not know. In any event, Tim said that he was responsible for having smoothed the matter out for Mr. Brush, but, up until the time he repeated the story to me, he had not received payment for his services.
Evidently, from the interviews which followed with Tim Slade at the Waldorf, he was not allowing any grass to grow under his feet. He told me he had called Mr. Crissinger on the phone and had intimated to him the nature of my problem, and that Mr. Crissinger had been eager to learn the details. "Dick" Crissinger was a Marion man whom Mr. Harding appointed Governor of the Federal Reserve in Washington, and who now holds that position. However, when Tim called Mr. Crissinger the second time, presumably to make a definite appointment with him, inasmuch as Mr. Crissinger had been frank to say he was very much interested in hearing the whole story, Tim said he was informed very curtly by Mr. Crissinger that he knew nothing about the matter nor did he care to know, and that he refused to have anything to do with it at all. I said to Tim that it looked as though Mr. Crissinger had approached someone else in the meantime and had received suggestions as to the attitude he should take.
About George Christian, President Harding's private secretary, Tim seemed to feel only the one thing which he very often expressed, which was in substance, "Poor old George! If anything else comes to his ears about the Harding Administration, I don't know what will happen to him!"
How terrible it all was, to be sure! The more Tim told me of Mr. Harding's "friends," the more my heart bled for him who had leaned upon them for the same gracious support and loyalty he had so generously bestowed. If such conditions existed, and Warren Harding, having trusted and been betrayed, really knew about them, what heart-break it must have brought! Tim's revelations were startling, yet the court trials, the talk, and the scandal that had gone on since Mr. Harding's tragic death all helped to make them seem plausible to me.
