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Title: A hat in the radio ring
Author: Garret Smith
Release date: July 29, 2024 [eBook #74149]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: The Frank A. Munsey Company, 1928
Credits: Roger Frank and Sue Clark
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A HAT IN THE RADIO RING ***
A HAT IN THE RADIO RING
By Garret Smith
“The radio’s playin’ hell with politics!”
With this sententious remark, a long speech for Boss Quaid, the big
fellow, who had just taken the end seat at the speakers’ table, glared
at the microphone opposite the toastmaster’s seat halfway down the long
alley of snowy linen. His pale little eyes betrayed secret anxiety
through their slits of fat.
“How so?” asked the lean, dapper gentleman at Quaid’s right.
“Why, it’s this way, Mr. Forsythe,” broke in the rat-faced little man at
the boss’s left. “Take this dinner tonight, for instance. In the old
days when we pulled a keynote dinner like this, that was to set the pace
for the campaign, we could pretty much keep it bottled up. We had the
newspaper boys fixed, and if anybody made the wrong turn, or started
puttin’ tacks on the pike, maybe we could keep it out of the papers.
“Anyhow, we could get it toned down, or if worse came to worse, have a
statement of our own printed along with it. Now everybody has a radio
and gets the gas right hot from the cylinder. He should worry about what
the papers say next morning.”
“Barney’s right. They don’t even go to meetings any more,” mourned the
boss.
“Unless they’re hand-picked, like this one,” Barney chuckled.
“Barney’s right,” the boss echoed the chuckle.
Barney Fogarty, the big fellow’s secretary, was as loquacious by nature
and profession as his chief was silent. But his speech was the thought
of Quaid, O. K.’d by the big fellow’s guttural “Barney’s right.”
“I take it I better be careful what I say tonight,” the elegant Forsythe
murmured with mock anxiety, as if his utterances were to be his own
spontaneous outbursts.
“If you want the boss to get you nominated for Governor, you had,”
Barney laughed. “As long as you’re cagy about the State power
proposition, it doesn’t matter a whoop what else you say. It’s some dark
horse popping up here tonight that we’re afraid of. Every yahoo in the
State will know it as soon as we do.”
“Barney’s right,” Boss Quaid sighed again. “People hear too damn much
these days.”
Boss Quaid’s domain had for twenty years been practically a one-party
State, dominated by the machine which Quaid till lately held tight in
his fat hand. But lately he had felt his power slipping a little with
this ominous growth of modern publicity. Walls had developed too many
ears.
Now on the eve of the county conventions he was not quite sure he would
get enough hand-picked delegates to dominate the coming State convention
which would nominate a Governor this year. The question of State control
of water power on which the boss saw fit to hedge was threatening
internal disruption.
To-morrow was county convention day. He was hoping that Forsythe’s
speech at this dinner tonight would swing sentiment in enough doubtful
counties to give him a majority of pledged delegates when the State
convention opened.
But he was uncomfortably conscious of that great unseen radio audience
in a hundred thousand homes already settled before their “speakers,”
listening eagerly to the preliminary gossip of the announcer as the
faithful gathered around the tables.
He knew that a wrong note struck at this dinner might start a
thunderstorm up-State over which he would have no control.
Forsythe was worrying, too, under his suave exterior.
“Suppose somebody did break loose tonight,” he remarked, leaning
insinuatingly toward the boss’s secretary. “Couldn’t an accident happen
to the radio temporarily?”
“Oh, nothing raw like that!” Barney deprecated with outpushed palm.
“They’d smell something rotten to the end of the State. No, I got a
better way.”
He glanced at a smaller table adjoining the low platform on which the
speakers’ table stood. It was surrounded by a group of dashing and
determined-appearing young men. At the end of this table, facing them,
sat a dark youth, even more rat-visaged than the red-headed Barney. He
winked knowingly at the latter.
“Who’s that young gunman?” Forsythe asked a little distastefully.
“That’s Jim Neenan,” Barney told him. “He’s a vaudeville actor and a
friend of the organization. Jim and his little pals will kind of
unofficially supervise what goes over the radio. Watch ’em if anything
breaks.”
And something did break. It held off so long that less acute observers
of political nature than Boss Quaid were beginning to breathe freely.
The harmless preliminary speakers had received polite applause. Boss
Quaid, after a glowing tribute from the toastmaster, had risen, bobbed
his head, grunted, and sat down to the tune of a thunderous ovation and
orchestral strains of “He’s a Jolly Good Fellow.”
