“I told you I was going to,” Wint repeated.
That night, his father spoke to him of the matter. The elderChase had heard it during the day, had heard what Amos had done. And there was fire in his eye. He had no sooner come into the house, before supper, than he called:
“Oh, Wint!”
Wint was upstairs, getting ready for supper. He answered: “Hello, dad.”
“Coming down?”
“Right away.”
“Well, hurry.”
Wint was surprisingly cheerful. The elation of battle was on him. He chuckled at the impatience in his father’s tone; but he did make haste, and a moment later joined the other man in the sitting room. The elder Chase was standing, stirring about, his face hot and angry.
“Look here, Wint,” he exclaimed, without parley. “I hear Amos Caretall turned you down, to-day.”
“Yes.”
“In the Post Office.”
“Yes, this morning.”
“Told Routt he was going to win.”
“Just that, dad.”
Chase threw up his hands furiously. “By God, Wint, I told you he’d cut your throat! The dirty....”
Wint put his hand up to his neck. “Cut my throat?” he repeated. “I seem to be all here.”
“You wouldn’t believe me, Wint. But I warned you.”
“Yes, you did.”
“What do you say now to this fine friend of yours? Damn the man!”
“I say he’s started trouble for himself.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I’m going to prove that when he said Routt would be elected, he was either a fool or a liar.”
Chase banged his hand on the table beside him till the lamp jumped in its place, and the shade tilted to one side. Mrs. Chase came bustling in just then, and straightened it, and protested anxiously: “I declare, Winthrop, you’re the hardest man around the house. You do disturb things so. I don’t see—”
“Caretall has turned against Wint,” Chase told her.
She nodded wisely. “Well, didn’t you always say he would?”
“Of course I did. Wint wouldn’t believe me. Now he’s done it.”
“He ought to be ashamed of himself,” Mrs. Chase declared. “But I always did think you were wrong, Wint, to be so friendly with a man who had treated your father as he did. He—”
“I know you did, mother.”
Chase cried: “You take it almighty calmly, Wint. Isn’t there any blood in you, son? Don’t you ever get mad? Damn it, the man ought to be kicked out of town.”
Wint laughed good-naturedly. “Oh, I don’t know. He has a right to support Jack if he wants to.”
“A right? What have his rights to do with it? By God, I’d have more respect for you if you could get good and mad!”
Wint chuckled. “I’ll try to work up a fever if you like. I always want your respect, dad.”
Chase said in a softer tone: “You always have it, Wint. You’ve earned it. But it makes my blood boil to see Caretall do this to you. To my son.”
“It’s terrible,” Wint agreed whimsically; and Chase protested:
“I believe you’re laughing at me.”
Wint shook his head anxiously. “No. But I don’t see that it does any good to get excited. I’m aiming to keep my head—and my job.”
“You’re going to fight?”
“Fight?” Wint echoed. “Why, dad, you won’t be able to see me for dust.”
“You’ve waked up at last. You’re not going to sit back and let Routt lie about you, and let Amos trick you.”
“I’m going to fight,” said Wint. “Also I’m going to win.”
Chase exclaimed: “I believe you can. If you try.”
“You know,” said Wint, “in a way I’m glad this has happened.”
“Glad?” Chase asked. “For God’s sake, why?”
Wint touched his arm in a comradely way. “Because now you and I can line up together. Fight side by side. I’d rather have you with me than Amos.”
Chase said, with a sudden humility: “Amos might be able to help you more than I can.”
“I’d rather have your personal vote than all the votes Amos can swing.”
“You’d have had that, anyway.”
“Well, isn’t that worth being crossed by Amos?”
Chase said: “But don’t fool yourself, Wint. Don’t imagine this is going to be easy. Caretall is powerful.”
Wint said with a slow energy: “I’ve done some thinking, dad. Amos is powerful. But—I don’t know just how to say it, but what I mean is this. I think I’ve been a good Mayor. I’ve tried to be a good one, anyway. And if a fellow tries to do the right thing, it seems to me the world has a habit of turning his way. I’ve done my share, straight out and out. And I’m going to the voters on that record. If there’s anything in—democracy—then I can beat Amos. He’s cleverer; he’s better at tricks and contraptions. But he can’t beat the right thing, dad. And—I’ve a hunch that the right is on my side, on our side, in this.”
“Right or wrong,” Chase declared, “we’ll lick him if there’s any way in the world it can be done.” His eyes lighted. “I believe I can get Kite to line up with you.”
Wint shook his head. “No.”
“I think I can,” Chase urged. “He hates Amos.”
“I don’t want him,” said Wint. “This is a clean fight.”
“You want all the help you can get.”
“All the decent help. There are enough decent folk in town to put this thing through.”
“You can’t be too squeamish, Wint.”
“I’m too squeamish to take help from Kite,” said Wint. “That’s flat, dad. Put it out of your head.”
Mrs. Chase was still doing her own work. She called them to supper, just then; and while they ate, she told them how tired she was. “I declare,” she said, “I wish Hetty wouldcome back here. I saw her, uptown, yesterday; and I asked her to. But she wouldn’t. Said she had a better job. I told Mrs. Hullis last night that the girl—”
“Hetty never cooked a better supper than this,” her husband told her; and the little woman smiled happily, and bridled like a girl, and said:
“Now, Winthrop, you’re always telling me things like that, when you know they’re not true. I’m just a—”
Wint laughed: “Quit apologizing for yourself, mother. It’s a darned bad habit. Tell people you’re a wonder, and they’ll believe you. I’ve found that out. That’s the way I’m going to be re-elected.”
“You can tell them that, but you have to back it up,” his father reminded him. “Brag’s not so bad, if there’s something to base it on.”
“Well, isn’t there?” Wint asked quietly; and his father’s eyes lighted, and he cried:
“Yes, son, by Heaven, there is!”
Wint made no move, during the next day or two; but he laid his plans. He intended to do a great many things in the last week before election. He would concentrate his effort in those last days, so that the effect should not have time to disappear. He talked with Dick Hoover, and Dick’s father; he talked with others. And he was surprised to find that such loyal supporters of Amos as Sam O’Brien and Ed Howe and even James T. Hollow were inclined to support him. Support him in spite of Amos. Sam told him as much.
He met Sam at the moving-picture show that night; that is to say, he met Sam just outside. And Sam and Hetty Morfee were together. That surprised Wint; he had not even known that they were friends. But it was obvious that they were very good friends indeed. When he stopped to speak to them, Hetty looked at him with an appealing defiance. He wondered if Sam knew. He did not think it would matter. Sam was the sort who could, if he chose, forgive.
