Pelton took another gulp from the tall glass at his elbow, emptying it. “Fix me up another of these, Frank,” he said. “I feel like a new man, already.” Then his face clouded again. “But we have no time to prepare a speech, now, and I just can’t ad lib one.”
Cardon drew a little half-inch record-disk from his pocket case.
“Play this off,” he said. “I had it fixed up, as soon as I got wise to what was going to happen. The voice is one of the girls in my office, over at the brewery. Pronunciation, grammar, elocution and everything correct.”
Pelton snapped the disk onto his recorder and put in the ear plug. Then, before he pressed the stud, he looked at Cardon curiously.
“How’d you get onto this, anyhow, Frank?” he wanted to know.
“Well. … I hope you don’t ask me for an accounting of all the money I’ve been spending in this campaign, because some of the items would look funny as hell, but—”
“No accounting, Frank. After all, you spent as much of your own money as you did of mine,” Pelton interrupted.
“… But I bought myself a pipe line into Literates’ Hall big enough to chase an elephant through,” Cardon went on, ignoring the interruption. “This fellow Mongery, for instance.” Elliot Mongery was one of Literate Frank Cardon’s best friends; he comforted his conscience with the knowledge that Mongery would slander him just as unscrupulously, if the interests of the Lancedale Plan were at stake. “I have Mongery just like this.” He made a clutching and lifting gesture, as though he were picking up some small animal by the scruff of the neck. “So, as soon as I got word of it, I started getting this thing together. It isn’t the kind of a job a Literate semanticist would do, but it’s all honest Illiterate thinking, in Illiterate language. Turn it on, and tell me what you think of it.”
While Pelton listened to the record, Cardon mixed him another of the highballs, adding a little of the heart-stimulant the medic had given him. Pelton was grinning savagely when he turned off the little machine and took out the ear plug.
“Great stuff, Frank! And I won’t have to ham it much; it’s just about the way I feel.” He thought for a moment. “You have me talking about my ruined store, there. Just how bad is it, anyhow?”
“Pretty bad, Chet. Latterman says it’s going to take some time to get it fixed up, but he expects to be open for business by Thursday or Friday. He’s going to put on a big Battle Sale; he says it’s going to make retail-merchandising history. And the insurance covers most of the damage.”
“Well, tell me about it. How did you get the riot stopped, after you got me out? And how did you—?”
Cardon shook his head. “You play that record over again; get yourself in the mood. When you go on, we’ll have you in a chair, wrapped in a blanket … you’re supposed to have crawled back out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death to make this speech … and we’ll have the wire run down inside the blanket, so that you can listen to the speech while you’re giving it. Chet, this is going to be one of the great political speeches of all time—”
Literate William R. Lancedale looked up from his desk and greeted his visitor with a smile.
“Well, Frank! Sit down and accept congratulations! I suppose you got the returns?”
Cardon nodded, dropping into a chair beside the desk. “Just came from campaign headquarters. This automatic tally system they use on the voting machines is really something. Complete returns tabulated and reported for the whole state within forty minutes after the polls closed. I won’t be silly enough to ask you if you got the returns.”
“I deserved that, of course,” Lancedale chuckled. “Can I offer you refreshment? A nice big stein of Cardon’s Black Bottle, for instance?”
Cardon shuddered and grimaced horribly. “I’ve been drinking that slop by the bucketful, all day. And Pelton’s throwing a victory party, tonight, and I’ll have to choke down another half gallon of it. Give me a cup of coffee, and one of those good cigars of yours.”
Lancedale grinned at him. “Ah, yes, the jolly brewer. His own best advertisement. How’s Pelton reacting to his triumph? And what’s his attitude toward his children? I’ve been worrying about that; vestigial traces of a conscience, I suppose.”
“Well, I had to keep him steamed up, till after he went off the air,” Cardon said. “Chet isn’t a very good actor. But after that, I talked to him like a Dutch uncle. Told him what a swell pair of kids and a fine son-in-law he had. He got sore at me. Tried to throw me out of the house, a couple of times. I was afraid he was going to have another of those attacks. But by the time Ralph and Claire get back from their honeymoon and Ray finishes that cram-course for Literate prep school, he’ll be ready to confer the paternal blessing all around. I’m going to stay in town and make sure of it, and then I’m taking about a month’s vacation.”
“You’ve earned it, all right.” Lancedale poured Cardon’s coffee and passed him the cigar humidor. “How’s Pelton’s attitude toward the Consolidated Illiterates’ Organization, now?”
Cardon, having picked up the Italian stiletto to puncture his cigar, looked at it carefully to make sure that it really had no