Then Forsythe, the favored son and real speaker of the evening, had
risen and said nothing dangerous, in burning, glittering language and at
considerable length.
But while his favorite was talking, the roving little eyes of the boss
had settled on the keen, quizzical face of a big, shaggy man at the
other end of the table. The man’s high, thoughtful brow corrugated as
the would-be candidate went on with his mellifluous platitudes. The
pleasant blue eyes, bent intently on the speaker, turned to gray steel.
Quaid nudged Barney.
“Watch out for Hammond,” he whispered.
When Forsythe sat down, Hammond sat bolt upright in his chair and stared
hard at the toastmaster.
It was not on the cards to have any more speeches. Forsythe’s address
had been planned as the climax of the evening. A half dozen lay figures
and uncertain quantities remained at the speaker’s table who would be
called on as a matter of form. All were supposed to know better than to
do more than rise and bow.
While the prolonged applause for Forsythe was still ringing, the
newspaper men gathered up their notes and departed, leaving the
Associated Press man to let them know if anything unexpected broke loose
at the last minute, not amply covered by the radio.
Then, in its perfunctory course, the name of Martin W. Hammond of
Gainsport was called.
The big man arose promptly. But instead of sitting down with a bow and a
word of greeting, as the man before him had done, he marched straight
down the table to the speakers’ position in front of the microphone.
“Gentlemen, I beg a moment’s indulgence,” he began in deep, mellow tones
that filled the suddenly silent hall and rang in the ears of the greater
radio audience in a hundred thousand homes. “I did not come prepared to
make a speech, but I cannot let this occasion pass without saying
certain things that the Honorable Mr. Forsythe left unsaid.”
Boss Quaid grunted and kicked Barney’s shins. Barney turned and winked
at Jim Neenan at the little table.
Neenan and his gang jumped to their feet with a yell of “Hurrah for
Forsythe! Hurrah for the next Governor! Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!”
They chanted it in chorus, crowding to the edge of the platform, and
leaning almost over the speakers’ table, with their faces only a few
feet from the ringing microphone. They kept it up, their cheers
alternated with catcalls.
The tumult spread through the big hall like a contagion. The whole place
was in an uproar. For a minute or two Hammond stood facing the clamor, a
sardonic smile on his face. Then as the noise continued he leaned over
the microphone and tried to go on with his speech in an effort to reach
his radio audience at least.
But the young cheer leaders bent closer to the instrument and redoubled
their efforts. The ether waves bore only an inarticulate roar.
Twice when the confusion subsided a little he tried it again, only to be
thwarted by a renewal of the racket.
Here and there through the throng there were cries of protest from the
fairer-minded. There were growing indications that the meeting might
break up in a riot.
The toastmaster stood helpless, his eyes fixed on the boss, who regarded
him with an indulgent grin.
At length Hammond gave it up altogether. With a bow and a smile, he
turned and walked out of the hall.
At this gesture a partial hush fell on the crowd. There were cries of
“Shame!” “Call him back!” “Give him a chance!”
Several fist fights were threatened among some of the more explosive of
the faithful. The toastmaster began gesturing for silence.
Then Jim Neenan leaped to the center of the speakers’ table and gave an
elaborate caricature of the presiding officer’s gestures. As soon as he
could make himself heard, he shouted:
“Gentlemen, inasmuch as Mr. Hammond had to catch a train and could not
make a long speech, I’ve been asked to go on with it.”
Thereupon the vaudeville artist launched into a parody of a political
speech that in a few minutes had restored the crowd to hilarious good
humor. At length the orchestra struck up “Home, Sweet Home,” and the
crowd filed out, most of them convinced that the whole episode had been
a bit of horseplay staged to give a light touch to a successful
occasion.
II
Boss Quaid was chuckling contentedly as he entered his limousine with
Forsythe, Barney Fogarty, and Jim Neenan. He had expressed his
satisfaction and his gratitude to the manipulators by giving the
dignitaries the slip, with the exception of Forsythe, and inviting the
trio to supper at his favorite roadhouse where neither henchmen nor
reporters would search him out.
“Now we’re all set,” Barney assured Forsythe as they rolled away. “There
were three or four possible bad eggs there tonight, Hammond among ’em.
Hammond was the only one that hatched, and we squashed him before he got
out of the shell, laughed him to death.”
“Barney’s right,” Quaid agreed.