He spoke to Sam of the coming election; and Sam said: “Sure, I’m for you. Amos’s all right in Congress. But he’d make a mighty poor Mayor. I’m for you, Wint, m’boy. You’ve got nerve; and you’re funny, sometimes. Lord, but I’ve thought there was times when I’d die laughing at you. But you’re there, Wint. You can have me.”
He and Hetty went away together, and Wint watched them, forgetting what Sam had said in wondering about Sam and Hetty.
He got further comfort the next day from a man as close to Amos as Peter Gergue. Peter told him it looked as though Routt would win. “But there’s a pile that’ll vote for you,” he added. “It ain’t hurt you much, Amos quitting.” He looked all around furtively, and fumbled in his back hair, and said: “Amos didn’t do you such a bad turn, even if he meant to. I might give you a vote myself, Wint. I don’t know but I might.”
Wint laid plans for rallies on Friday and Saturday nights of the week before election. On Monday and Tuesday of that week, he worked all day, preparing the words he meant to say at those rallies. It was tough work; it was hard for him to put his own determination into words.
Tuesday night, the first of November, there came a diversion. Jim Radabaugh telephoned to him at midnight, summoning him out of bed. When Wint answered the ’phone, the marshal asked:
“That you, Wint?”
“Yes.”
“You r’member you told me to get after the bootleggers?”
“Of course.”
“Well, I’ve done that little thing.”
Wint exclaimed: “First rate. You mean you’ve arrested some one?”
“I should say I had.”
“Who?” Wint asked.
“You know Lutcher?”
“Of course.”
“Him,” said Radabaugh.
THAT Radabaugh should have arrested Lutcher was almost as though he had arrested Kite himself; and Wint knew it. It brought matters to an issue, direct and unavoidable. Lutcher, for all practical purposes, was Kite. His arrest meant an open defiance to the head and front of the opposition. Wint, characteristically, leaped at the chance. He might have been more lenient with a lesser man.
He asked the marshal: “Where is he?”
“Locked up,” said Radabaugh.
“In the calaboose?”
“Yeah. Him and the fire horses are all little pals together.”
“You’ve got the evidence?”
“Sure.”
“No doubt about it?”
“Not a bit. I’ll tell you—”
“That can wait till morning. What does he say?”
“Acts like he wasn’t surprised. Acts like he expected it. Matter of fact, he pretty near invited me to pinch him.”
Wint nodded to himself. “That means they’re looking for trouble.”
“I’d say so.”
“Haven’t seen Kite, have you?”
“Hear he’s out of town. Be back Thursday.”
“All right. We’ll hold Lutcher till then and have it out.”
Wint heard a gulp that told him Radabaugh was shifting that bulge in his cheek. “He’s wanted to furnish bail,” the marshal said.
“Nothing doing,” Wint told him.
“We-ell—he’s got a right to want to.”
“We’re sound sleepers here. You couldn’t raise me with the telephone,” Wint suggested.
“Lutcher’s all dressed up in a yellow vest and everything; and he didn’t fetch his jail pajamas with him.”
“He can sleep in the yellow vest.”
“It’s your funeral,” Radabaugh decided philosophically. “Whatever you say.”
“That’s right.” And Wint added: “I’m glad you got him, Jim. Good work.”
“Oh, he weren’t so much to get. I told you he put himself in the way of it.”
“Just the same, you had good nerve.”
“We-ell—maybe so.”
Wint went back to bed; but he didn’t go to sleep. He was tingling with the pleasurable excitement of combat; and he was immensely pleased at this chance to give evidence of the sincerity of his fight for a clean Hardiston. Those orders to Radabaugh which had become something like a proverb in Hardiston.... This was their test. He meant that they should meet the test.
He could not decide whether the incident would help him or hurt him at the polls; it was impossible to tell. But—he did not care. Hurt or help, his course would be the same. Unchangeable. Lutcher should get the limit. Whatever the evidence justified. The rest was on the lap of the gods. Let them take care of it.
It may have been an hour or two before he was asleep again; and he woke in the morning a little tired because of the sleep he had lost. But the cold tub revived him; he was cheerful enough when he came down to breakfast; and when his father appeared, Wint told him the news.
“Something doing, dad,” he said.
Chase looked at him in quick and surprised interest; and he asked: “What? What do you mean, Wint?”
“Did you hear the telephone last night, about midnight?”
“No.”
“I did,” said Mrs. Chase. “I thought I heard the bell; butyour father was asleep, and I wasn’t sure. I came to the head of the stairs, but you were already down.”
“I answered as quickly as I could. The bell only rang once or twice.”
“Who was it?” Chase asked quickly.
“Radabaugh. Jim. The marshal. He’s arrested Lutcher.”
“Lutcher! What for?”
“Bootlegging!”
Chase uttered an involuntary exclamation. “Lutcher? He’s Kite’s right-hand man.”
“Absolutely.”
“Radabaugh arrested him?”
“Yes.”
“Has he got a case?”
“Jim always has a case, when he makes an arrest.”
“But Lutcher.... He’s shrewd. Knows how to cover his tracks.”
“He didn’t cover well enough this time.” Wint’s elation was singing in his voice.
“But he—”
“As a matter of fact,” said Wint, “Radabaugh thinks Lutcher allowed himself to be caught. Thinks he wanted to get arrested.”
“By God, that doesn’t sound reasonable!”
“He’ll be sorry.”
“They’ve got something up their sleeves, Wint.”
“So have I!”
“You—What?”
“My arms,” said Wint cheerfully. “With a fist on each one and a punch in each fist.”
Chase looked uncertain. “They’ll try some trick.”
Wint touched the other’s arm. “Don’t worry. They’ve got to fight in the open, now. The time’s short. And I’m not afraid of them in the open.”
“They’re treacherous. They’ll strike behind your back.”
“I’m not worried.”
But the older man was worried. He said little more; nevertheless his concern was plain. Wint was sorry, a little disappointed. His father’s uneasiness did not affect his own confidence. He was as sure of himself as before. But he had expected his father to be as confident as himself, as sure. To him, the matter of Lutcher simply offered an opportunity for a telling blow; but it was evident that to his father the incident was rather a threat than an opportunity.
He and his father walked downtown together; they separated when Wint turned aside toward the fire-engine house where his office was. The older man gave him a word of warning there. “Go carefully, Wint,” he urged. “Watch yourself.”
