“But you told them from what office you came--from my office?”
The clerk's face grew red and betrayed sudden embarrassment.
“Oh, they--they--didn't say anything special: just uppish--only--”
“What did they say?” roared Mr. Converse. “You've got a memory! Out with it! Exact words.”
Clerks were taught to obey orders in that office.
“They said,” choked the man, “that simply because your father was governor of this state once you needn't think you could tell folks in the State House to stand around! They said you didn't cut any ice in politics.”
“That's the present code of manners, eh? Insult a citizen and salaam to a politician!”
“Mr. Converse, I waited an hour in the Vital Statistics Bureau while the chief smoked cigars with Alf Symmes, that ward heeler. I had sent in our firm card, and the chief held it in his hand and flipped it and smoked and sat where he could look out at me and grin--and when Symmes had finished his loafing they let me in.”
Mr. Converse turned to his desk and plunged again into the data.
The next day he put a clerk at the long-distance telephone to call physicians in all parts of the state--collecting independent information in regard to the past and present prevalence of typhoid; he read certain official reports with puckered brow and little mutters of disbelief, and after he had read for a long time that disbelief was very frank. Mr. Converse had rather keen vision in matters of prevarication, even when the lying was done adroitly with figures.
He was not a pleasant companion for his office force during those days; his irascibility seemed to increase. He knew it himself, and he felt a gentleman's shame because of a state of mind which he could not seem to control.
And finally, out of the complexity of his emotions, he fully realized that he was angry at himself and that his anger at himself was growing more acute from the fact that he realized that the anger was justified. For he woke to the knowledge that he had allowed himself to grow selfish. He resented the fact that anybody should expect him to meddle with public affairs--to get into the muddle of politics. And he knew he ought to be ashamed of such selfishness--and, therefore, he grew more angry at himself as he continued to harbor resentment against any agency which threatened to drag him into public life.