But for once Barney was wrong. How amazingly, mysteriously wrong, he
learned two and a half hours later, when the party stopped at an
all-night news-stand on the way home and bought copies of the _Press_
and the _Sentinel_, the capital city’s two morning papers.
MARTIN W. HAMMOND
THROWS HAT IN RING
This was the flaring headline that smote his eyes from one front page,
at the top of the dinner story.
HAMMOND FLOUTS FORSYTHE,
DECLARES HIMSELF CANDIDATE
This blazed at him from the other newspaper.
“What!” the boss exploded. “The damned traitor! Sent ’em a statement!
Hell’s bells!”
“Statement nothing!” Barney ejaculated. “These papers are full of
prunes, both of ’em! Why, they say he made this speech as the dinner
feature of the occasion, the _Sentinel_ calls it.”
For several minutes, under the glare of the dome light in Quaid’s
limousine, the four men read, pop-eyed with amazement, the silence
broken only by occasional crackling profanity. There was no doubt but
that both papers had seemingly gone mad.
According to their accounts, Hammond had actually completed a ringing
speech of some twenty minutes’ duration at the dinner, and at its
conclusion had received tumultuous applause. He had scathingly picked
Forsythe’s empty mouthings to pieces, keenly analyzed the State power
proposition, declaring it must be put in the hands of experts to
determine the right policy as between State and local control. He was
personally engaged in such a study now, he declared, and the State could
have his services as Governor to direct such a study and carry out its
results.
There was added a brief account of Hammond’s career as a successful
engineer who had served the State for one term as engineer ten years
before.
Quaid finished reading and dashed the paper to the floor in a purple
rage.
“_Sentinel_ office, George,” he ordered the chauffeur.
The _Sentinel_ was controlled by Quaid. Boon, its managing editor, and
handy man to the boss, was just about to go home when the enraged and
mystified quartet stormed in.
“What the hell?” Quaid demanded, slapping the paper down on the desk and
pointing one pudgy finger at the offensive and mystic headline. “Are you
fellows crazy or drunk?”
“That’s what I wonder!” Boon returned with unwonted spirit. “We’ve been
hunting you boys for two hours, almost lost the trains on the first two
editions, waiting for you to give orders on the handling of this yarn.
Why didn’t you tell us you were going to flop to Hammond? All we could
do was to print the news.”
“News, hell!” Quaid snorted. “Damned lies! Hammond never made a speech.
Tried to; got hooted out.”
Boon leaned close and got a good sample of the breath the quartet had
acquired at the roadhouse, drawing erroneous but not unnatural
conclusions as to their sobriety.
“Say that again slow,” he requested. “I don’t get you.”
Barney said it for him, making from two to four words grow where one
grew before.
“Now I say you ought to get out an extra denying this rot,” Barney wound
up, looking about for confirmation.
“Barney’s right,” declared the boss.
“Now, listen,” Boon exclaimed. “I was glued to that radio horn from the
time your dinner opened until the orchestra stopped playing ‘Home, Sweet
Home.’ Don’t try to tell me I don’t know what I heard. Half the rest of
the office heard it too. About twenty other people who listened in on
the radio in Gobel’s drug store drilled in here to get the inside dope.
The men over in the Press heard it too. They had me on the wire, asking
for a statement from you.”
“Now we all heard Hammond called on at the end of the evening. We heard
him get a whale of a demonstration and some kidding. Then we heard his
speech to the finish and the cheering he got afterward. We got his
speech right from the radio by shorthand. They heard it all over the
State too. We’ve had wires from papers from one end of the State to the
other asking for dope.
“Now, in the face of that, do you want to make an ass of the whole party
by a statement that your keynote dinner was so wet that you were all too
drunk to hear the key speech?”
“Did your reporter hear that speech?” Quaid demanded in bewilderment.
“No. The boys all left when Forsythe got through. The A. P. man stayed,
but he must have been drunk and gone to sleep. We couldn’t get anything
out of him.”
“Listen, boss,” Barney broke in. “Somebody double crossed us, unless the
spooks have been at work. I bet Hammond played in with the broadcasting
station some way and got ’em to let him break in. The whole mischief’s
been done for tonight. We better lie low till we find out how it was
done.”
“Barney’s right,” Quaid decided, and stalked out.
Barney was right when he said the mischief had been done. But the
following day only increased the mystery of how.
First thing in the morning, the fatal morning of the county conventions,
Quaid began getting wires from leaders all over the State, asking
instructions, and confirming the fact that every radio user outside of
the dinner hall had heard the speech.
