done so, he closed the safe.
As he left, he said, "I shall only bother you to let me sleep in the
house. I'll be very busy all day each day I'm here." When she thought
he had gone he returned to add: "Perhaps I'd better explain to you that
there's forty-five thousand dollars in cash in the package. That's why
I was so anxious for no one to know."

"I'll say nothing about it," Pauline assured him.

Larkin came down from Indianapolis the next day and registered at the
Palace Hotel. As soon as he could escape from the politicians and
newspaper correspondents in the hotel office, he went by a devious
route to a room on the floor below his own and, knocking, was admitted
to Culver and Merriweather. He nodded to Dumont's political agent,
then said to Culver: "You've got the dough?"

"Yes," Culver answered, in his best imitation of the tone of the man of
large affairs. "In twenties, fifties and hundreds."

"I hope, mighty few hundreds," said Larkin. "The boys are kind o' shy
about changing hundred-dollar bills. It seems to attract attention to
them." He had large, dreamy, almost sentimental, brown eyes that
absurdly misrepresented his character, or, at least, his dominant
characteristics. His long, slightly bent nose and sharp chin and thin,
tight mouth were more truthful.

"How do things look, Joe?" asked Merriweather.

"Yes, Mr. Dumont asked me to telegraph him after I'd talked with you,"
said Culver. "Has Scarborough made much headway?"

"I must say, he's raised a darn sight more hell than I thought he
would," Larkin answered.

"The people seem to be in a nasty mood about corruption. Darn their
fool souls, as if they wouldn't be in the rottenest kind of a fix, with
no property and no jobs, if we didn't keep the ignorant vote under
control and head off such firebrands as this fellow Scarborough."

"Got any figgers?" demanded Merriweather, who had listened to this
tirade with an expression suggesting cynicism. He thought, and he knew
Joe Larkin thought, politics a mere game of chance--you won or you
didn't win; and principles and oratory and likes and dislikes and
resentments were so much "hot air." If the "oil can" had been with
Scarborough, Merriweather would have served him as cheerfully and as
loyally as--well, as would Joe Larkin in those circumstances.

Larkin wrenched a big bunch of letters and papers from the sagged
inside pocket of his slouchy sack coat; after some fumbling and
sorting, he