“And what will you say to Dave Everett and his friends, all of whom you’ll need at the polls?”

“It’s a party exigency, isn’t it?”

“It can be called that—­and you can call a skunk ‘Kitty’ on your way home from the club, but that fact won’t change your wife’s opinion of you when you come in.  You walk up to Dave Everett now with your political exigency in your hand, Luke, and it would turn to a political axegency, and you’d have a pack of rebels on your back that would down you sure!  No, sir!  You can’t afford to smash a man that way.”

“Then we’ll ram him through the convention, reformers or no reformers!”

“You haven’t got your crowd.”

“Thelismer, you’re right!  I wouldn’t have admitted it yesterday, but after seeing how they came roaring up against you, I’m scared.  I’m going to pull Everett out of the fight and set up another man—­one of the young and liberal fellows.  I’ll do it within twenty-four hours!”

The Duke replaced his clippings and shoved the big wallet into his pocket.

“Sudden remedies are sometimes good in extreme cases, Luke,” he drawled, “but administering knockout drops to a sick party is not to be recommended.”

The chairman’s patience left him then.

“What kind of a trick is this, standing up here at the eleventh hour and putting the knife into your party?” he demanded, wrathfully.

“I had a dog once, Luke, that was snapping at flies in general as he was lying on the porch here, and he snapped at a brown hackle fly that was hitched onto a fish-line.  And he ran off down the road with a hook in his mouth and sixty yards of line and a pole following him.  You’d better spit out that last fly, Luke.  Now will you take a little advice from me, on the condition that I’ll follow up that advice with some practical help?”

“That’s what I’m waiting for.”

“Then you get back onto your job, and leave Everett just where he is—­not one word to him or his friends.  That’s the advice part.  The help will come when I’ve got a few things straightened out a little more.”

“The convention is less than three weeks off.  What’s your plan?  I want to know it now.”

“Well, you won’t.”

“Do you think for a moment that I, the chairman of the Republican State Committee, am going into a convention with blinders on?”

“You can go in any way you want to,” retorted the Duke, calmly.  “But that’s all you’re going to hear from me to-day, Luke.  Faith without works is no good.  You furnish the faith, and I’ll furnish the works.”

“I never heard of any such devilish campaign management as this,” grumbled the chairman.  “You’re talking to me as though I didn’t know any more politics than a village hog-reeve.”

“Well, I’m the doctor in this case, providing I’m called,” said the old man.  “Just now I’m feeling of the pulse and making the diagnosis, and am getting ready to prescribe the dose.  I’ll call you into consultation, Luke, when the right time comes, and I’ll guarantee that nothing will leak out to wound your pride or your political reputation.  But I want to say that if you stand here to-day waiting to hear any more about what I intend to do, you’d better shut off that automobile.  You won’t be leaving for quite a spell.”