"You're a nice, quiet, gentlemanly little optimist, and I like you, old fellow," retorted Cullen. "But don't deceive yourself too much. Your Senator Langdon is personally one of the best ever. But he was born a mark, and a mark he'll be to the end of time.
"He looks good now. Sure, I like his speeches, and all that, but just wait. When some of those old foxes in the Senate want to put his head in the bag and tie it down, they won't have any trouble at all."
Smiling, Haines looked up at his cynical friend.
"The bag'll have to go over my head, too," he said, with a nod.
"Well, I don't know that Peabody'd have to strain himself very much to get such an awful big bag to drop you both in, if it comes right down to that, old chap. You're making a mistake. You're as bad as your old man. You're a beautiful pair of optimists, and you a good newspaper man, too--it's a shame!"
After momentary hesitation, Cullen continued, thoroughly serious.
"But, my old friend," he said in low tone, glancing quickly about, "there's one thing that you've got to put a stop to. It's hurting you."
The secretary's face showed his bewilderment.
"What do you mean?" he snapped, abruptly. "Out with it!"
"I mean," replied Cullen, "that rumors are going around that you are keeping Langdon away from the crowd of 'insiders' in the Senate for your own purposes--that, in short, you plan to--"
"I understand," was the quick interruption. "I am accused of wanting to 'deliver' Senator Langdon, guarantee his vote, on some graft proposition, so that I can get the money and not he himself. Consequently I'm tipping him off on what measures are honest, so that he'll vote for them, until--until I'm offered my price, then influence him to vote for some big crooked scheme, telling him it is all right. He votes as I suggest, and I get the money!"
"That's what 'delivering a man' means in Washington," dryly answered the Chicago correspondent. "It means winning a man's confidence, his support, his vote, through friendship, and then selling it for cash--"
"Of course, old man, I have denied the truth of this. I knew you too well to doubt you. Still, the yarn is hurting you. Remember that Western Senator who was 'delivered' twice, both ways, on a graft bill?" he laughingly asked the secretary.