Death Before Bedtime Read Online Free Page B

Senator’s study was a corner room on the second floor with windows on two sides, oak paneling and bookcases filled with law books (which looked unopened), bound copies of the
Congressional Record
(fairly worn), and thick scrapbooks of newspaper clippings, much used, dating from 1912. There were photographs on the walls … less political, however, than those in his office. Photographs of his family at various moments in their lives … even one of Ellen as a bride. This surprised me since, as I remembered the story, she had eloped with an undesirable and had been brought home before, in the eyes of the law at least, he had soiled her.
    The Senator seated himself at a desk in front of the windows. I sat down in a leather armchair beside the unlit fireplace; the room was chilly, I thought. I remember shivering.
    “I must tell you frankly,” said the Senator, looking at me severely, “that I didn’t anticipate this … situation.”
    “What situation?” I acted innocent.
    “This business with my daughter … this ‘engagement.’ ”
    “Sir, there is no business with your daughter,” I said, sitting up very straight.
    “What do you mean, sir?” He was obviously going to out-courtesy me; our manners became more and more antebellum. “My daughter gave me to understand that you and she were to be married.”
    “She is mistaken,” I said; the job was over, I decided sadly.
    “You mean that you refuse, sir, to marry my daughter?”
    “I mean, Senator,” said I, suddenly weary of the whole farce, “that I have never in my one year’s acquaintance with your daughter thought of marrying her nor has she ever thought of marrying me.”
    He looked at me as though I were Drew Pearson investigating the inner workings of the Senate Committee on Spoils and Patronage. He blustered. “Do you mean to imply my daughter is a liar?”
    “You know perfectly well what she is,” I snapped.
    Leander Rhodes sagged in his chair; he looked a hundred years old at that moment. “Young man,” he said huskily, “I have misjudged you. I apologize.”
    “It’s nothing, sir,” I mumbled. I felt genuinely sorry for the old bastard. He sighed heavily; then he lit another cigar.
    “I’ll tell you a little about the coming campaign,” he said. I was enormously relieved: I wasn’t fired after all. “On Friday I shall announce my candidacy. So far the only two candidates officially in the field are both conservatives … neither is quite so conservative as I am, however, and neither has my following in the Midwest, among the farmers and small business people. Now I have been in this game long enough to know that high ideals are not enough if you want high office: you have to compromise to win and I want to win and I am willing to compromise with both Labor and the Left Wing, two elements which have never supported me before. You follow me?”
    I said that I did, perfectly. I was beginning to revise my estimate of him. He was not entirely a fool. Had he been in the fashionable liberal camp I should probably have thought well of him … there were men far less astute than he who enjoyed a good deal more esteem.
    “Now I anticipate a deadlock at the convention.…” Forthe next few minutes I was told political secrets which any Washington journalist would have given an arm to know. I found out what the President was going to do and what was going on in the inner circles of both parties … it was all very grand. “I am taking you into my confidence, young man, because unless you are up on the facts you’ll be of no use to me, and you have a lot of work to do. Fortunately, we have money. I am backed in this by some of the richest men in America and we’ll spend all that the law’ll allow … and then some.” He smiled for the first time since I’d met him: long yellow teeth, like a dog’s.…
    It was almost one-thirty when our conference ended. “I feel we understand each other,” said the Senator, shaking my