“He was an honorable man when he came in,” he thought. “What was he when he went out?”
Something had risen out of that greed-polluted room and entered the soul of Terry Black. Greg Cooper had seen it happen. He passed the handkerchief across his forehead and looked toward the senator. Bradford Weller tossed the currency-stuffed envelope from one desk to the other.
“Two hundred and fifty more, Cooper,” he said. “Make a record of it.”
Greg Cooper made no comment. There were times when the words at his command were inadequate to express his thoughts or his feelings. He had no awe of the senator. He had written speeches for Bradford Weller that Weller could never have written himself. He had written diplomatic letters to irate constituents and he had ferreted out the hidden hands behind important bills so that the senator could line up on the right side. He had no more illusions about statesmanship and he knew the senator for what he was. Yet strangely, he had an affection of a kind for the man; the affection of a foster parent for a spoiled and detestable brat which has, nevertheless, a helpless appeal. Bradford Weller couldn’t walk alone in a world of politics but he thought that he could and he was quite vain. Cooper granted him his vanity and watched over him. It was all part of a good political secretary’s job.
The room was quiet again. Cooper made the pencil entry on a long sheet and the ink entry in a ledger. He checked through the thin sheaf of tens and twenties for which Terry Black had entered the slave ranks of a loan shark, then tossed the bills into the box with the rest.
The door at the end of the room opened. Hito was bowing to the senator again.
“Misser George Arlington. You see him, yess?”
At sound of the name, Cooper raised his head sharply. The senator came out of his reverie. “Yes. Yes. Of course, I’ll see him.”
He was squaring away behind his desk like a man of affairs rather than like the idle dreamer of a long afternoon. He made a gesture toward Cooper.
“You might drop the lid on that box,” he said.
Cooper had acted ahead of the command. The box was closed and he was stacking the last of the unchecked bills in a desk drawer when the latest visitor came in.
George Arlington was big and expansive; a massive study in blue and gray. Six feet tall and over two hundred pounds, he looked like a wealthy western cattleman dressed for the city. He was carrying a pearl gray Stetson of the broad-brim type in his hand. A broad, white-toothed smile split his bronzed face.
“Ah, Senator. I’m glad to see you.”
A whiff of lilac blew across the room and Greg Cooper wrinkled his nose. His eyes had narrowed and he was sitting stiffly behind his own desk. The name George Arlington had been familiar but he had been willing to grant the fact that more than one man might bear the name. There was no mistaking the big man in the gray suit and the blue shirt, however. They had met before. Greg Cooper had been a newspaper man then and Big George had been under indictment for fraud.
“Leave us alone for a while, Cooper. I’ll call you.”
The senator had risen to his feet. Big George half turned and the smile left his face momentarily. He was remembering Cooper. Cooper was looking at the senator.
“Do you know who this man is?” he said curtly.
Bradford Weller frowned. “If you are referring to Mr. Arlington, I am quite familiar with... ah, his record.”
“He’s a con man. A darned good one. He’s made his living by trimming suckers for years and he’s only slipped once.”
“Cooper, this is embarrassing.”
Big George laughed. “Not to me, Senator. A newspaper man never quite gets the hang of being a gentleman.”
“Thanks.”
Cooper looked the big man over briefly. The look of expansive geniality had come back to George Arlington, but his eyes had grown small and narrow. They were small eyes normally, but Arlington had learned the trick of holding them wide open so that they appeared frank and friendly. He wasn’t holding them open while his face was turned away from the senator. Greg Cooper stood his ground. He faced the senator once more.
“Embarrassing or not,” he said, “this baby can get the fillings out of your teeth. Don’t buy anything from him.”
The senator threw back his head and laughed. His laugh was a sudden, explosive sound in the room. Big George’s chuckle rumbled an accompaniment. The two men looked at each other and Greg Cooper was outside of the secret that they shared. He knew that he was outside and that there was nothing that he could do about it. The senator had taken the bit in his teeth like this once before. He had played with a utility crowd at a time when Greg Cooper told him that it was political suicide to do so.
That was why Bradford Weller was a senator now by courtesy only. He retained the title but the voters had swept him out of office in the last election and he was actually an ex-senator. Cooper shrugged. He could nurse and jockey a man only to a certain point; beyond that point, the man was on his own. He had thrown out his warning and if the senator preferred to laugh, that was the senator’s business.
Big George Arlington blocked his way to the door. The con man was holding out his hand. “No hard feelings?” he said.
Greg Cooper took the extended hand gravely. They shook hands as two fighters might shake before the opening bell. There was a grim smile on Greg Cooper’s face.
“No hard feelings,” he said.
Chapter II
The Promise
If the mood of the senator’s study was Greed, then the mood of the big hall was Fear. Mike Deshler was the symbol of it. A bulky, heavy-shouldered man with the face of a prize-fighter, he sat in a straight chair with a clear view of both the front door and the door to the senator’s study. He had his arms folded across his chest and his right hand was at his armpit. He was a guard who had been hired by the day from a famous detective agency. To that extent had Bradford Weller been careful; he had prepared against sudden violence.
But he had let George Arlington enter the room where he had over a hundred and fifty thousand dollars in currency.
Cooper nodded to the guard and crossed the hall. A girl rose swiftly to meet him from a big chair in the parlor where she had been pretending to read a magazine. She was a slender girl; vividly dark, her brown eyes wide with worry.
“Greg,” she said, “I’ve been wanting to talk to you. What is he going to do?”
Greg Cooper looked down into the girl’s face, all the prettier for its pallor, and his heart thudded painfully. Vivian Dawson had the capacity for stirring his emotions as no other girl ever had. She was the lure that had held him to his job on weary days when the senator tried his patience and his soul. She was the senator’s orphaned niece and because she was all that she was, Greg Cooper refused to believe that the senator was all that he appeared to be.
“I don’t know what he’s going to do, Vi,” he said softly. “Let us talk it over a little.”
He started into the old-fashioned parlor with her and stopped. There was a tall, thin man with long, curling gray hair in the easy chair by the window. This was Tim Weller, a Federal judge once in the long ago, and the elder brother of the senator. Tim Weller had given up his own political career when his brother started to climb. He was old now, but still the wiser of the two men when he cared to speak his mind. At the moment, his chin was on his chest and he seemed to be asleep. Vivian spoke from behind Cooper’s right shoulder.
“The little study might be better,” she said.