Mrs. Honoria leaned her two round arms on the mezzanine rail, and looked long and earnestly down upon the caucussing lobby throng.  When she looked up it was to say:  “There are wires?”

“A full set of cut-ins.  You can trust the big boss for that.  He is in touch with every corner of the State, just the same as he would be if he were here in his usual election headquarters in the hotel.”

The small plotter became silent again, and when she spoke she was smiling brightly.

“You are a good boy, Richard, and you shall have your reward.  And it is going to be something that will make you happy, this time.  Run away, now, and let me have a little solitude.  I want to think.”

It was a full hour after Gantry’s disappearance that the senator came up-stairs, and Mrs. Honoria beckoned to the pair on the opposite side of the gallery.

“It’s bedtime,” she said, when they came around to her divan.  And then, with a malicious little grimace for Evan:  “I’ve been counting, and I’ve seen Patricia stifle three distinct and separate yawns in the last five minutes.  She has been up every night since we came to town, and—­”

Left to himself, Blount sat watching the crowd for a time, and then went to his room to read himself to sleep.  One of the two crucial days of suspense was outworn, but there was another coming; and after he had read for an hour he went to bed, resolutely determined to get the rest necessary to carry him through the dreaded Saturday.  Sleep came quickly when he had turned off the lights, but it was merely a transition to a troubled dreamland in which Patricia, Mrs. Honoria, Gryson, and Gantry were weirdly confused.  In the thick of it he seemed to see the ward-heeler standing at his bedside and beating furiously upon a huge Chinese gong.  When he sprang up and began to rub his eyes, the room was lighted by a red glare, and the dream-noise was translated into the rattling of wheels and the clanging of alarm-gongs and cries of “Fire!” in the avenue below.

As a city dweller, Blount should have felt the wall of the room, and, finding it still cool, should have turned over and gone to sleep again.  Instead, he slipped out of bed and went to the window.  One glance showed him that the fire was in the business district, either in or near the Temple Court Building.  That was enough to make him dress hurriedly and hasten to the street, where he found a handful of policemen trying ineffectually to keep a clear pavement for the racing fire-trucks.  Watching his chance, Blount darted out to make the crossing.  He was half-way to the opposite curb when an unwieldy hook-and-ladder truck, drawn by a pair of magnificent grays, came lurching and plunging down the side street upon which the hotel cornered.

In front of the horses, and leaping and barking at their heads in a frenzy of excitement, was a spotted coach-dog—­the truck squad’s mascot.  Blount was within a few feet of the farther sidewalk, and was well out of danger when the long truck slewed into the avenue.  But at the passing instant the mascot dog, leaping and whirling like a four-footed dervish, sprang backward.  Blount felt the catapulting shock of a yielding body between his shoulders, heard a yell from the truck-driver on his high seat, and went plunging headlong to the curb.  After which he felt and heard no more.