“Don’t worry.”
“Be sure of the law, Wint. Don’t make a mistake. They would jump on it.”
“That’s Foster’s job. And I’m no ... I’ve studied up a bit.”
“Take care.”
“Right, dad.”
They separated, and Wint went on to his office. Radabaugh was not there, but he appeared a little later. “I’ve just had Lutcher up to Sam O’Brien’s for breakfast,” he explained. “He wanted to go to the hotel; but I told him Sam had the contract to victual the city prisoners.”
Wint chuckled. “Where is he now?”
“Down in the calaboose.”
“Does he still want to furnish bail?”
“Says he does.”
“Kite comes home to-morrow, doesn’t he?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, we’ll let Lutcher out on bail till then. I’m curious to hear what Kite will have to say.”
Radabaugh shifted the plug in his cheek. “Think he’ll have anything to say?”
“Don’t you?”
“We-ell, he might.”
“Bring Lutcher up, and we’ll turn him loose.”
Lutcher came. Wint chuckled inwardly at sight of what Radabaugh had called a yellow vest. It was an ornate affair; no doubt of it. He was inclined to expect an outbreak fromLutcher, but the big, bald man was cheerfully amiable. Wint said: “Sorry we had to hold you in jail. The marshal tried to get me, but I’m a sound sleeper.”
“Well, the bed wasn’t soft,” Lutcher admitted. “But I can stand it.”
“I’m going to hold you till to-morrow,” Wint said. “Unless you want to plead guilty and accept sentence now.”
“Guilty? No, sir. You can’t pin anything on me, Wint. You ought to know that.”
“We’ll see,” Wint told him. “Want to stay in jail, or furnish bail?”
“Bail, of course. I can get any one.”
“I’d rather have money.”
“Check any good?”
“I’ll cash it before you leave here.”
Lutcher said amiably that that was all right, and asked the amount. Wint said “Four hundred.” And Lutcher whistled, and protested: “That’s pretty hard.”
“Harder than the bed in the calaboose?”
Lutcher grinned, and wrote. Wint took the check and his hat and left Lutcher with the marshal. He went to the bank, drew the money, and deposited the cash to the city’s account. “Just so there can be no question of stopping payment on that check,” he explained.
Back at his office, he told Lutcher he was free to go. Lutcher, contriving to look dapper and well-dressed in spite of his night, took himself away. Then Wint turned to the marshal.
“Now, Jim, how about it?” he asked. “What’s the case against him?”
Radabaugh shifted the knob in his cheek to clear the way for speech; and he sat down, and hitched his trousers up, and opened his coat and put his thumbs in his armholes. “We-ell,” he said, “it was like this.”
He had been scouting around for two weeks past, he said, according to Wint’s orders, without discovering anything. But the afternoon before, an automobile had come into town with some boxes in the tonneau and a stranger driving. It made some stir on Main Street; and then it drove openly enough toLutcher’s place, on the alley. He had seen the boxes carried up Lutcher’s stair.
“First off,” he explained, “I figured it couldn’t be what it looked like. Didn’t seem as if they’d be so open about it. Lutcher had been lying low. I figured they might be aiming to get me excited, just to make a fool of me. So I held off a spell.
“But the thing stuck in my head. They might be trying a game, and they might not. I decided to keep an eye on Lutcher’s place, and I did. All that afternoon.”
Wint said: “They were brazen, eh?”
“I’d say so,” Radabaugh agreed; and he shifted his plug and went on.
“Nothing happened, particular, all afternoon. I et my supper; and after it was dark, I took another walk down that way. Met Jack Routt coming out of the alley; and he stopped me and talked to me. It was on his breath. Plain enough. He must have knowed that; must have meant me to smell it. He was so darned open, I suspicioned there was a trick. So I still held off.
“But I took a walk through the alley about nine o’clock. All quiet. A light in Lutcher’s place, that was all. Some men up there. I wondered.
“I walked through again, after a while. Sounded like they was having a game. Finally, about a quarter past eleven, I come along through, and some one yelled. Sounded boozy. So I says to myself: ‘Jim, you’re the goat. You got to bite, if it’s only to see the joke.’ So I went up the stairs. Quiet.”
“No search warrant?” Wint asked.
“Why, no,” said Radabaugh innocently. “I was just dropping in for a drink, like I’d done before. Some time back.”
Wint grinned. “Of course. Go ahead.”
“We-ell, the door wasn’t locked,” said Radabaugh. “So I knew I was meant to come in. And I went in. On in where they were. Four of them. Tuttle, and Harley, and Gates, and this Lutcher. I went in; and Tuttle throws a five-dollar bill to Lutcher and says: ‘Here’s for that last bottle, Lutch.’
“Lutcher took it. And he’d seen me before he took it. Then he got up and says: ‘Hello, Jim. Have a drink?’
“So I told him to come along.”
He stopped; it was evident that his story was done. Wint nodded. “Well, that’s plain enough,” he agreed.
“It’s my evidence against theirs,” Radabaugh reminded him. “But that’s the way it’s got to be.”
“Your evidence is good enough for me.”
“Sure. But he’ll fight.”
“We can’t help that,” Wint reminded him. “All we can do is—soak him.” There was a sudden heat in his voice; and Radabaugh eyed him curiously and asked:
“In earnest, ain’t you?”
“Absolutely,” said Wint.
“Well, it never hurt any, to be in earnest. Go to it, boss.”
Hardiston talked it over that day, and wondered what Wint would do. Most people thought he would sentence Lutcher; some declared he would wait till after election, for fear of influencing the vote. Sam O’Brien laughed at this view. “Wint wasn’t ever afraid of anything,” he declared. “Why man, you make me laugh. He’ll soak Lutcher so hard Lutcher’ll need to be wrung out like a sponge.”
There were others who were loyal to Wint; and there were some few—not very vociferous except among those of like views—who were loyal to Lutcher. But for the most part, people waited. Waited for Kite to come home. This was his fight; that was understood. Lutcher was his man.
He came on the early morning train next day; and his coming was marked. Lutcher met him at the train. They came up the hill from the station together, and went to the Bazaar, and were alone there for a little while. Routt joined them presently. Routt would represent Lutcher in court, he said. But Kite laughed at that.
“It will never come to court, man,” he told Routt. “You know that.”
“I’m not so sure,” Jack objected.
“Then we’ll smash that young rip, flat as an egg,” said Kite harshly, with a gesture of his clenched fist. “But he’ll crawl, I say.”
