forebears didn't shrink, and I'll not. With every talent God has given me I intend to fight you, to fight you until I shall strangle the last vestige of vitality from your rotten political carcass. Do you understand that, sir? I'll show you whether or not you'll shake your scarlet rags of presidential ambition before me! Why, man," and here Felt's voice grew husky with repressed wrath—"why, man, I'm going to drive you out of the United States Senate into oblivion, with the doors of the penitentiary banging at your heels."
Felt's voice must have got into Wharton's soul, for he grew paler and paler as Felt proceeded. When he closed there was a deep silence. In it Wharton began to slough off his identity. He became a fear-stricken animal. His wrinkles made his face look like a dirty cracked china plate. The trembling creature that had been Wharton spoke with Wharton's mouth and said:
"My—good—God—Felt. Do—you realize what this—m-m-means. Think of my family—my wife. You—are not"
The Thing put its hands to its head in a tremor of pain, and something akin to a sob broke from its wracking frame. It was a horrible sight for men's eyes to see. Williams looked away. His eyes met Felt's and saw no mercy.
When Wharton finally got hold of his nerves he said, weakly:
"You're young, Senator Felt. You're an educated man. You have the advantage of me—for I am old. I am an ignorant old man, and you can make fine speeches against me. All right, go ahead; ruin me; but is it such a great thing to whip an old man? " Felt did not reply and dropped into a chair near Williams. Wharton rose heavily. "Is there no way I can make you see this—like I do?" he asked. Felt shook his head. Wharton looked appealingly at Williams, whose eyes were downcast. The silence grew painful. Wharton's hand groped for the door-knob. He hesitated for a moment, then said, awkwardly:
"Well, gentlemen, I guess I'll have to bid you good-night."
Before midnight Wharton stumbled into a Turkish bath with the daze of the combat upon him. By ten o'clock the next morning, after he had deadened an agonizing headache with antipyrine, a maudlin logic had convinced him that Senator Felt was a stockholder in the Consolidated Electric Light Company, and that his greed as a stockholder to get the $75,000 back was stimulated by his ambition as a senator to get a new lease of life by defeating the Wharton service pension bill. Wharton was satisfied with his own shrewdness, but the stupid smile he wore at the thought of his penetration of Felt's business acumen faded into a frightened stare as the recollection of Felt's voice swept over Wharton. In the hotel corridors and in the street he fancied that he heard his name spoken in derision, and imagined that his back was the target at which every eye was shooting curious and malicious darts. He hurried through the Capitol building and into his committee-room like a coward under fire.
"Bob," mumbled Wharton to his private secretary, "did you see that piece in the Star last night?"
Wharton's heavy fingers were cluttering the mail upon his desk as he spoke. When Dunning replied affirmatively, Wharton questioned:
"Anything more in the morning papers about it?"
"Nothing very much—about the same," answered Dunning.
"Mention any names?" asked Wharton, quickly.
"Not exactly. Want to see the Post? It has the most to say."
Wharton answered with a negative grunt and tried in vain to call the Thompson woman at three different telephone numbers. For the inebriated syllogisms of his logic had persuaded him that if he could get the school bonds to Williams, to secure the note, Felt would be placated and the threatened blow averted. This conviction grew upon him until it became a mania, and at noon he sent Dunning out to the house on the green-car line for the valise containing the bonds. When he returned empty-handed, and when Wharton could not find the Thompson woman by telephone again, he damned her and her kind almost vigorously. At lunch he put into the coal-box of his physical machine an astonishingly large quantity of soft-shell crabs and much whiskey—even much for Senator Wharton, to
