dy, with your
independent candidate who can't talk English."

Willy Cameron kept his temper.

"No," he said, slowly. "It wasn't a question of Mr. Hendricks
withdrawing. It was a question of Mr. Cardew getting out."

Sheer astonishment held old Anthony speechless.

"It's like this," Willy Cameron said. "Your son knows it. Even if we
drop out he won't get it. Justly or unjustly--and I mean that--nobody
with the name of Cardew can be elected to any high office in this city.
There's no reflection on anybody in my saying that. I am telling you a
fact."

Howard had listened attentively and without anger. "For a long time, Mr.
Cameron," he said, "I have been urging men of--of position in the city,
to go into politics. We have needed to get away from the professional
politician. I went in, without much hope of election, to--well, you can
say to blaze a trail. It is not being elected that counts with me, so
much as to show my willingness to serve."

Old Anthony recovered his voice.

"The Cardews made this town, sir," he barked. "Willingness to serve,
piffle! We need a business man to run the city, and by God, we'll get
it!"

"You'll get an anarchist," said Willy Cameron, slightly flushed.

"If you want my opinion, young man, this is a trick, a political trick.
And how do we know that your Vigilance Committee isn't a trick, too?
You try to tell us that there is an organized movement here to do heaven
knows what, and by sheer terror you build up a machine which appeals to
the public imagination. You don't say anything about votes, but you see
that they vote for your man. Isn't that true?"

"Yes. If they can keep an anarchist out of office. Akers is an
anarchist. He calls himself something else, but that's what it amounts
to. And those bombs last night were not imaginary."

The introduction of Louis Akers' name had a sobering effect on Anthony
Cardew. After all, more than anything else, he wanted Akers defeated.
The discussion slowly lost its acrimony, and ended, oddly enough, in
Willy Cameron and Anthony Cardew virtually uniting against Howard.
What Willy Cameron told about Jim Doyle fed the old man's hatred of
his daughter's husband, and there was something very convincing about
Cameron himself. Something of fearlessness and honesty that began,
slowly, to dispose Anthony in his favor.

It was Howard who held out.

"If I quit now it will look as though I didn't want to take a licking,"
he said, quietly obstinate.