Lutcher got up. “I’m willing to see that,” he declared amiably. “Come along and stage the show.”
So they went down to the fire-engine house together, and they found the council room where Wint held court crowded with Hardiston folk who wanted to see what was going to happen. Radabaugh was there; and he told them Wint was in his office, in the rear. Kite bade Routt and Lutcher sit down. “I want to see the Mayor,” he told Radabaugh, in a peremptory tone. “Take me in.”
Radabaugh shifted the bulge in his cheek, and told Kite to stay where he was. “I’ll see if he wants to see you,” he said, and went into Wint’s office. A moment later, he appeared at the door and beckoned to Kite, and there was an instant’s hush in the big room as every one watched Kite go in. Then they began to whisper and talk together; and instantly were still again, trying to hear what Wint and Kite were saying. Radabaugh had shut the door behind Kite and stood, with his back against it, indolently studying the crowd.
They tried to hear; but they did not hear anything except a murmur of voices now and then. They could only guess at what had been said from what happened when Kite had been with Wint five minutes, or perhaps ten. At the end of that period, the door opened so suddenly that Radabaugh was thrown off balance. He stumbled to one side, and Wint came out and sat down at his desk. Kite was on Wint’s heels; he whispered to Wint fiercely, but Wint, without heeding Kite, said to the clerk:
“Call Lutcher’s case.”
And at that Kite looked at Wint for a moment with a red and furious face, and then he turned and bolted for the stairs and was gone.
Wint’s countenance was steady, his lips were white. He heard Radabaugh’s story of the arrest of Lutcher; and when it was done, he asked Routt, who was appearing for Lutcher, whetherthe man denied anything. Routt hesitated, uncertain what Kite would wish him to do. He whispered with Lutcher. Then he stood up and said:
“He has decided to plead guilty, your Honor.”
Wint nodded, consulted in a low voice with Foster, and said: “Two hundred and costs.”
That was all. While Routt and Lutcher arranged the payment of the fine, the crowd began to disperse, a few lingering in the hope of some fresh sensation. And those who lingered and those who went their way were agreeing, one with another, that this matter was not ended.
“Kite’s got something up his sleeve,” Gates told Bob Dyer. “You wait and see.”
And Dyer nodded, and grinned, and said: “Yes, wait till old V. R. takes a hand.”
When every one was gone except Radabaugh, and Foster, and one or two others, Wint got up and went into his office and shut the door.
THOSE minutes—five or ten—which Wint spent with V. R. Kite in his office behind the council chamber, before he sentenced Lutcher, left Wint depressed, shaken by foreboding. He was like one beset in the darkness by enemies he could not see. He felt the imminence of disaster without being able to avert it. The world was all wrong. Life had turned her thumbs down. There could be only destruction ahead.
He felt this, without being able to put a name to the peril. It was intangible; Kite had only hinted at it. But the little buzzard of a man had been in deadly earnest. Wint was sure of that. So.... There was nothing to do but wait for the blow to fall; and waiting is the hardest thing in the world to do.
Kite had come into Wint’s office that morning with a smile in his dry eyes. It was a smile that had triumph in it; and it held also a certain mean magnanimity to a fallen foe. It was as though Kite knew Wint was beaten, and expected him to surrender, and was willing to accept the surrender while despising Wint for yielding. Wint had expected the little man to come in anger, with protestations, and open threats, and a desperate sort of defiance. He was prepared for these things; he was not prepared for the confidence in Kite’s bearing. And his first glimpse of it disturbed him, made him uneasy.
Kite sat down without being invited; he put his hat on Wint’s desk; and he said in an amiably triumphant way:
“Well, young man?”
He seemed to expect Wint to speak; but Wint had nothing to say to Kite. He replied: “You wanted to speak to me?”
“Not exactly,” said Kite. “I wanted to hear what you have to say.”
“I?” said Wint. “I have nothing to say, except what I shall say to Lutcher in court presently.”
“Ah, yes, Lutcher,” Kite murmured. “Lutcher, to be sure.” And he nodded as though Lutcher were scarce worth considering, and kept silent, to force Wint into speech.
This trick of keeping silent, forcing the other man to make the advances, was a favorite with Amos Caretall. Amos had beaten V. R. Kite at the game more than once; but Wint had beaten Amos. He beat Kite, now. The older man was driven to speak first. He said, in a quick rush of words:
“You know you’re done for. Done. Skinned. Licked. Down. What have you got to say?”
Before a direct attack, Wint recovered himself. He laughed. “I should say you were wide of the mark, Kite,” he said cheerfully. “That is, if I know what you’re talking about. The mayoralty?”
“Of course. Your hide is on the fence.”
Wint shook his head. “I haven’t felt it being removed; and they say the process is painful. So I would have felt it go.”
“Don’t joke, young man. You know what I mean.”
“I know,” said Wint, “that I’m going to be elected Mayor. I know Routt is licked. If that’s what you mean.”
Kite laughed, a harsh, short, mirthless laugh. “What’s the use of bluffing? I tell you, I know.”
Wint said a little impatiently: “You’re talking in a mysterious way, Kite. I don’t see your object. If you’ve no plain words in your system, we’re wasting time.”
“I’ve a plain word for you. Hardiston will have a plain word for you.” There was a deadly menace in the little man’s tone, and Wint felt it, and was a little impressed. But he managed a smile.
“I’ve a plain word for Lutcher, too,” he said. “You’re keeping Lutcher waiting.”
“Oh, Lutcher,” said Kite again. “You’ll let him go.”
“Hardly,” said Wint; and Kite cried:
“I say you will. Don’t be a fool. I tell you I know.”
“You may know some things,” said Wint slowly. “But you are wrong about Lutcher. He gets the limit.”
Kite leaned forward; and his voice was almost kind. “Young man,” he said, “you’ve good nerve. You’re a good fighter. You’re a vote getter, too, in an awkward way. If I didn’t have the winning hand, I should be worried about what you can do. But I have; from the person who knows. You’re beaten. You might as well accept it.”
“If I’m beaten,” said Wint, “I’ll know it by midnight of the eighth. Not by your telling.”
Kite lost his temper for an instant; and he cried: “You miserable little dog! With not even the grace to know you’re whipped.”
Wint said coldly: “Just what are you talking about, Kite? You wanted to see me. Well, here I am. What have you got to say? I’ll give you about thirty seconds more.”
