"Stuffy, isn't it?" said Park, and got up to open a window. The unsuspecting MacSvensson was having too good a time to notice Park thrust his arm out the window and wag it briefly.
Five minutes later the doorbell rang. By the time MacSvensson had snapped out of his happy daze, Park had admitted a small, wrinkled man who pointed at the friend's friend and cried: "Fleda!"
"Oswald!" shrieked die girl.
"Sir!" shouted Dunedin at the boss, "what have you been doing with my wife? What have you been doing with my wife?"
"Oh," sobbed Fleda, "I didn't mean to be unfaithful! Truly I didn't! If I'd only thought of you before it was too late ..."
"Huh?" mumbled MacSvensson. "Too late? Unfaithful? Your wife?"
"Yes, you snake, you scoundrel, you bustard, my wife! You'll suffer for this, Boss MacSvensson! Just wait till I—"
"Here, here, my man!" said Park, taking Dunedin by the arm and pulling him into the vestibule. For ten minutes the boss listened in sweaty apprehension to Park's and Dunedin's voices, rising and falling, the former soothing, the latter strained with rage. Finally the door slammed.
Park came back, and said: "I got him to promise not to put in any slurs or tell any newspapers for a while, until we talk things over again. I know who he is, and I think I can squelch him through the company he works for. I'm not sure that'll work, tiiough. He's mad as a wet hen; won't believe that this was just an innocent get-together."
The imperturbable boss looked badly shaken. "You've got to stop him, Al! The story would raise merry hell. If you can do it, you can have just about anything I can give you."
"How about the secretaryship of the burg committee?" asked Park promptly.
"Surely, of course. I can find something else for Ethel-bald to do. Only keep that man shut up!"
"All right, old boy. Right now you'd better get home as soon as you can."
When MacSvensson had been gone a few . minutes, Eric Dunedin's ugly face appeared in the doorway. "All clear, Hal—I mean Thane Park?"
"Come on in, old boy. That was a neat piece of work. You did well too, Fleda. Both you girls did. And now—" Park started to drive a corkscrew into another cork, "we can have a real party!"
"Damn it, Dunedin," said Park, "when I say put your breakfast down on the table and eat it, I mean it!"
"But Hallow, it simply isn't done for a thane's thane to eat with his master—"
"To hell with what's done and what isn't. I've got more for you to do than stand around and treat me as if I were God Almighty. We've got work, brother. Now get busy on that mail."
Dunedin sighed and gave up. When Park chose to, he could by now put on what Dunedin admitted was a nearly perfect imitation of Bishop Scoglund. But unless there were somebody present to be impressed thereby, he chose instead to be his profane and domineering self.
Dunedin frowned over one letter, and said: "Thane Callahan wants to know why you haven't been doing anything to push the glick-ricks changelet."
Park mentally translated the last to "equal-rights amendment."
"Why should I? It isn't my baby. Oh, well, tell him I've been too busy, but I'll get around to it soon. That's always the stock excuse."
Dunedin whistled suddenly. "The kin of the late Trigvy Darling have filed a wergild claim of a hundred and fifty thousand crowns against you."
"What? What? Let's see that! ... What's that all about? Have they got the right to sue me, when I killed him in self-defense?"
"Oh, but of course, Hallow. There's nay criminal penalty for killing a man in fair fight. But his heirs can claim two years' earnings from you. Didn't you know that when you took up his challenge?"
"Good lord, no! What can I do about it?"
"Oh, deary me, glory be to Patrick. You can try to prove the claim too big, as this one may be. I don't know, though;-Darling got a big stipend from Brahtz as a parasite."
"I can always withdraw Allister Park from circulation and be just the bishop. Then let 'em try to collect!"
It would be wearisome to follow Allister Park's political activities in detail for the three weeks after his use of the badger-game on MacSvensson. But lest his extraordinary rise to power seem improbable, consider that it was not until the 1920's in Park's original world that a certain Josef Vissarianovitch Dzugashvili, better known as Joseph Stalin, discovered what could really be done with the executive secretaryship of a political committee. So it is not too surprising that, whereas Park knew what could be done with this office, the politicians of Vinland did not. They learned. Among other things, the secretary makes up the agenda of meetings. He put motions in "proper" form, since a motion is seldom intelligible in the form in which it is presented from the floor. He prompts the chairman—the nominal head of the organization—on parliamentary procedure. He is the interim executive officer; wherefore all appointments go through his hands, and he has custody of all records. He is ex-officio member of all committees. Since a committee seldom has any clear idea of what it wants to do or how it wants to do it, an aggressive secretary can usually run as many committees as he has time for. Whereas the chairman can't speak at meetings, the secretary can not only speak but speak last. He gets the gavel when an appeal is made from the chair ...
At least, that is how it is done in this world. In Vinland the rules were not quite the same, but the similarity was close enough for Park's purpose—which was still to get back to good old New York and that judgeship, if there was still any chance of getting it.
It was after the burg committee meeting on the first of June that Park faced Ivor MacSvensson in the latter's office. Park intended to start needling the boss about the body of Joseph Noggle. But MacSvensson got there first, demanding: "What's all this about your making up to the committeemen?"
"What's that?" asked Park blandly. "I've been seeing them on routine duties only."
"Yeah? Not according to what I've been told. And I've found out that that girl you had up for me wasn't wedded at all. Trying to put one down on the boss, eh? Well, you can go back to hide-walking. You'll call a special committee-meeting for Friday night. Get those seeings out today without fail. That's all."
"Suits me," grinned Park. The chairman can demand special meetings, but the secretary's the man who sends out the notices.
When Friday evening arrived, two-thirds of the seats in the committee-room in Karlsefni Hall remained empty. MacSvensson, blue eyes glacial, fretted. Park, sending out thunder-heads of smoke from the bishop's largest pipe, lolled in a chair, glancing surreptitiously at his watch. If MacSvensson were down at the far end of the hall when the hand touched sixty, Park would simply arise and say: "In the absence of the chairman, and of any other officers authorized to act as such, I, Allister Park, acting as chairman, hereby call this meeting to order ..."
But MacSvensson, looking at him, divined his attention. He snatched out his own watch, and dashed to the chair. He made it by one and a half seconds.
Park was not disturbed. He took his place, hearing the boss's growclass="underline" "Did you send out all those seeings when I told you to, Park? There's just barely a quorum here."
"Absolutely. I can't help it if they go astray in the mail." Park neglected to add that, with the proper cooperation from a postal clerk, it is sometimes possible to make sure that certain of the notices, though duly postmarked as of the time they are received, are accidentally misplaced in the postoffice and completely overlooked until the day after the meeting.
"The meeting will kindly come to order," snapped MacSvensson. He did not like the look of the quorum at all; not one of his tried and true friends was in sight, except Sleepy Ethelbald.