Also he had innumerable phone calls from people who had been at the
dinner, asking what it was all about and confirming the fact that no one
at the dinner had heard Hammond’s speech.
Following Barney’s hint, the staff at the radio broadcasting station
were given the third degree. They swore that Hammond’s speech had come
over the regular wire along with the rest of the dinner program.
Their announcer on duty at the hall that night could shed no further
light, as he had gone home after the Forsythe speech, arranging with the
toastmaster to give the radio “good night.”
Hammond himself, who had a reputation for truth telling, issued a
statement to the afternoon papers exonerating the broadcasting staff.
“I was invited to speak at the dinner, and I did,” he told the
reporters. “That’s all. I’ll swear to you I made the whole speech right
there. I’m sorry if the gentlemen at the dinner couldn’t hear it, but I
have the statement of my radio audience about a thousand to one against
theirs.”
That’s all they got out of him, and the twinkle in his eye indicated
that he was enjoying himself immensely.
But the speech was on record. That was the important and practical fact.
Events pressed too fast to waste further time over a puzzle as to how it
got there. Early reports from the counties decided Quaid to hold off his
own statement for another day till he could count noses of instructed
delegates.
It was a worried group who met with him in his office the day after the
county conventions. Forsythe, under his air of debonair indifference,
was decidedly anxious for fear his sponsor might decide to drop him for
the new entrant.
“Give ’em the dope, Barney,” the boss ordered.
“Well, we figure just about forty per cent of the delegates pledged or
sure for Forsythe, and just about the same number for Hammond. That
leaves about twenty per cent waiting to be shown.”
“And that kind hates a dude,” Quaid remarked, looking hard at Forsythe.
“Meaning that’s what I am?” he asked.
“No! No!” Barney assured him. “He means that’s what they might figure if
you go to talk to ’em personally. They’re shy of city men. You’re a
polished gentleman. Hammond’s sort of rough and ready. Other things
equal, they’d be for him if they got a look at you both. And it’s a
cinch Hammond’ll go around and talk to ’em. I expect Mr. Quaid would
like to keep you both out of sight of those birds. For once he’d like a
straight radio campaign.”
“Barney’s right!” rumbled the boss.
“Perhaps I’d better begin wearing soft shirts and a slouch hat,”
Forsythe suggested wryly.
“Be yourself,” grunted the boss. “I’m for you.”
Forsythe departed, content with this assurance of the boss’s support,
but not altogether optimistic as to the final outcome. Barney Fogarty
retired thoughtfully to his own private office and went into the
silences.
After a little of this, some cryptic phoning resulted in a luncheon
appointment in a discreet back room of one of the city’s quietest
speakeasies.
Late that afternoon Jim Neenan, the handy impersonator and general
utility man, presented himself on private business at the offices of
Thomas Forsythe, who rather distastefully granted the caller’s request
for a confidential conference.
“Look here,” Neenan opened, “I hear you and the boss are honin’ for a
pre-convention campaign that’ll limit you an’ Hammond to radio speeches,
figgerin’ it would give you a better break.”
“That seems to be Mr. Quaid’s idea,” Forsythe admitted dryly.
“I suppose you know Hammond has a different idea?”
“I have heard as much.”
“How much would it be worth to you to have it arranged so that Hammond
would be glad of a chance to make it a radio campaign?”
“It might be worth quite a little, but I fail to see what is the
practical use of discussing it.”
“Just this. For a price I might be able to bring it about.”
Forsythe laughed.
“Judging from such of your methods as I have seen I feel safe in saying
I’d pay as high as a thousand dollars if my opponent is persuaded to
such a course and you can convince me that you were instrumental in
bringing it about.”
“Is that a promise?” Neenan demanded.
“It is,” Forsythe agreed again with another cynical laugh. “And if your
machinations result in my nomination I’ll make it another thousand. And
that’s a promise. Now I’ll bid you good day, as I have another
appointment.”
Neenan departed, a crafty smile on his narrow features.
III
That same evening Warren Hammond arose from a hurried dinner and gave
his pretty young wife an affectionate goodnight kiss.
“Don’t wait up for me, ladybird,” he warned her. “I’ve got to speak at
two meetings, and I may be out till all hours.”
“I wish I could go with you to your first meeting. I’ll be thinking of
you. I’m so proud of my big boy.”
“Even if he does traffic with the powers of darkness and employ black
magic to make himself invisible,” he laughed.
“I think you’re mean, Warren, not to tell me the truth about that
mysterious radio speech. I think everybody there must have been drunk as
one of the papers hinted, and you don’t want to let me know it.”