“Thirty seconds?” Kite echoed. “You’ll give me all the time I want. I tell you, you’re done.”
“What have you got to say?”
“Go out there, and.... No, first write out for me a notice of your withdrawal from the mayoralty fight. Then go out there and turn Lutcher loose. If you do these two things, they’ll save you, for a while. And nothing else in the world can save you.”
Wint—there could be no question of this—was frightened. He was afraid of the certainty in Kite’s manner, afraid of the mystery behind the other’s confidence. But it is braver to appear brave when you are frightened than when there is no fright in you; and Wint, frightened though he might be, was yet brave. He rose.
“Time’s up, Kite,” he said.
Kite exclaimed: “Don’t be a fool. I don’t want to ruin you. Save yourself, boy.”
Wint opened the door and stepped out into the other room.
That was Thursday morning, five days before election. A fair, fine day of the sort you will see in Hardiston in the fall. The sun was warm, the air was crisp and dry. It was a day when simply living was pleasant; when to draw breath was a joy.Ordinarily, Wint would have drunk this day to the full. But there was abroad in Hardiston a whispered word; men looked at him curiously as he passed them. No one seemed to know exactly what was coming; yet they looked upon Wint as one looks upon a man about to die. Kite had said nothing. From the fire-engine house he had gone direct to his Bazaar and stayed there. One or two of his lieutenants visited him there during the morning.
Kite said nothing; no one had any definite word. Yet Hardiston was whispering its guesses. Somehow the rumor had gone abroad that Wint was done, that Kite was about to strike. There was a lively and an eager anticipation. It is always easy to anticipate the misfortunes of others; and there will always be those to rejoice in the imminent downfall of one who has held himself high. Wint had enemies enough; even some of those whom he had counted his friends looked askance at him this day.
When he went to the Post Office for the noon mail, he encountered Hetty on the street. Because he was thoughtful and abstracted, he spoke to her curtly. Hetty did not speak to him at all. She turned away her head. But Wint, already passing by, did not mark this.
He met B. B. Beecham in the Post Office, and stopped in with B. B. at theJournaloffice afterward. B. B. talked pleasantly of a number of things, till Wint could be still no longer. He asked abruptly:
“B. B., have you heard anything?”
The editor looked surprised. “How do you mean?” he asked.
“What’s Kite up to?”
B. B. said: “I don’t know. Is he up to something?”
“He came to me before court this morning and demanded that I withdraw from this fight and let Lutcher go.”
“Demanded it?”
“Yes.”
“On what ground?”
“He made some covert threat. He was not specific.”
B. B. shook his head. “I hadn’t heard.”
“Oh, no one knows this,” Wint told him. “I refused, of course, and fined Lutcher. Now every one in town seems to know that something is going to drop on me.”
“What is there that he can bring against you?”
“Not a thing. Except the old stuff. What everybody knows.”
B. B. nodded. “I should not worry, if I were you, if there’s nothing.”
“There isn’t anything, I tell you,” Wint exclaimed impatiently.
“Then what can he do?”
Wint got up, a little weary. “All right,” he said. “I thought you might have heard.”
B. B. shook his head. “Not a thing.”
Wint went to Sam O’Brien’s restaurant for dinner. It was a little after his usual hour, and there were only two or three others on the stools before the high, scrubbed counter. O’Brien waited on Wint himself, and Wint ate in silence, under the other’s sympathetic eye.
When he paid for his dinner, O’Brien asked heartily:
“Well, Wint, m’ boy, how’s tricks?”
Wint looked up at the other and smiled wearily. “Rotten, Sam,” he said.
O’Brien protested. “Lord, now, I’d not say that. As fine a day as it is.”
“I wasn’t talking about the weather,” Wint told him. “It’s just.... I guess I’m in the dumps, Sam. I’ve got a hunch. I’ve got a hunch something’s going to drop on me like a ton of bricks.”
“A hunch like that is bum company,” O’Brien commented. “Where did you get it, Wint?”
Wint shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Lord, boy! You act like you’d lost your nerve, Wint.”
Wint said: “Maybe I have.” He was terribly depressed, almost ready to drop out and surrender.
“You’d nerve enough when you soaked Lutcher, this morning,” Sam reminded him. “I was proud of you, m’ son. You’ve give me many a laugh, Wint, but I was proud o’ your cool nerve this day.”
“Oh, I’m not worried about Lutcher.”
“I’d not be. Him nor his. The old buzzard of a Kite, neither.”
Wint said: “I don’t know. Kite’s got something up his sleeve.”
“That’s as much as to say that he’s tricky. It’s these magicians that has things up their sleeves. Full of tricks. You stick to the middle of the road, Wint, and never mind their tricks. They’ll trick their own selves.”
Wint shook his head. “That’s all right. But what can I do?”
“Do?” Sam echoed. “Why, fight ’em like that dog of yours fit Mrs. Moody’s Jim.” He nodded to Muldoon, curled as always near Wint’s feet; and Wint dropped his hand to Muldoon’s grizzled head. He was apt to turn to Muldoon in trouble. The dog was his shadow, always with him; but it was when he was troubled that Wint gave most heed to the terrier. At Wint’s caress, Muldoon rolled his eyes up without moving his head; and Sam said:
“Look at him grin; the nervy pup. He’s telling you to take a brace, m’ son. You can’t scare the dog.”
“I’m not scared.”
“You act damn like it,” said Sam frankly; and Wint protested:
“It’s only that I’m sick of it all. Sick of the fight, and the mud-throwing. And getting no thanks.”
“Hell’s bells,” Sam exclaimed. “You talk like a woman!”
Wint looked at him curiously. “What’s Kite up to, Sam? Have you heard?”
“Heard some rats say he would rip you up. And I told them you’d be doing some ripping, about that time. You’re not going to make me out a liar, Wint. Are you now?”
“Oh, I suppose I’ll fight.”
He left the restaurant and walked down to Hoover’s office and secluded himself in the back room; but his studies couldnot hold him. There was a curiously passive despair upon the boy. He could not shake it off. The whole thing seemed so little worth while. If there had been a chance to fight.... But the peril was intangible. He could not come to grips with it. He could not even be sure there was peril. He could not be sure of anything. Not even of himself. He asked himself despairingly: “Are you going to be a quitter, Wint?” And then thought hopelessly: “Oh, what’s the use?”
In mid-afternoon, Dick Hoover looked in and said Gergue wanted to see Wint. Wint was surprised. “What does he want?” he asked. “Gergue?” He got up and went to the door and saw Peter waiting; and he called: “Come along in here.”
