Before North, departing, reached the door Senator Corson's secretary tapped and entered. He gave several telegrams into the hand of his employer.
"Pardon me, gentlemen!" apologized the Senator, tearing open an envelope. "Wait a moment, North. These messages may bear on the situation."
He read them in silence one after the other, his face betraying nothing of his thoughts.
He stacked the sheets on the table. "Evidently several notable gentlemen in our state rise early, read the newspapers before breakfast, and are handy to telegraph offices," he remarked, leveling steady gaze at Stewart. "These telegrams are addressed to me, but by good rights they belong to you, Mister Mayor, I'm inclined to believe."
There was irony in the Senator's tone; Morrison offered no reply.
"They're all of the same tenor, North," explained Senator Corson. "I'm bracketed with you. You'll probably find some of your own waiting at the State House for you. And more to come!"
"Compliments for the sane, safe, and statesmanlike way we handled a crisis and saved the good name of the state."
"Now, Morrison," raged the Governor, "you can begin to understand what kind of a damnable mess you've jammed me into along with Corson, here! That steer of a policeman will blab, that Scotchman will snarl, and that loose-mouthed girl will babble!"
"Governor, I haven't resented anything you have said to me, personally. You can go ahead and say a lot more to me, and I'll not resent it. But let me tell you that I can depend on the business loyalty of the folks who serve me; and if you go to classing my kind of helpers in with the cheap politicians with whom you have been associating, I shall say something to you that will break up this friendly party. My folks will not talk! Save your sarcasm for your agents who have been running around getting you into a real scrape by telling about those election returns."
He snapped about face, on his heels, and walked out of the door.
The haste displayed by Mayor Morrison in getting away from the study door suggested that he was glad to escape and was not fishing for any invitation to return for further parley.
But when he approached the head of the stairway he moved more slowly. His demeanor hinted that he would welcome some excuse, outside of politics, to keep him longer in the Corson mansion. He paused on the stairs and made an elaborate arrangement of a neck muffler as if he expected to confront polar temperature outside. He pulled on his gloves, inspected them critically as if to assure himself that there were no crevices where the cold could enter. He looked over the banisters. There was nobody in the reception-hall. He arranged the muffler some more. Step by step, very slowly, he descended as far as the landing where he had met Lana Corson joyously the night before. Not expectantly, with visage downcast, he looked behind him.