Part 16 (1/2)

I directed Silliman to work for Rundle of Indiana, a thoroughly honest man, in deadly earnest about half a dozen deadly wrong things, and capable of anything in furthering them--after the manner of fanatics. If he had not been in public life, he would have been a camp-meeting exhorter. Crowds liked to listen to him; the radicals and radically inclined throughout the West swore by him; he had had two terms in Congress, had got a hundred-odd votes for the nomination for President at the last national convention of the opposition. A splendid scarecrow for the Wall Street crowd, but difficult to nominate over Goodrich's man Simpson in a convention of practical politicians.

In May--it was the afternoon of the very day my mutineers got back into the harness--Woodruff asked me if I would see a man he had picked up in a delegate-hunting trip into Indiana. ”An old pal of mine, much the better for the twelve years' wear since I last saw him. He has always trained with the opposition. He's a full-fledged graduate of the Indiana school of politics, and that's the best. It's almost all craft there--they hate to give up money and don't use it except as a last resort.”

He brought in his man--Merriweather by name. I liked the first look at him--keen, cynical, indifferent. He had evidently sat in so many games of chance of all kinds that play roused in him only the ice-cold pa.s.sion of the purely professional.

”There's been nothing doing in our state for the last two or three years--at least nothing in my line,” said he. ”A rank outsider, Scarborough--”

I nodded. ”Yes, I know him. He came into the Senate from your state two years ago.”

”Well, he's built up a machine of his own and runs things to suit himself.”

”I thought he wasn't a politician,” said I.

Merriweather's bony face showed a faint grin. ”The best ever,” said he.

”He's put the professionals out of business, without its costing him a cent. I've got tired of waiting for him to blow over.”

Tired--and hungry, I thought. After half an hour of pumping I sent him away, detaining Woodruff. ”What does he really think about Rundle?” I asked.

”Says he hasn't the ghost of a chance--that Scarborough'll control the Indiana delegation and that Scarborough has no more use for lunatics than for grafters.”

This was not encouraging. I called Merriweather back. ”Why don't you people nominate Scarborough at St. Louis?” said I.

Behind his surface of attention, I saw his mind traveling at lightning speed in search of my hidden purpose along every avenue that my suggestion opened.

”Scarborough'd be a dangerous man for you,” he replied. ”He's got a nasty way of reaching across party lines for votes.”

I kept my face a blank.

”You've played politics only in your own state or against the Eastern crowd, these last few years,” he went on, as if in answer to my thoughts. ”You don't realize what a hold Scarborough's got through the entire West. He has split your party and the machine of his own in our state, and they know all about him and his doings in the states to the west. The people like a fellow that knocks out the regulars.”

”A good many call him a demagogue, don't they?” said I.

”Yes--and he is, in sort of a way,” replied Merriweather. ”But--well, he's got a knack of telling the truth so that it doesn't scare folks.

And he's managed to convince them that he isn't looking out for number one. It can't be denied that he made a good governor. For instance, he got after the monopolies, and the cost of living is twenty per cent.

lower in Indiana than just across the line in Ohio.”

”Then I should say that all the large interests in the country would line up against him,” said I.

”Every one,” said Merriweather, and an expression of understanding flitted across his face. He went on: ”But it ain't much use talking about him. He couldn't get the nomination--at least, it wouldn't be easy to get it for him.”

”I suppose not,” said I. ”That's a job for a first-cla.s.s man--and they're rare.” And I shook hands with him.

About a week later he returned, and tried to make a report to me. But I sent him away, treating him very formally. I appreciated that, being an experienced and capable man, he knew the wisdom of getting intimately in touch with his real employer; but, as I had my incomparable Woodruff, better far than I at the rough work of politics, there was no necessity for my entangling myself. Merriweather went to Woodruff, and Woodruff reported to me--Scarborough's friends in Indianapolis all agreed that he did not want the nomination and would not have it.

”We must force it on him,” said I. ”We must have Scarborough.”

Immediately after Burbank's nomination, Goodrich concentrated upon nominating Judge Simpson. He had three weeks, and he worked hard and well. I think he overdid it in the editorials in our party organs under his influence in New York, Boston and other eastern cities--never a day without lugubrious screeds on the dismal outlook for Burbank if the other party should put up Simpson. But his Simpson editorials in big opposition papers undoubtedly produced an effect. I set for De Milt and his bureau of underground publicity the task of showing up, as far as it was prudent to expose intimate politics to the public, Goodrich and his crowd and their conspiracy with Beckett and his crowd to secure the opposition nomination for a man of the same offensive type as Cromwell.