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"Because I thought if anyone in the world could do anything with Gorgett, you'd be the one," he answered. "Because it seemed to me he'd listen to you, and because I thought in my wild clutching at the remotest hope that he meant to make my humiliation more awful by sending me to you to ask you to go back to him for me."
"Boss Gorgett," of course our papers called him when they went for him, which was all the time; and pretty considerable of a man he was, too. Most people that knew him liked Lafe. I did. But he got a bad name, as they say, by the end of his fourth term as Mayor and who wouldn't?
"Now," said I, when he'd gulped it down, "let's hear what's turned up." He looked at me kind of dimly, and I'll be shot if two tears didn't well up in his eyes and run down his cheeks. "I've come to ask you," he said slowly and brokenly, "to ask you if you won't intercede with Gorgett for me; to ask you if you won't beg him to to grant me an interview before to-morrow noon." "What!"
"What's Knowles going to do?" "He's sworn to expose the whole deal, as you've just told me you knew; one of the preliminaries to having us all up before the next Grand Jury and sending you and Genz over the road, that's all!" Gorgett laughed that old, fat laugh of his, tilting farther back, with his hands in his pockets and his eyes twinkling under his last summer's straw hat-brim.
The penitentiaries are built for just this " "Sh, sh!" said I, but he paid no attention. "They say Gorgett owns the Grand Jury," he went on. "Well, let him! Within a week I'll be mayor of this town and Gorgett's Grand Jury won't outlast his defeat very long. By his own confession this man Genz is party to a conspiracy with Gorgett, and you and Crowder are witnesses to the confession.
And, like most men, you've thought you were different from other men, and you aren't. So, here you are. I believe you said you'd had a hard night?" Knowles looked up at last, his lips working for a while before he could speak. "I'll resign now if you'll if you'll let me off," he said. Gorgett shook his head. "I've got the election in my hand," he answered, "though you fellows don't know it.
Don't you see the frightful irony of it? The best thing in my life, the widest and deepest; my friendship with a good woman becomes a joke and a horror! Don't you see that the personal scandal about me absolutely undermines me and nullifies the political scandal of the closet affair? Gorgett will come in again and the Grand Jury would laugh at any attack on him.
Then we sat in silence for a while, each understanding the other's joy and triumph in the great blow I had struck for the right. I left very soon, and she came with me to the door. We stood for a moment on the step and for the first time, the only time in my life I received a a sister's caress." "Oh," said I. I understood how Gorgett had managed to be so calm that afternoon.
But we thought, when we took Farwell Knowles, that we had 'em at last. Fact is, they did seem stirred up, too. They called it a "moral victory" when we were forced to nominate Knowles to have any chance of beating Gorgett. That was because it was their victory. Farwell Knowles was a young man, about thirty-two, an editorial writer on the Herald, an independent paper.
He didn't even turn to look at us as we came in and closed the door. "Come in, gentlemen, come in," says he, not moving. "I kind of thought you'd be along, about this time." "Looking for us, were you?" I asked. "Yes," said he. "Sit down." We did; Farwell looking pretty pale and red-eyed, and swallowing a good deal. There was a long, long silence. We just sat and watched Gorgett.
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