down in the lobby with all the newshawks and politicos and curiosity-seekers.

It didn't take them awfully long. They said the operation was a success. When the nurse who had brought the news said that, Lucy slumped in her chair and uttered a dry, gasping sob. The sister, who herself had seemed to relax a little at the words, looked sharply at Lucy. "Lucy," she said, not loud but with some severity, "Lucy!"

Lucy raised her head, met the sister's reproving gaze, murmured humbly, "I'm sorry, Ellie, I'm sorry. It's just that I've–I've–"

"We must thank God," Ellie announced. The she rose briskly, as though she were about to step right out and do that before it slipped her mind. But she turned to the nurse. "When can she see her husband?" she asked.

"It will be some time," the nurse said. "I can't tell you exactly, but it will be some time. If you wait here I can let you know." She moved to the door. There she turned, and asked, "Can I get anything for you? Some lemonade? Some Coffee?"

"That's right kind and considerate," the sister said, "but we'll just say no thanks this time of morning."

The nurse went out, and I excused myself and followed. I went down to the office of Dr. Simmons, who had performed the operation. I had known him around the place. He was a sort of friend of Adam–about as good a one as Adam had, for he never had chummed up with anybody, that is, anybody except me, and I didn't count, for I was the Friend of His Youth. I had known Dr. Simmons around the place. Adam had introduced us.

Dr. Simmons, a dry, thin, grayish man, was at his desk, writing something on a big card. I told him to finish what he was doing. He said he was about through, the secretary picked up the card and put it into a filing cabinet, and he turned to me. I asked him how the Governor was doing. The operation had been a success, he said.

"You mean you got the bullets out?" I asked.

He smiled in a sort of chilly way, and said he meant a little more than that. "He's got a chance," he said. "He's a strong man."

"He's that," I agreed.

Dr. Simmons picked up a little envelope from his desk, and emptied the contents into his hand. "No matter how strong they are they can take much of this diet," he said, and held out his hand, open, to show me the two little pellets resting there. A.25-caliber slug is small, all right, but these looked even smaller and more trivial than I had remembered.

I picked one of them out of his hand and examined it. It was a little misshapen slug of lead. Fingering it, I thought of how a long time back, when we were kids at the Landing, Adam and I used to shoot at a pine board, and how sometimes we had dug the lugs out of the soft wood with a pocketknife. Sometimes the slug dug out of the wood hadn't been a bit more misshapen than this one, the wood was so soft.

"The son-of-a-bitch," Dr. Simmons said irrelevantly.

I gave the slug back to him and went down to the lobby. It was pretty well cleared out down there now. The politicos had gone. Two or three newspapermen still hung around, waiting for developments.

There weren't ant developments that day. Or the next day either. The Boss seemed to be getting on all right. But the third day he turn a turn for the worse. An infection had started up. It moved pretty fast. I knew for the way Dr. Simmons looked, even if he wouldn't say much, that he was a gone gosling.

That evening, shortly after I had arrived at the hospital and had gone up to the waiting room to see how Lucy was making out, I got the message that the Boss wanted to see me. He had rallied, they said.

He was a sick-looking customer when I saw him. The flesh had fallen away on his face till the skin sacked off the bone the way it does on an old man's face. He looked like Old Man Stark, up at Mason City. He was white as chalk.

When I first saw the eyes in the white face, they seemed to be filmed and unrecognizing. Then, as I moved toward the bed, they fixed on me and a thin light flickered up in them. His mouth twisted a little in a way which I took to be the feeble shorthand for a grin.

I came over close to the bed. "Hello, Boss," I said, and hung something on my features which I meant to be taken for a grin.

He lifted the forefinger and the next finger of his right hand, which lay prone on the sheet, in an incipient salute, then left them drop. The strength of the muscles which held his mouth twisted gave out, too, and the grin slid off his face and the weight of flesh sagged back.

I stood up close to the bed and looked down at him, and tried to think of something to say. But my brain felt as juiceless as an old sponge left out in the sun a long time.

Then he said, in something a little better than a whisper, "I wanted to see you, Jack."

"I wanted to see you, too, Boss."

For a minute he didn't speak, but his eyes looked up at me, with the light still flickering in them. Then he spoke: "Why did he do it to me?"

"Oh, God damn it," I burst out, very loud, "I don't know."

The nurse looked warningly at me.

"I never did anything to him," he said.

"No, you never did."

He was silent again, and the flicker went down in his eyes. Then, "He was all right. The Doc."

I nodded

I waited, but it began to seem that he wasn't going to say any more. His eyes were on the ceiling and I could scarcely tell that he was breathing. Finally, the eyes turned toward me again, very slowly, and I almost thought that I could hear the tiny painful creak of the balls in their sockets. But the light flickered up again. He said, "It might have been all different, Jack."

I nodded again

He roused himself more. He even seemed to be straining to lift his head from the pillow. "You got to believe that," he said hoarsely.

The nurse stepped forward and looked significantly at me.

"Yes," I said to the man on the bed.

"You got to," he said again. "You got to believe that."

"All right."

He looked at me, and for a moment it was the old strong, probing, demanding glance. But when the words this time, they were very weak. "And it might even been different yet he whispered. "If it hadn't happened, it might–have been different–even yet."

He barely got the last words out, he was so weak.

The nurse was making signals to me.

I reached down and took the hand on the sheet. It felt like a piece of jelly.

"So long, Boss," I said. "I'll be seeing you."

He didn't answer, and I wasn't even sure that there was recognition in the eyes now. I turned away and went out.

He died the next morning, just about day. There was a hell of a big funeral. The city was jam-packed with people, all kinds of people, county-courthouse slickers and red-necks and wool-hat boys and people who had never been on pavement before. And they had their women with them. They filled all the space around the Capitol and spilled and eddied back into the streets beyond, while the drizzle came down and the loud-speakers placed on the trees and poles blared out the words which made you want to puke.

Then after the coffin had been brought down the great steps of the Capitol and loaded into the hearse and after the state patrolmen and the mounted cops had fought out a passage, the procession rolled slowly away to the cemetery. The crowd seethed after it. At the cemetery they surged and swayed over the grass, trampling the graves, breaking down shrubbery. A couple of gravestones were overturned and broken. It was two hours after the burial before the police managed to clear the place.

That was my second funeral within a week. The first one had been very different. It had been the funeral of Adam Stanton, down at Burden's Landing.