Gergue came at the invitation. His hat was off; he was fumbling in the tangle of hair at the back of his neck. There was a curiously furtive uncertainty about the man. Wint thrust a chair toward Peter with his foot, and said: “Sit down.” When Gergue was seated, and slicing a fill for his pipe, Wint asked:
“What’s on your mind?”
Gergue looked at him sidewise, stuffing the crumbled tobacco into the black bowl. And he asked: “Wint, where do you figure I stand?”
Wint was surprised. “You mean—in this business between Routt and me?”
Gergue nodded. “Yeah.”
“Why, with Routt, I suppose,” Wint told him.
“Why d’you figure that?”
“You’re tied up with Amos.”
Gergue scratched a match. “Wint,” he said, “Amos is a fine man. He does things his own way; but in the end, he pretty near always turns out pretty near right.”
“Well, that’s his record,” Wint agreed. “He’s usually on the winning side.”
“Don’t let that get away from you,” said Gergue. “Don’t you forget that, Wint!”
Wint laughed harshly; and he said: “I’m not likely to. I counted on him in this, you know.”
Gergue leaned toward him. “Thing is, Wint, I’m wonderin’ what you’d think if I told you something?”
“That would depend on what you told me.”
“Something for your own good. Help you some.”
Wint said, amiably enough: “I want to win this fight, Peter. But—after Amos’s stand—I don’t particularly want any help from him. I’d mistrust it.”
“Say this come from me, personal.”
“You’re linked with Amos.”
Gergue nodded resignedly. “Have it so,” he agreed. “Anyway, I’m going to tell you.”
Wint said: “All right. What do you want to tell?”
Gergue hesitated for a while, choosing his words. At last he asked: “You wondering what Kite aims to do to trim you?”
“Yes.”
“Got any ideas?”
“No.”
Gergue looked at him shrewdly. “Know any way he could hit at you?”
“No. Not with the truth.”
Gergue hesitated; then he asked slowly: “Know any way he could hit at you with Hetty?”
“Hetty?” Wint echoed. “Hetty Morfee?”
“Yes. Her.”
Wint was stupefied with surprise. “Good Lord, no!”
“She got any reason to be against you?”
“No. I—She’s friendly, I think. Ought to be.”
Gergue puffed at his pipe. Then he got up. “Wint,” he said, “take it for what it’s worth. I hear he’s going to hit you with her.”
Wint exclaimed angrily: “You’re crazy, Peter. Or you’re.... Look here, did Amos send you?”
“No.”
“Is this some damned trick of his?”
“No.”
“Well, what in God’s name are you talking about?”
Gergue said thoughtfully: “I’ve said all I know. Think it over, Wint.”
He went out, with a surprising quickness, and was gone before Wint could frame other questions. The young man was left to consider the thing.
When Wint went home for supper, he was still mystified; but he was beginning to grow angry. Angry at the mere suggestion that lay behind Peter’s words. Angry at Gergue for saying them. And this anger was a more hopeful sign than his depression of the morning had been. He was fiercely resentful at Hardiston, at the whole world.
He met Joan, halfway home. That is to say, he overtook her on her way, and they walked home together. He was so absorbed in his own thoughts that he did not see there was something troubling the girl until she spoke of it. She said: “Wint, I met Agnes Caretall uptown.”
He nodded, scarce hearing; and Joan said: “She’s a good deal of a gossip, you know.”
There was something in her tone which caught his attention; and he looked at her sharply and asked: “What do you mean? What did she say?”
“She said Mr. Kite was going to ruin you,” Joan told him.
Wint laughed shortly. “Well, that’s no secret. At least it’s no secret that he wants to.”
“She said he was going to,” Joan insisted.
Wint asked: “How, since she knew so much, did she know how?”
Joan touched his arm. “Don’t be angry, Wint.”
But Wint was angry, even with Joan. He exclaimed harshly, after the fashion of angry men: “I’m not mad. What did she say?”
Joan told him. “She said they were going to link you up with Hetty.”
Wint exclaimed: “Lord! You too? I’m sick of that tale. Hetty!”
Joan begged: “But there isn’t anything, is there?”
Wint faced her hotly. “If you don’t know without being told.... Can’t I even count on you, Joan?”
“I only asked.”
They were at her gate, and Wint lifted his hat abruptly. “Think what you like,” he told her sharply. “Good afternoon!”
He left her there; left her, and Joan looked after him with troubled sympathy in her eyes, and something more. There was a mist of tears in them when she went on toward the house.
While they were at supper that night, the telephone rang, and Wint’s father answered. After a moment he came back into the dining room. “Wint,” he said, “it’s Kite.”
“Kite?” Wint demanded, pushing back his chair. “What does he want?”
“He wants to see you—and me. He says he’ll be out here at eight. He wants us to be here.”
Wint’s face turned black with anger; then he threw up one hand. “All right,” he cried, “tell Kite we’ll be here.”
WHEN Chase came back from the table after telling Kite that they would expect him at the appointed time, Wint asked:
“Did he say what he wanted?”
Mrs. Chase exclaimed: “I don’t think you ought to have let him come, Winthrop. I don’t want that man in my house. He—”
Chase answered Wint. “No. Just said he wanted to see us.” He was troubled; and he showed it. “What do you think he wants, Wint? Something about Lutcher?”
Wint shook his head. “I think he’s going to hit at me. Somehow. There’s been a rumor around town all day. They say he has something.”
Chase asked quickly: “Has he? Has he got anything on you, Wint?”
“Not that I know of. There’s nothing he could get. Nothing to get.” He looked at his father in a quick, appealing way. “Dad, I wish you’d just remember that, whatever happens. You know the worst there is to know about me. Anything else is just flat lie.”
His father nodded abstractedly. “Of course. But Kite is confoundedly clever. Now I wonder what he’s—”
“I always told you, Wint, that you hadn’t any business in politics,” Mrs. Chase exclaimed. “I don’t think it’s decent, the way men talk about each other. Why, Mrs. Hullis told me that Jack Routt is going around saying the most terrible things about you. That you—”
“I know, mother. That’s Jack’s idea of a campaign. We’ll show him his mistake next Tuesday.”
“But he says that you—”
“Now, mother,” her husband interrupted, “never mind. Wint, did you hear anything definite about Kite? What he’s planning....”
