When Kennedy passed out of the Boss’s office there was a look of quiet satisfaction on his face which I could not fathom.  Not a word could I extract from him either that night or on the following day, which was the last before the election.

I must say that I was keenly disappointed by the lack of developments, however.  The whole thing seemed to me to be a mess.  Everybody was involved.  What had Miss Ashton overheard and what had Kennedy said to McLoughlin?  Above all, what was his game?  Was he playing to spare the girl’s feelings by allowing the election to go on without a scandal for Travis?

At last election night arrived.  We were all at the Travis headquarters, Kennedy, Travis, Bennett, and myself.  Miss Ashton was not present, but the first returns had scarcely begun to trickle in when Craig whispered to me to go out and find her, either at her home or club.  I found her at home.  She had apparently lost interest in the election, and it was with difficulty that I persuaded her to accompany me.  The excitement of any other night in the year paled to insignificance before this.  Distracted crowds everywhere were cheering and blowing horns.  Now a series of wild shouts broke forth from the dense mass of people before a newspaper bulletin board.  Now came sullen groans, hisses, and catcalls, or all together with cheers as the returns swung in another direction.  Not even baseball could call out such a crowd as this.  Lights blazed everywhere.  Automobiles honked and ground their gears.  The lobster palaces were thronged.  Police were everywhere.  People with horns and bells and all manner of noise-making devices pushed up one side of the thoroughfares and down the other.  Hungrily, ravenously they were feeding on the meagre bulletins of news.

Yet back of all the noise and human energy I could only think of the silent, systematic gathering and editing of the news.  High up in the League headquarters, when we returned, a corps of clerks was tabulating returns, comparing official and semi-official reports.  As first the state swung one way, then another, our hopes rose and fell.  Miss Ashton seemed cold and ill at ease, while Travis looked more worried and paid less attention to the returns than would have seemed natural.  She avoided him and he seemed to hesitate to seek her out.

Would the up-state returns, I had wondered at first, be large enough to overcome the hostile city vote?  I was amazed now to see how strongly the city was turning to Travis.

“McLoughlin has kept his word,” ejaculated Kennedy as district after district showed that the Boss’s pluralities were being seriously cut into.

“His word?  What do you mean?” we asked almost together.

“I mean that he has kept his word given to me at a conference which Mr. Jameson saw but did not hear.  I told him I would publish the whole thing, not caring whom or where or when it hit if he did not let up on Travis.  I advised him to read his Revised Statutes again about money in elections, and I ended up with the threat, ’There will be no dough day, McLoughlin, or this will be prosecuted to the limit.’  There was no dough day.  You see the effect in the returns.”