"Clever boy," said Stevens as the newspaper man disappeared.
"Yes, only I'm not sure it's a good thing for a newspaper man to be too clever. Spoils his usefulness. Makes him ask too many confounded questions."
Stevens acquiesced, for it would never do to disagree with the boss.
"It's very kind of you, Senator," he began, changing the subject, "to come with me to welcome the new Senator from my State, my old friend and colleague."
An inscrutable smile--a smile, yet a cold one--accompanied Peabody's answer.
"I have always found, Stevens," he said, "that a little attention like this to a new man is never wasted, and I make it a rule not to overlook opportunities."
Again the senior Senator from Mississippi acquiesced, and he laughed heartily at Peabody's keen insight into human nature.
"I think you'll like Langdon," Stevens remarked after a pause, "and you'll find him easy to deal with. Just put up any measure for the benefit of the South and Langdon will go the limit on it. Even a Republican majority doesn't mind a little Democratic support, you know. I think he's just the man you can use in this gulf naval base bill."
"You can swing him?" asked Peabody, sharply.
"I elected him, and he knows it," he chuckled.
"And it's likely that a man like Langdon, new to politics--a simple gentleman of the old school, as you describe him--might have considerable influence on opinion throughout the country."
Langdon's colleague grasped the arm of the senatorial dictator.
"He's just the man we want, Senator. He's one of those old fellows you just have to believe when he talks. He'll do what I suggest, and he can make the public believe what we think."
"Then you guarantee him?" snapped the boss.
"All right," said Peabody. "He goes on the naval committee. That ought to be enough honor for a man who a year ago was growing cotton on an old plantation miles away from civilization."
"We have control now of all the land about Altacoola that can be used," said Stevens. "I have had Norton, the Congressman from Langdon's district, working on it. There isn't a foot of land there which we do not now control under options, and," he added, with a chuckle, "the options were dirt cheap."
"There won't be any New York fortune in it, but it ought to be a pretty tidy bit," he said. "Now, if we could only get Langdon interested, directly or indirectly, in a financial way, that would clinch everything."