take it?"

"Urbanely, as always. He's silkier every time I see him." Bowers's
memory lingered upon the soft-spoken interview with the great state
leader.

"Well?" Shelby jogged him crisply.

"He knows all about Graves--as he knows about everybody. Says he has
met the scholar in politics before. Do you remember how he took care
of that kid-gloved aggregation which tried to run him out of business a
year or so ago? He dumped this distinguished kicker into the cabinet,
had another made a plenipotentiary, foisted off number three into some
windy commission on the other side of the planet, and so on down the
list. They said it seemed to be in the air that harmony should
prevail."

Shelby laughed.

"The Boss is the smoothest made," he owned. "What does he advise in
this case?"

Bowers leaned forward importantly.

"What do you think the young man would say to an author's job--some
French or Italian consulate?"

"I'll tell you what I say: if the Boss advised that, he's growing
senile."

"I didn't say he advised it. He merely suggested that literary people
bit at that kind of bait. As a matter of fact, he didn't advise
anything. He said if we couldn't fix things with the O'Rourke crowd,
that the situation would have to develop a bit."

"Queer sort of talk," Shelby commented. "I wonder what he wants?" He
puzzled over it a moment. "Well, whatever develops, don't talk
consulate to Bernard Graves. The Boss is a pastmaster at side-tracking
soreheads, but there's a point involved in this case that he doesn't
grasp. Disappointed lovers are probably out of his line."

Bowers shifted his cigar to reply, but thought better of it. His hold
on the wheel was weakening, and he remarked to his wife that night that
this should be his last active campaign. Shelby entertained a similar
opinion.

When the two men met on the morrow the situation had indeed developed.
Persuaded against his own judgment by Volney Sprague, Bernard Graves
had consented to assume the mantle of Chuck O'Rourke, deceased. To the
repressed amusement of his new allies, he stipulated that the
employment of questionable methods should be left to the common foe,
and that they must accept him absolutely unpledged.

Shelby ran a gauntlet of chaff to his law office that afternoon, and
found Bowers awaiting him in bilious mood. He was hazing the rooms
with gusts of tobacco smoke, a sign of nervousness in so deliberate a
smoker. They nodded cu