Wint hesitated; he had heard something definite. Definite but incredible. That which he had heard could not possibly be true; he could not believe it. To tell his father would only disturb the older man; he could not be sure how Chase would react to the report. He held his tongue. “No, nothing definite,” he said.
“Is he’s coming to see you about it, he must have something.”
Wint got up from the table. “Well,” he said abruptly, “we’ll soon know. It’s after seven, now.”
They went into the sitting room to wait; and the waiting was hard. Wint tried to read the daily; his father took a book from the shelves. But Wint’s eyes strayed from the printed columns. He was in a curiously numb state of mind. This was part hopelessness, part the sheer suspense of waiting. Wint was one of those men who in their moments of greatest passion and excitement become outwardly serene and calm. Their own emotions put a physical inhibition on them so that they are still, and do not speak. Once or twice Chase glanced toward his son and saw Wint motionless, apparently absorbed, apparently quite at ease. But actually Wint was stirring to the throbbing of his heart, held still by the very fury of his own dread and anger and suspense.
At fifteen minutes before eight, some one knocked on the front door. Wint said: “There he is,” and got up and went to the door; but when he opened it, Jack Routt stood there. Wint was surprised; he said slowly:
“Oh, you, Jack?”
Routt nodded, a little ill at ease. “Is Kite here?” he asked.
“No. He’s coming.”
Routt smiled ingratiatingly. “I don’t know what he wants. He told me to meet him here about eight, to have a talk with you.”
“Told you to?”
“Yes. I asked him what he meant; and he said to wait. I supposed he had made arrangements with you.”
Wint said dully: “Yes, he has. He’s coming.” And after a moment, he added: “You might as well come in.”
Routt grinned. “You’re damned cordial,” he remarked.
“Oh, that’s all right,” Wint assured him abstractedly. He was thinking so swiftly that he seemed stupefied. His father came into the hall, and Wint said: “Here’s Jack Routt. Kite told him to come.”
Chase looked at Routt uncertainly; and Routt said: “I’ll get out if you say so.”
Wint shook his head. “No. Sit down. Go on in.”
They went into the sitting room; but before they could sit down, some one else knocked. This time it was B. B. Beecham. He stood in the door when Wint opened it, and smiled, and said:
“I’m not sure I understand, Wint. V. R. Kite telephoned me there was to be some sort of a conference here, about a matter for the good of Hardiston. I thought it curious that the word should come from him.”
Wint laughed harshly. “All right, come in,” he said. “I don’t know any more about it than you do. I suppose Kite thought it would be cheaper to use our house than to hire a hall.”
B. B. said simply: “I don’t want to inconvenience you.”
“Come in,” Wint repeated. “I’m up in the air, that’s all. Routt’s here already. Kite will be along, I suppose.”
“Routt?” B. B. echoed, in surprise.
“Yes; in there.”
Wint and B. B. went into the sitting room where Chase and Routt were talking awkwardly. After the first greetings, no one could think of anything more to say. B. B. broke the silence. “I saw a robin to-day,” he said. “They stay here, sometimes, right through the winter.”
Birds and flowers were B. B.’s hobbies; he knew them all. And other people recognized this interest in him, and shared it. They liked his enthusiasm. Chase said: “Is that so? I had no idea they stayed. It doesn’t seem to me I ever saw one in winter.”
“They live in the sheltered places,” said B. B. “You’ll find them in the woods, and the brushy hollows, and around houses where there is a good deal of shrubbery. Especially if the people put out a lump of suet for them to feed on.”
“Why, everybody ought to do that,” Chase declared, with a quick interest. “You ought to tell them to, in theJournal, B. B.”
B. B. smiled and said he was telling people just this, every week. He spoke of other birds. Chase seemed interested. Routt and Wint said nothing. Routt seemed uncomfortable; and that was a strange thing to see in this assured young man. Wint’s eyes were lowered; he was thinking. Lost in a maze of conjectures. Kite would be coming, any minute now.
B. B. was still talking about birds when Kite came. Wint heard footsteps on the walk in front of the house, heard them come up the steps. There were several men. Not Kite alone. The sounds told him that. He waited, sitting still, till they knocked on the front door. Then he went out into the hall and opened the door and saw Kite standing there, his dry little face triumphant, malignantly rejoicing.
Wint looked at Kite steadily for a moment; and then he lifted his eyes and saw, behind Kite, Amos Caretall. And at one side, Ed Skinner of theSun. He had thought there were others. But he saw no one else.
Kite stepped inside the door. Skinner and Amos stood still till Wint asked: “Well—what is it?”
Kite said then: “Come in, Amos. You too, Ed.”
Amos, his big head on one side, his eyes squinting in a friendly way, drawled a question: “How about it, Wint? Kite says he’s got something to talk over. Asked me to come along. But I don’t allow he’s got any right to ask me into your house.”
“Come in, Amos. Both of you,” Wint said; and Kite repeated:
“Yes, come in. I know what I’m talking about. This young man isn’t likely to object.”
“All right, Wint?” Amos asked again; and Wint nodded, and Amos lumbered into the hall. Then Chase came to the door that led from the sitting room into the hall; and at sightof Amos, he stopped very still, with a white face. Wint crossed to his father’s side and told him quietly:
“It’s all right. Kite brought him. It’s all right, dad.”
Chase exclaimed: “How do I know it’s all right? I don’t understand all this mystery. Kite, by what right do you use my house for a meeting place? What is all this, anyway? What is the idea, Kite?”
Kite smiled his dry and mirthless smile; and he said mockingly: “Do not fret yourself, Chase. Our concern is with this young man, with Wint. You shall hear.” He was stripping off his overcoat in a business-like way. This was Kite’s big hour, and he meant to make the most of it. He dropped the coat on the seat in the hall; and Amos and Ed Skinner imitated him; and Kite said briskly, rubbing his hands:
“Now, then, where can we have our little talk?”
Chase looked at Wint uncertainly; and Wint, still held by that curious inhibition which made his voice level and low, said quietly:
“The sitting room. Come in, gentlemen.”
There were not chairs enough for them in the sitting room. Wint went into the dining room for another, and found his mother there, putting away the dishes. She asked in a whisper:
“Who is it, Wint? Mr. Kite?”
Wint nodded. “Yes, mother. Several men. You’d better go upstairs the back way.”
He was so steady that she was reassured; he did not seem excited or disturbed. Yet was there something about him that made her think of a hurt and weary little boy; and she laughed softly, and put her arm around him and made him kiss her. He did so, patting her head; and then he said:
“There, mother. Run along.”
