Chapter III

With the announcement of the Chief’s candidacy things began to change in the office. The day’s routine was put through quickly, and after that came a series of conferences. Sometimes it was one man, closeted with the Chief for a prolonged period; again it would be a delegation, and the office would be thick with the smoke of the Chief’s cigars when it had gone.

There were always newspaper men, too. Thomas Patrick knew them all soon, even the ones belonging to the opposition press. He would pass out his neatly typed statements to them with a small pucker of worry on his face.

“We’re being square with you fellows,” he would say, anxiously. “So you be square with us.”

“Square!” the opposition would snort on his departure, stuffing the pages into its pockets.

“Well, the kid’s square.”

The Chief was making a fine campaign, and what was more, he had ceased “playing.”

“Boss is certainly walking the chalk line,” the chief clerk observed to Thomas Patrick. “Not so many telephone calls on his private wire, eh what?”

“How do you know they weren’t on business?”

“Then that sort of business is darned poor just now,” said the chief clerk, and grinned.

“If talk of that kind gets to the press—”

“Oh, I’m not a damned fool,” said the chief clerk, and sauntered off.

The book containing that secret page was apparently closed, and Thomas Patrick was relieved and happy. But as time went on he began to understand why it had ever been written. In spite of the crowds and the adulation, the Chief was a lonely man. He began to see, dimly, that loneliness may drive a man to seek company along a crooked path.

And his wife was away again.

“Gone to some fool sanitarium,” he said to Mary, with disgust.

“Maybe she’s sick.”

“She could be sick at home, couldn’t she?”

But Mary understood loneliness, if she couldn’t disloyalty, and she no longer objected when now and then, the Chief took Thomas Patrick home to dinner.

“We’ll eat something,” the Chief would say, “and then we’ll do a little work.”

And Thomas Patrick would sit, very small and self-conscious, at the table, and be served by a butler and a footman in white gloves. The awful silence and dignity oppressed him. And across from him the Chief would make conversation, in his kindly way, and finally send the servants out. Then they would talk, man to man.

And sometimes Thomas Patrick felt, as he shut the house door behind him and went away, that the Chief rather dreaded his going, that he hated being left alone.

Thomas Patrick seemed to grow in height at that time. He began to feel that the Chief was leaning on him, and he assumed a sort of protective attitude. It was he now who looked to see if the Chief’s great coat was in the car, and when they began to make trips to outlying districts, it was he who brought a revolver and kept it in the car thereafter, for fear of thugs.

And, to complete his happiness, one day the Chief gave him the key of a safe deposit box, and told him to bring its contents back with him. He brought back a sealed manila envelope, exhaling a faint odor of scent, and laid it on the Chief’s desk. The Chief looked at it, and then at Thomas Patrick.

“When you’re as old as I am, Pat,” he said, soberly, “you’ll learn that you don’t find happiness by chasing up an alley after it.”

He took a box of matches and going into his private washroom, put the contents of the envelope into a bowl and set fire to them. He stood by until they slowly burned up, and Thomas Patrick felt that he was observing a ceremony.

But the Chief’s wife did not come back. She was taking a new cure of some sort, and it promised to be lengthy. And as time went on, and the Chief showed fatigue and nervous strain, Thomas Patrick began to be anxious again.

He was always gentle to Thomas Patrick, but when they were having dinner at the big house he was sometimes sharp with the servants. And after dinner, in the library, there began to be times when he would stop dictating and, lying back in his chair, would stare abstractedly at the painting of a fleshy, almost nude woman, over the mantelpiece.

It was a Sir Thomas Lely, although of course Thomas Patrick did not know it, and the Chief’s wife had bought it and put it there, with a light over the top. It was considered a very handsome picture.

“You and Mary getting along all right?” he asked once, after such an interval.

“Yes, sir.”

“That’s right. Hold onto her!” said the Chief. “She’s a good girl, Pat.”

“She is, indeed. She’s—she’s wonderful.”

Mary was most awfully pleased when he told her that conversation.

But, as a matter of fact, it was after just such an evening that the trouble began. There had been no letter from the Chief’s wife that day, for one thing, and he seemed to have expected one. Then when they got to the house there it was, and Thomas Patrick saw the Chief’s face set somewhat as he read it.

“Well, I guess we’ll bach it for awhile longer, Pat,” he said. And laughed, a little recklessly.

He was restless and abstracted after dinner, and something before nine he got out of his chair.

“I’ve gone stale, Pat,” he said. “Better give it up for to-night.” He looked at his watch. “Might freshen me up to see a show or something. Do _you_ good, too. How about it?”

Thomas Patrick flushed with pleasure.

“All right with me, sir,” he said.

There are certain moments which stand out in a lifetime, glorious soul-swelling moments when the full flavour of joyous existence is being tasted. Thomas Patrick, behind the Chief, being passed into the Lyric Theatre with a bow from the business manager and a wave of the hand; Thomas Patrick stepping into a box behind the Chief and seeing the house turn _en masse_ to stare; Thomas Patrick, very erect while a small burst of applause interrupted the program and the Chief bowed—great moments these, unforgettable.

If only Mary had been in the audience!

Now and then during the evening he eyed the Chief, who was very calm, and apparently quite oblivious of the faces turned toward him; oblivious, too, of the attention he was receiving from the stage. There was a girl in blue who sang an entire song to him, but the Chief appeared to be only slightly amused and a trifle bored. Indeed, toward the end of the second act he seemed to lose interest in the stage and fell to writing something in his notebook. Evidently the staleness had passed, and that great mind of his was functioning again.

He took another look at his program and then tore out the page from his notebook and wrote something on it. Then he passed it to Thomas Patrick.

“The stage door’s behind this box, Pat,” he said. “Slip out before the curtain falls and give this message to that girl in the blue dress. Her name’s Elliot. Lily Elliot. Give it to _her_, you understand?”

Thomas Patrick felt a little sick. The hand that took the note even shook a little.

“Don’t you think, sir—” he ventured.

The Chief gave him an odd look.

“Don’t you worry, Pat,” he said. “I’ll do the thinking! I’m only asking her out to supper.”

Thomas Patrick stopped outside the box and considered, his heart beating furiously. Damn the girl! Damn the Chief’s fool of a wife! Damn all women—except Mary. But the Chief had turned and was watching him. He opened the door and went behind.

He was some time in finding the Elliot girl’s dressing room. Stage hands jostled him; he tripped over a wire cable and a dozen men yelled at him. He wandered about, a queer timid figure in a ridiculous necktie, and all the time something in him was whispering: “I wish he wouldn’t. Oh, I wish he _wouldn’t_.”

The Elliot girl, her make-up absurdly accentuated away from the footlights, a kimono very negligently thrown around her, took the note and read it.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“His secretary.”

“Hm!” she said, and looked him over. “That’s him in the stage box, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“Tell him all right.”

As he went out of the dressing room he suddenly saw Mr. Tufts, sitting in a chair at the stage entrance. Mr. Tufts, however, was reading a newspaper.

* * * * *

“Worked pretty late, didn’t you?” said Mary, that night, when he had locked the house and tiptoed up the stairs.

Thomas Patrick hesitated. Then:

“Yes,” he said.