Hammond laughed boyishly.
“Why, it was so simple I’m ashamed to tell it. When I do tell you,
you’ll be ashamed to think you didn’t guess it.”
“But do you think it’s nice to fib to everybody about it?”
“Nary a fib,” he denied. “I’ve told nothing but the truth, so help me.
Now stop worrying and go to bed early.”
He kissed her again and was off.
But Warren Hammond did not get to his first meeting. In fact, he got no
more than a scant hundred yards down the narrow country road that led
from his suburban home into the capital city.
He was just shifting his gears into first when he felt the front end of
the car swaying violently back and forth. He threw out the clutch and
jammed on the brakes, but it was too late.
The front of the car lurched over to one side, dropped to the ground,
and plowed down into the ditch at the roadside. He was thrown forward
felt a stinging blow on the head, and then went unconscious.
A few minutes later a passing car saw the wreck and stopped. Hammond
came to in the ditch beside his car to find a neighbor applying first
aid.
Besides the blow on the head, which had left an ugly welt across his
scalp, both legs were broken. Fortunately the glass in his car was
nonbreakable, and he had suffered no disfiguring cuts.
The cause of the accident proved to be a loose front wheel, which had
come off, completely tipping the car half over. It had all occurred so
suddenly that he had no clear notion of just what had happened to him,
but he assumed that his head had hit one of the top braces, and that his
legs had been broken when he was thrown over the door.
Never at any time did he suspect that his accident had been inspired and
carefully planned.
But a few days later Jim Neenan, with a smile more deeply insinuating
than ever, again called at the offices of Thomas Forsythe. He carried
with him a copy of an afternoon paper just off the press.
“Perhaps you’ve noticed that I’ve made good on that radio campaign
stuff,” he announced, pointing to a story on the front page.
Forsythe took the paper and read an announcement by Hammond’s political
manager. The latter would be confined to his room and bed until long
after the State convention, his doctor had predicted, but would
doubtless be restored to complete health by election time.
In the meantime the physician saw no reason why the patient should not
carry on such mental labor as the pre-convention campaign required, as
soon as he had completely recovered from the first shock of the
accident. It had therefore been arranged that he should deliver a
limited number of speeches by radio, from a telephone in his room
connecting with the broadcasting station.
He would also have a final statement to deliver at the convention in the
same manner, assuming the privilege of a regularly elected delegate and
a leading candidate for head of the ticket.
“How’s that?” Neenan gloated. “Barney tells me you are going to swing
back with a big show of doing the sporting thing by agreeing to the same
program yourself. So we’ve got our wish, and little Jimmie’s come for
his pay.”
“How’s that?”
“Wasn’t I to get one grand if I arranged it so that Hammond would
consent to a radio campaign?”
Forsythe was frankly puzzled for a moment, then saw a light.
“Look here, you young thug, do you mean you deliberately wrecked
Hammond’s car? Suppose you’d killed him! Good Lord, did you think I
meant anything like that? We talked about persuading.”
Neenan grinned.
“We’re practical politicians, ain’t we? There’s different kinds of
persuadin’. Mind, I’m not confessin’ anything, but I leave it to your
judgment if that looks just like an accident. There wasn’t a chance in
the world of his being killed, with a guy hidden in the back of the car
to stop him if he got to goin’ too fast with his wheel loosened up.
“Wasn’t it funny he wasn’t marred up, nothing wrong but a little tap on
the head and a couple of broken legs that laid him up proper without any
permanent hurt? He never guessed that he got that biff on the bean from
a blackjack from behind him, and that his legs was broken nice and quiet
by hand afterwards.”
“You cold-blooded devil!” Forsythe began, but checked himself on second
thought. After all he couldn’t afford to antagonize this crafty little
man.
“Look here,” he went on. “I haven’t got a thousand on hand just now, and
I didn’t mean just that, but here’s a hundred cash on account, and I’ll
make good on the two thousand all right if you can show you’ve put over
my nomination without any more physical brutality and no danger of a
comeback.”
There was a little argument over it, but in the end Neenan left with his
hundred and a promise that he’d earn the big money yet
IV
So the novel pre-convention radio campaign opened and developed
presently a pitch of excitement seldom exceeded by a closely contested
Presidential election. Twice a week alternately the courtesy of the
capital city’s broadcasting station was extended to one of the
contestants, Hammond reading his speech from his bed in his little
farmhouse in the suburbs, Forsythe delivering his from the hotel suite
which he had taken as headquarters till after the State convention.