She went out toward the kitchen, and Wint took the chair he had come for into the other room. He found the others all sitting down. Amos had slumped into the biggest and the easiest chair in the room. B. B. sat straight in the straightest chair, his round, firm hands clasped on his knees. B. B.’s legs were short and chubby; and his lap was barely big enough to hold his clasped hands. Ed Skinner and Chase were on thecouch at one side of the room. Routt sat on the piano stool, twirling slowly back and forth through a six-inch arc. Kite, in the manner of a presiding officer, had pulled his chair to the table in the middle of the room and sat there very stiffly, his head held high in that ridiculous likeness to a turkey.
Wint placed his chair just inside the door, and sat down. He and Kite were the only composed persons in the room. B. B. looked acutely embarrassed and uncomfortable; Chase was angry; Skinner was nervous; Routt’s ease was palpably assumed. And Amos was fumbling uncertainly with his black old pipe. He asked, when Wint came in:
“Your mother mind smoke in her sitting room?”
Wint said: “No; go ahead.” He filled his own pipe, and Amos sliced a fill from his plug and deliberately prepared his smoke and lighted it. Kite seemed in no hurry to begin. He had taken a letter or two and a slip of paper from his pockets and was studying them in silence. Wint thought he recognized that slip of paper. A check.... It seemed to him that a cold hand clutched his throat. He felt a sick sense of the hopelessness of it all; a sick despair. Not so much on his own account.
Kite at last looked around the room, and said importantly:
“Well, gentlemen!”
Wint’s father could be still no longer. He cried: “See here, Kite, what’s all this tomfoolery? What’s this nonsense? It’s an outrage. Be quick, or be gone. I’ve no time to waste.”
Kite looked at Chase; and then he looked at Wint and asked maliciously: “Do you bid me be gone, too, young man?”
Wint shook his head. “Say what you have to say,” he suggested; and there was a great weariness in his voice.
Kite nodded. “I mean to.” And to Chase: “You see, the young man understands it is in his interest to handle this thing among ourselves.”
“To handle what thing?” Chase demanded. Kite cleared his throat.
“A matter,” he said importantly, “that concerns first of all the good name of Hardiston. A matter that concerns, veryintimately, the good name of your son. A matter that will be decisive in the mayoralty campaign now pending. A matter—” His poise suddenly gave way before the fierce rush of his exultation; and he cried: “A matter that will stop this damned Sunday-school nonsense of denying grown men the right to do as they please. That’s what it is, by God! A matter that will show up this young hypocrite in his true light. If I were not merciful, I would have spread it before the town long ago.”
He stopped abruptly, looking from one to the other as though challenging them to deny that he was merciful. No one denied it. B. B. cleared his throat; and the sound was startling in the silence that had followed Kite’s words. Amos puffed slowly at his pipe and squinted across the room at Wint. Wint said nothing. He had scarce heard what Kite said; he was curiously abstracted, as though all this did not concern him. He was like a spectator, looking on.
Chase looked at his son; and there was fear in the man’s eyes. For Kite was so terribly confident. Chase looked at his son, expecting Wint to make denial, to defend himself. But Wint said nothing; Wint did not lift his eyes from the floor. He only puffed slowly and indolently at his pipe, moving not at all.
Kite cleared his throat again; and his dry little eyes were gleaming.
“I have given this matter some thought,” he said. “Some thought, since the facts came into my hands. And I must confess, at first they seemed incredible. I made investigations, I was forced to believe—the whole, black story.” He paused again. He wanted some one to question him, but no one spoke. He went on:
“My first impulse was to cry the truth to the whole town. But I held my hand. I went to the city for the final proof. Got it. And when I came back, it was to find that this young man had caused the arrest of one of my friends, Lutcher, on a ridiculous liquor charge. Simply because Radabaugh discovered Lutcher and three others engaged in a game of cards, drinking as they had a right to do.
“I was indignant; but even then I was merciful. I wanted to give this young man a chance; and I went to him and offered him the chance to save himself.”
He paused, moved one of his hands as though to brush the possibility aside. “But it is unnecessary for me to tell you that his chief trait is a blind and unreasoning stubbornness. It betrayed him, on this occasion. He rejected my offer; refused to take the easy way out.
“That was this morning. I considered. My chief concern was for the good name of Hardiston; that such a man should not be chosen Mayor. This seemed to me the simplest and least painful way to arrange his withdrawal. So I asked you to come here.”
Amos drawled from the depths of his chair: “Did you fetch us here to talk us to death, Kite?”
Kite smiled bitterly. “No, Amos. Be patient.”
Chase was watching Wint, still with that desperate hope in his eyes. They were all watching Wint; but Wint was looking at the floor, following with his eyes the pattern in the rug. This was the end. He had just about decided that. There was in him no more will to fight. He had been a good Mayor. If they didn’t want to re-elect him—that was their affair. He would do no more. He had a sick sense of betrayal. His lips twisted in a bitter little smile.
Kite addressed him directly. “So, young man, we want your withdrawal from the mayoralty race. And this whole matter will end right here.”
Wint still did not lift his head. His father thought the boy was shamed; and his heart was torn. Kite asked sharply: “Come! What do you say?”
Wint looked at Kite, then, for the first time; looked at him with a slow, steady, incurious gaze that made Kite twist in his chair. And he repeated, in a low voice:
“You want me to withdraw?”
“Exactly. Now.”
Wint shook his head gently. “No,” he said, “I won’t withdraw.”
Kite threw up one clenched fist in a furious gesture. “By God, if you don’t you’ll be run out of town!”
“I’m in the fight,” said Wint steadily. He spoke so low they could scarce hear him. “I’m in the fight. I’ll stay.”
“Then I’ll smash you, flat as a pancake. You young fool.”
“Kite,” Wint murmured gently. “I don’t give a damn what you do. I’m in to stay.”
Kite banged his fist on the table. “Then the whole story comes out.”
“Let it come,” said Wint.
“You mean you want me to tell these men here? The black shame?”
“Yes,” Wint assented. “Tell them anything you please.” He lowered his eyes again, resumed his study of the carpet, puffed at his pipe. Kite stared at the boy’s bent head as though he could not believe his eyes, or his ears. He had counted so surely on Wint’s surrender; he had been so sure that Wint would yield.
But Wint.... The fool sat there, passively defying him; daring him. Kite’s face twisted with a sudden furious grimace. He jerked back his head. So be it. He flung defiant eyes around the room; he said abruptly, curtly: