ing at Drayton
with an ingratiating flicker in his dulled eyes.

"Hello, Quinlan!" said Drayton. "What's on your mind to-night?"

"Nothing, until you get done there," said Quinlan, letting himself
flop down into a chair across the desk from Drayton. "Go ahead and get
through. I've got nowhere to come but in, and nowhere to go but out."

"I'm just putting the final touches on my story of Congressman
Mallard's speech," said Drayton. "Want to read my introduction?"

Privately Drayton was rather pleased with the job and craved approval
for his craftsmanship from a man who still knew good writing when he
saw it, even though he cold no longer write it.

"No, thank you," said Quinlan. "All I ever want to read about that man
is his obituary."

"You said it!" agreed Drayton. "It's what most of the decent people in
this country are thinking, I guess, even if they haven't begun saying
it out loud yet. It strikes me the American people are a mighty
patient lot--putting up with that demagogue. That was a rotten thing
that happened up on the hill to-day, Quinlan--a damnable thing. Here
was Mallard making the best speech in the worst cause that ever I
heard, and getting away with it too. And there was Richland trying to
answer him and in comparison making a spectacle of himself--Richland
with all the right and all the decency on his side and yet showing up
like a perfect dub alongside Mallard, because he hasn't got one-tenth
of Mallard's ability as a speaker or one-tenth of Mallard's personal
fire or stage presence or magnetism or whatever it is that makes
Mallard so plausible--and so dangerous."

"That's all true enough, no doubt," said Quinlan; "and since it is
true why don't the newspapers put Mallard out of business?"

"Why don't the newspapers put him out of business!" echoed Drayton.
"Why, good Lord, man, isn't that what they've all been trying to do
for the last six months? They call him every name in the calendar, and
it all rolls off him like water off a duck's back. He seems to get
nourishment out of abuse that would kill any other man. He thrives on
it, if I'm any judge. I believe a hiss is music to his ears and a
curse is a hushaby, lullaby song. Put him out of business? Why say,
doesn't nearly every editorial writer in the country jump on him every
day, and don't all the paragraphers gibe at him, and don't all the
cartoonists lampoon him, and don't all of us who write news from down
here in Washington give him th