“Something about telling the crowd?” he answered.  “Yes, I heard it.”

“We were having a tussle,” continued Vetch lightly.  “The fat’s in the fire at last.”

Stephen laughed drily.  “Then I hope you will keep it there.”

“You mean you would like an explosion?”

“I mean that anything that could clear up the situation would be welcome.”

At this Vetch turned to Darrow and observed whimsically:  “He doesn’t seem to fancy our friend Gershom.”

Darrow looked round with a smile from the window.  “Well, there are times when I don’t myself,” he confessed in his deliberate way.  “Of all bullies, your political bully is the worst.  But he is not bad, he is just foolish.  His heart is set on this general strike, and he can’t set his heart on anything without losing his head.”  As the old man turned his face back to the sunset, the strong bold lines of his profile reminded Stephen of the impassive features of an Egyptian carving.  Was this the vague resemblance that had baffled him ever since he had entered the room?

“To tell the truth,” said Stephen frankly, “the fellow strikes me as particularly obnoxious; but I may be prejudiced.”

“I think you are,” responded Vetch.  “I owe Gershom a great deal.  He was useful to me once, and I recognize my debt; but the fact remains, that I don’t owe him or any other man the shirt on my back!” As he met Stephen’s glance he lowered his voice, and added in a tone of boyish candour that was very winning in spite of his colloquial speech:  “I like your face, and I’m going to talk frankly to you.”

“You may,” replied the young man impulsively.  It was impossible to resist the human quality, the confiding friendliness, of the Governor’s manner.  The chances were, he said to himself, that the whole thing was mere burlesque, one of the successful sleight-of-hand tricks of the charlatan.  In theory he was still sceptical of Gideon Vetch, yet he had already surrendered every faculty except that impish heretical spectator that dwelt apart in his brain.

“You want something of course, every last one of you, even Darrow,” resumed Vetch, with his charming smile.  “I can safely assume that if you didn’t want something, you wouldn’t be here.  Good Lord, if a man so much as bows to me in the street without asking a favour, I begin to think that he is either a half-wit or a ne’er-do-well.”

“At least I want nothing for myself,” laughed Stephen, a trifle sharply.

“Nor does Darrow, God bless him!—­nor, for the matter of that, does Judge Page.  I’ve got nothing to give you that you would take, and so you are wishing Berkeley on me for the penitentiary board.”  The gleam of humour was still in his eyes and the drollery in his expressive voice.

“We are seeking this for the penitentiary, not for Mr. Berkeley.  He is the man you need.”

“For a hobby, yes.  That’s all right, of course, but, my dear young sir, you can’t run the business of a state as a hobby any more than you can administer it as a philanthropy.”