Harking back to the famous “Front Porch” campaigns of certain
Presidential candidates, this campaign of Hammond’s was facetiously
dubbed a “Bedside Campaign.” Forsythe made much of it in his glittering
speeches which continued to evade anything but generalities regarding
the State water power issue.
On the whole the two contestants continued to run neck and neck. They
continued to hold their original blocks of instructed or definitely
committed delegates, each falling some ten per cent short of the
required majority.
And the little block of uncommitted delegates from the rural districts
who held the balance of power, despite repeated rumors of a break after
each radio speech, remained uncommitted and stuck together.
There had been no personal mud slinging on either hand. They admired the
finished oratory of Forsythe. But equally they admired Hammond’s clear,
cold analysis of the power situation.
They were suspending judgment until the final summing up of
recommendations he promised to make when they assembled for the
convention.
So the time of the State convention arrived, and, as Boss Quaid had
feared, the fight was carried to its floor with the chance of victory
ready to fall either way according to the words a sick man might utter
into his telephone in the privacy of his bedroom.
For when the convention opened, Warren Hammond was really ill, broken
down by the strain of the campaign on top of the shock of his injuries.
With great effort he had finished dictating his final radio statement
which he hoped to read over the wire to the convention. Now there were
grave doubts whether he would be able to read it himself.
The morning of the convention dawned at last. Into the city’s convention
hall the delegates poured.
Quaid snorted at the spectacle.
“Don’t look much like the old-time batch of handmade ones,” the big
fellow mourned to Barney as they watched from the gallery.
“Nope,” his satellite admitted. “Especially with the skirts in on the
game. But the women ain’t nuthin’ to this Hammond. He’s a woman and a
devil and one of the Lord Almighty’s mysterious ways wrapped up in one
bundle. He’s been one trick ahead of us at every jump. That accident of
his was either plain dumb good luck or fixed by himself intentional. The
poor invalid stuff’s got the women going. The boys that are feeling him
out say even those in the neutral crowd are leanin’ his way. I’m afraid
he’s got us licked, chief.”
“You’ve said it, Barney--afraid I’m about through.”
An out-of-town man under the edge of the gallery hailed a local
acquaintance. “Hello, Dick! Is this the place where you held the ghost
dinner?”
Barney and his chief grinned at each other ruefully.
“They’ll always believe we fellows were blind and dumb that night,”
Barney replied.
“And I’ll always believe those radio people double crossed us somehow,”
Quaid added.
And the big fellow clung to that belief to his dying day.
A good sized knot of delegates came in, making the roof ring with cheers
for Forsythe. Another knot across the hall tried to drown them out with
counter cheers for Hammond.
“Hello, you bedroomers!” Shouted a Forsythe man above the din.
“Go on, you ghost walkers,” a man from the other ranks retorted.
And in Hammond’s sick room out in the little suburban farmhouse, the
invalid was listening to the tumult in the convention hall as it came to
him over his radio. A vigilant wife and nurse kept him constantly under
their eye, shutting off the blaring instrument whenever he showed signs
of getting nervous.
“Remember, Warren, if you overstrain your nerves, the doctor won’t let
you read your speech,” Mrs. Hammond warned him at intervals.
“I’ve got to read that speech if it kills me,” he told her. “If I don’t
know what’s going on beforehand I won’t be able to put the right spirit
in it.”
And he managed to grin at her cheerily, although it was an evident
effort.
In Forsythe’s headquarters at the hotel near the convention hall, the
other candidate was nervously rehearsing his speech in the intervals
when he was listening in on the radio. Little Jim Neenan was in constant
attendance upon him these days, acting as general handy man.
The crafty one had taken a room of his own down the corridor from
Forsythe’s suite where he could be on hand night and day to make himself
useful. He was charging nothing for these services, but he hadn’t
forgotten the main chance.
“Remember you’re going to owe me a fat two grand in the course of the
next day or two,” he reminded his self-selected chief at frequent
intervals.
But Forsythe vouchsafed him nothing more by way of reply than a
sarcastic lifting of the eyebrows. At times Neenan studied him
reflectively, and worry lines appeared in the narrow brow. Then there
was a flash of dangerous light in the cold, close-set eyes.
The convention moved through two days of tense suspense and excitement.
During the routine business of organizing, whenever there was
opportunity for a test vote, the original line-up continued firm.
