“What’s the matter?” wailed the frightened Buggerie, frantically feeling for a match.
“Turn on that God damned light!” roared Snobbcraft. “I just stumbled over a man. … Hurry up, will you?”
Dr. Buggerie finally found a match, struck it, located the wall button and pressed it. The hall was flooded with light. There arranged in a row on the floor and neatly trussed up and gagged were the six special guards.
“What the hell does this mean?” yelled Snobbcraft at the mute men prone before them. Buggerie quickly removed the gags.
They had been suddenly set upon, the head watchman explained, about an hour before, just after Dr. Buggerie left, by a crowd of gunmen who had blackjacked them into unconsciousness and carried them into the building. The watchman displayed the lumps on their heads as evidence and looked quite aggrieved. Not one of them could remember what transpired after the sleep-producing buffet.
“The vault!” shrilled Buggerie. “Let’s have a look at the vault.”
Down the stairs they rushed, Buggerie wheezing in the lead, Snobbcraft following and the six tousled watchmen bringing up the rear. The lights in the basement were still burning brightly. The doors of the vault were open, sagging on their hinges. There was a litter of trash in front of the vault. They all clustered around the opening and peered inside. The vault was absolutely empty.
“My God!” exclaimed Snobbcraft and Buggerie in unison, turning two shades paler.
For a second or two they just gazed at each other. Then suddenly Buggerie smiled.
“That stuff won’t do them any good,” he remarked triumphantly.
“Why not?” demanded Snobbcraft, in his tone a mixture of eagerness, hope and doubt.
“Well, it will take them as long to get anything out of that mass of cards as it took our staff, and by that time you and Givens will be elected and no one will dare publish anything like that,” the statistician explained. “I have in my possession the only summary—those papers I showed you at your house. As long as I’ve got that document and they haven’t, we’re all right!” he grinned in obese joy.
“That sounds good,” sighed Snobbcraft, contentedly. “By the way, where is that summary?”
Buggerie jumped as if stuck by a pin and looked first into his empty hands, then into his coat pockets and finally his trousers pockets. He turned and dashed out to the car, followed by the grim-looking Snobbcraft and the six uniformed watchmen with their tousled hair and sore bumps. They searched the car in vain, Snobbcraft loudly cursing Buggerie’s stupidity.
“I—I must have left it in your study,” wept Buggerie, meekly and hopefully. “In fact I think I remember leaving it right there on the table.”
The enraged Snobbcraft ordered him into the car and they drove off leaving the six uniformed watchmen gaping at the entrance to the grounds, the moonbeams playing through their tousled hair.
The two men hit the ground almost as soon as the car crunched to a stop, dashed up the steps, into the house, through the crowd of bewildered guests, up the winding colonial stairs, down the hallway and into the study.
Buggerie switched on the light and looked wildly, hopefully around. Simultaneously the two men made a grab for a sheaf of white paper lying on the sofa. The statistician reached it first and gazed hungrily, gratefully at it. Then his eyes started from his head and his hand trembled.
“Look!” he shrieked dolefully, thrusting the sheaf of paper under Snobbcraft’s eyes.
All of the sheets were blank except the one on top. On that was scribbled:
Thanks very much for leaving that report where I could get hold of it. Am leaving this paper so you’ll have something on which to write another summary.
Happy dreams, Little One.
“Great God!” gasped Snobbcraft, sinking into a chair.
XII
The afternoon before election Matthew and Bunny sat in the latter’s hotel suite sipping cocktails, smoking and awaiting the inevitable. They had been waiting ever since the day before. Matthew, tall and tense; Bunny, rotund and apprehensive, trying ever so often to cheer up his chief with poor attempts at jocosity. Every time they heard a bell ring both jumped for the telephone, thinking it might be an announcement from Helen’s bedside that an heir, and a dark one, had been born. When they could no longer stay around the office, they had come down to the hotel. In just a few moments they were planning to go back to the office again.
The hard campaign and the worry over the outcome of Helen’s confinement had left traces on Matthew’s face. The satanic lines were accentuated, the eyes seemed sunken farther back in the head, his well-manicured hand trembled a little as he reached for his glass again and again.
He wondered how it would all come out. He hated to leave. He had had such a good time since he’d been white: plenty of money, almost unlimited power, a beautiful wife, good liquor and the pick of damsels within reach. Must he leave all that? Must he cut and run just at the time when he was about to score his greatest victory? Just think: from an underpaid insurance agent to a millionaire commanding millions of people—and then oblivion. He shuddered slightly and reached again for his glass.
“I got everything fixed,” Bunny remarked, shifting around in the overstuffed chair. “The plane’s all ready with tanks full and I’ve got Ruggles right there in the hangar. The money’s in that little steel box: all in thousand dollar bills.”
“You’re going with me, aren’t you, Bunny?” asked Matthew in almost pleading tones.
“I’m not stayin’ here!” his secretary replied.
“Gee, Bunny, you’re a brick!” said Matthew leaning over and placing his hand on his plump little friend’s knee. “You sure have been a good pal.”
“Aw, cut th’ comedy,” exclaimed Bunny, reddening and turning his head swiftly away.
Suddenly the telephone rang, loud, clear, staccato. Both men sprang for it, eagerly, open-eyed, apprehensive. Matthew was first.
“Hello!”
