“Publish him as a jailbird.”
“What, after I got him pardoned as an innocent hero and worked that gag all over the country?”
“Knock him on his fool head,” sneered an alderman.
“There’s only one thing to do with a bozo like him, and that is to trip him up with a skirt.”
“Can’t he steal something?”
They went over his career with a fine-tooth comb until at last they came back to that lynching and train wreck and his jail record.
“I remember now,” said Sammy thoughtfully, “that Sara unearthed a lot of unpublished stuff.”
“We’ve got to discover new evidence and admit that we were fooled.”
Corruthers had been lolling back in his chair, smoking furiously and saying nothing. His red hair blazed, and his brown freckles grew darker. Suddenly now he let the two front legs of his chair down with a bang.
“Oh, to hell with you all!” he snarled. “You don’t have to get no new evidence. I’ve had the dope to kill Towns for six months.”
Sammy did not appear to be impressed. He had little faith in Corruthers.
“What is it?” he growled, with half a sneer in his tone.
“It is this. Towns made that attack on the woman for which another porter was lynched on the Klan Special last year.”
Sammy sat up quickly. “Like hell!” he snapped.
“Yes, like hell! Towns confessed it to the executive committee of the porters. Said he was in the woman’s compartment when the husband discovered them. He knocked the husband down and escaped. The husband thought it was the regular car porter, and he got his friends and lynched him. Towns offered to tell this story to the general meeting of the porters and in court, but the committee wouldn’t let him. They let him say only that he knew the lynched porter was innocent, because he wasn’t in the car. They figured it would be bad policy to admit that the woman had been attacked by anyone. I got this story from the secretary of the committee. After you ditched me for the nomination to the legislature, I tried to get him to come out with it and swear to it, but he wouldn’t. He was backing Towns. Then I tried to find the widow of the guy who was lynched. I knew she would tell the truth fast enough. Well, I couldn’t get her until the election was over, but I’ve got her now fast enough. She’s in New York, and I’ve been writing to her.
“And that ain’t all. Remember, there was another colored woman mixed up in this. Called herself an Indian princess and got away with it. Princess nothing! I figure she was in the blackmailing game with Towns, double-crossed him, and left him holding the bag. Slip me five hundred for expenses, and I’ll go to New York tonight and round up both of these dames. We’ll bury Towns so deep he’ll never see the outside of jail again.”
Sammy hesitated. He didn’t like this angle of attack. It was—well, it was hitting below the belt. But, pshaw! politics was politics, and one couldn’t be too squeamish. He peeled off five one-hundred-dollar bills.
That night Corruthers went east.
XV
Sara was delighted at Sammy’s move in the Doolittle nomination. If he had stuck to his original plan, it would have been difficult for her to refuse him her support. As it was, the chorus of denunciation at Sammy’s apostacy was easily turned to a chorus demanding the nomination of Matthew Towns to Congress, before the rival politicians in Sammy’s machine could prevent it. It was suggested that if the Republicans refused to nominate him and insisted on Doolittle, he might run independently and get support from the mass of the Negro vote, all the reformers, and, possibly, even the Democrats, in a district where they otherwise had no chance. Sara followed up the suggestion quickly. Club after club in her Colored Women’s Council nominated Matthew by acclamation, until almost the solid Negro women’s vote apparently stood back of him.
Matthew was astounded. He had never dreamed that Sara could effect his nomination to Congress, He resented her means and methods. He half resolved to refuse utterly, but, after all, it was a great chance, a door to freedom, power. But he would have to pay. He would have to strip his soul of all self-respect and lie and steal his way in. He knew it. What should he do? What could he do?
Sara had immediately taken the matter of Matthew’s nomination to the white women’s clubs and to the reformers. Here she struck a snag; Matthew had gained applause from the Farmer-Labor group for his support of some of their bills in the legislature; but after all, he was well known as a machine man and had voted at the dictation of big interests in the traction deal. How then could they nominate Towns, unless, of course, he was prepared to cut away from the machine and take a new progressive stand?
It was Mr. Cadwalader, leader of the