This was discernible on the second day also, in the cheering and
speeches accompanying the putting of Forsythe and Hammond in nomination
for Governor. The neutrals were still standing in a firm bloc, waiting
for Hammond’s statement.
Then, on the morning of the third day came the long awaited opportunity.
The session opened with a motion that the convention proceed to ballot
for Governor.
Before it was seconded, a Hammond adherent, as previously arranged with
the presiding officer, arose, and after a brief eulogy of the sick man
announced that he had just been informed by telephone that Mr. Hammond’s
doctor had given permission to the patient to read his address to the
convention over the radio that morning. He therefore moved that the
convention extend this courtesy to Mr. Hammond as one of the nominees.
The motion was carried unanimously, and the time for the address set at
ten thirty, one-half hour away. Then, in accordance also with agreement,
the same privilege was sought and obtained for Forsythe, and his time
set at twelve o’clock.
During the few minutes that remained before Hammond’s voice was due to
be heard over the wire, there was an atmosphere of electric suspense in
no wise mitigated by the blaring of the band which filled in the
interval. In the sick man’s bedroom miles away, the doctor had just
examined the patient and ordered every one else out of the room but
himself and the nurse in order that the invalid speaker might be as
little disturbed as possible.
Pale and trembling he sat propped up in the bed, his manuscript on a
tray before him, and the telephone transmitter on an extension bracket
at his lips. Downstairs his family and immediate friends were in front
of the radio which would hurl back to them the speech he was about to
send out.
In a voice deep and resonant in spite of his weakness he began his brief
statement. The listeners below and the great crowds in the convention
hall down in the city sat breathless.
After outlining his purposes toward the party in case he were selected,
he summarized his finding in the water power problem in words eloquent
for their simple clearness. Finally came the closing section in which he
was to give his long awaited policy.
His councilors listening downstairs, who had worked with him over the
manuscript, knew his suggestion for a long term nonpartisan commission
by heart.
But as he began this section they heard words strangely unfamiliar. They
stared at each other in amazement. Down in the convention hall it was as
though the assemblage had been struck by a bolt of lightning.
They heard Hammond, the supposed scientific progressive, deliberately
proposing as his conclusions that the State keep its hands off the water
power forever, and leave it in the grasp of the present private
corporations. As his words ceased, it was evident that in a few brief
sentences, Hammond had torn down all the esteem that he had built up,
and with it his hopes of the nomination.
There was a moment of silence in the great hall, and then pandemonium
broke loose. Boss Quaid and Barney Fogarty pounded each other on the
backs and shouted with glee. Hammond had gone further than Quaid in his
most arrogant moments had ever dared go.
“The guy’s gone crazy!” Barney roared.
“Barney, you’re right,” roared the big fellow.
In the Hammond farmhouse the doctor came out of the speaker’s room to
face a horrified group.
“Doctor--has it been too much for him? Is he delirious?” Mrs. Hammond
gasped.
“Oh, no; he’s all right. Seems to be a great relief to him to get it off
his mind,” the doctor reassured her.
“But, doctor, you heard what he said at the last!” Hammond’s partner
insisted. “Altogether different from what he’d planned.”
“Oh, I didn’t notice what he said,” the doctor told him calmly. “I was
busy counting his heart beats.”
V
A few minutes later, down in the city, little Jim Neenan drove hurriedly
up to the hotel where Forsythe had headquarters, leaped from his car and
made his way up to the Forsythe suite with all speed.
Forsythe was closeted in his private office, going over for the last
time, the address that he was to deliver over the radio in a few
minutes, but Jim burst in on him unannounced.
“Now do you owe me the two grand?” he demanded triumphantly.
“I do not! What for? Get out of here. Can’t you see I’m busy!” Forsythe
snapped at him.
“What for?” Neenan snarled. “Why, for putting Hammond out of the
running! Didn’t you know I did it?”
Forsythe stared at him in contempt.
“You did it!” he sneered. “That’s a delightful bluff, but I’m too busy
to be amused. I don’t owe you two thousand dollars, and never will. Now
get out, I tell you.”
“But listen, I can prove--”
Neenan got no further. Forsythe stood over him menacingly.
“Another word from you and I’ll ring for a cop and have you arrested for
conspiracy. Remember I know who broke Hammond’s legs.”
Neenan stared back at him for a moment with eyes turned to steel
gimlets, white hot at the points. Then without a word he left the room
and the suite and hurried down the corridor to his own apartment.
A few minutes later the eloquent voice of Forsythe was being poured into
the convention hall. He was surpassing himself in his flights of
oratory.
He wound up, deprecating his opponent’s position on the water power
question, and pledging himself to continue a safe and sane policy of
watchful waiting until the time was ripe for the State to act.
Forsythe laid down his manuscript and turned to receive the plaudits of
the group around him.
“Stop! Just a moment, Mr. Forsythe!” came an unfamiliar voice of thunder
from the amplifier of the convention hall, and from the radio horn in
the Forsythe suite. “You have something to confess, Mr. Forsythe. Do it
now, before I’m compelled not only to confess it for you, but to make a
further statement that will make you a fugitive from justice.”
The booming voice ceased, and for a moment there was absolute silence.
Then another voice came from the radio. Forsythe started, and turned
deadly pale. He had not spoken a word, but the voice that he was hearing
was seemingly his own.
“I am afraid I will have to confess,” the voice was saying. “My
opponent, Mr. Hammond, has been the victim of a conspiracy. The closing
words of his speech which led you to condemn him just now were not his
own, but the artful interpolation of an impostor clever at disguising
his voice. If you will go to the woodland near the home of Mr. Hammond,
just outside the city, through which the telephone line passes that
brought his speech this morning from his bedroom to the broadcasting
station, you will find still dangling from one of the poles a wire which
the impostor had cut into the telephone line. It was a simple thing for
him to attach a telephone to the end of that wire and listen in while
Mr. Hammond read his speech. When my opponent reached his
long-waited-for conclusion regarding State water power, the impostor cut
him out of the line, and cleverly imitating Mr. Hammond’s voice, he
delivered the false statement which you heard with so much
consternation. What Mr. Hammond actually read, and you can prove it by
getting his manuscript, was in substance as follows:”
The simulated voice of Forsythe then gave a close approximation of what
Hammond had intended them to hear.
“That is all I have to say,” concluded the pseudo Forsythe.
The real Forsythe, still deathly pale, whirled away from the radio.
“That damned little rat of a Neenan! He double crossed me because I
wouldn’t bribe him! He played the same trick on me that he did on
Hammond. Down to his room quick!”
The group rushed pell-mell down the hall and burst into the room which
Neenan had occupied. But Mr. Neenan had gone, taking with him the sweet
flavor of his revenge.
Over the window sill dangled a wire attached to a telephone instrument.
It ran out along the ledge and connected with the special wire that had
been installed in Forsythe’s suite.
The crafty Neenan had lately feared that his service to Forsythe would
be repudiated, and had prepared the instrument of his revenge
beforehand.
And in the convention hall at this moment the uproar had subsided to the
point where one of Forsythe’s former adherents could make himself heard.
“Mr. Chairman,” he said, “I move that we dispense with the roll call and
instruct the secretary of the convention to cast one ballot for Mr.
Warren Hammond as our candidate for Governor.”
It was seconded and carried without a dissenting voice.
A few minutes later a local man came across Boss Quaid as he was
slipping quietly out of a side entrance of the convention hall.
“Not leaving us, are you, chief?” the other asked.
“Yep,” he sighed. “Barney’s been intimating lately that I’m a has-been.
Barney’s right.”
VI
A week after Warren Hammond had taken the oath of office as Governor of
the State, he dropped a line to one Joseph Morris, a radio announcer
employed by the local broadcasting station, suggesting to Mr. Morris
that it might be to his advantage to call and see him.
“Mr. Morris,” the new Governor began when the young man appeared, “I
feel that I owe you an apology and a reward as well, in case anything in
the line of jobs that I have to dispose of would appeal to you. I’ve
looked you up, and the only thing I find against you is that on a
certain evening when you were acting as announcer at our party’s keynote
pre-convention dinner, you took a chance and went home early, thereby
making me Governor of the State.”
He paused and chuckled at Morris’s utter bewilderment.
“Well, it’s the answer to the ghost story that’s been puzzling a lot of
people since last spring--how I was able to get a speech of mine from
that dinner when I apparently wasn’t there. It’s so darn simple!
“When I left the table licked that night and went out the side door, I
almost ran into your little sound-proof announcer’s booth with its handy
little microphone all ready for use, and its handy little switch to cut
off the microphone out on the table so that I was able to stay right
there and substitute my speech for Mr. Jim Neenan’s horseplay, switching
back to catch his applause and give it to my radio audience as my own.
At that I guess I owe Jim something, too. But if there is anything I can
do for you, let me know.”
THE END
[Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the October 1923 issue of
McClure’s Magazine.]
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